It's not a big idea/improovement, but wouldn't the farm land owners look better with a different shield, such as the green samurai one?
The newbie shield makes them look dull.

yeah, replace with turtle-shield.gif

Or maybe a bucket of water as a shield...

oh i think its a re-initialization bug after
npcserver-restart, they are supposed to not
have any shield (or is it needed for farming?)

Well, for the last few versions setcharprop #2,; has set the character's shield to the default, shield1.gif.
Maybe the default should be no-shield.gif instead?

Maybe........
 

You should make it a watering can as a shield?

or use that samauri tools gif thing and setimg to create a pitchfork over their hand... that always looks good.