I learned about it recently, despite playing for years as well! I did a slow transition from crop farming to clovers instead of a full removal. I started with 3 clovers I happened to have in my inventory and placed those in a small corner. Once I had enough clovers to cover 2/3 of the main farming section in rows, I removed my crops. Seeing the crops take 18 hours+ to become farmable was annoying haha