Always need to manualy activate a quest to progress but the dialogue is available anyway. But doing that will softlock the progress because the game won't repeat the dialogue or recognize it was already done.
Dispite restarting the game and going through the annoying dialogues (especially the high pitched blabbering) the farming won't work because every tile is gray and it's not possible to use the how. Only pickaxe, axe and scythe are working but only outside of the grid-mode.