Rennebu Prison Blues

[humbe]

It's august, 1996. I was driving south from Trondheim to visit the folks for the weekend. After having driven in nowhere for a while I get to Berkåk, which is basically a gas station on each side of the road and a collection of houses, yet still the center of Rennebu kommune I think. After a while I start to wonder. Is the speed limit still 60 kph? I must have missed a sign.. *yawn*.. I've been driving in the middle of the forest for a while.



What are these two doing sitting right next to the road watching the traffic? Wouldn't it be more peaceful to lunch somewhere else in all this nature?

A few bends on the road later I catch on, as a policeman wavers me off the road.

Policeman 1: Do you realize how fast you were driving?
Me: I was doing 80 sir.
Policeman 1: Yeah.. Eighty in a sixty zone no less. What if you had hit a kid walking home from school?
Me: What kid? There's noone around.
Policeman 1: Hmm.. Ronny.. What should we give this one. Noone seems to respect our main street here..
Policeman 2: Yeah.. We have to really do something that'll get in the papers and scare people off so they don't do the same. I guess a few months of jail time?
Policeman 1: Sadly not scary enough it seems. We've tried that before.
Policeman 2: Haw haw.. I think I got it.. I have a new device here to test. Get out of the car.

I get out of the car and turn around, and suddenly they clamp something around my left foot.

Policeman 2: This is a GPS tracker with explosives. If you move more than 4 km's away from the position I'm about to give it it'll explode. You'll serve your prison time here in Rennebu.
Policeman 1: Wait.. We don't want this git walking around our town do we?
Policeman 2: Good point. Lets get him down the valley first..



One of the policemen drives me down the valley west of the main road.

Policeman 2: This'll work. I've made you a map here.. The last map you'll ever need.. Haw haw.. If you go beyond the limits of this, the device will explode.. Lead a happy life!
Me: Wait.. For how long? When do you come to get this thing off me?
Policeman 2: Haha.. Dream on.. Just drive up to Berkåk if you want to complain.
Me: But that's not on the map!!
Policeman 2: Exactly.. Haw haw..



Urk. According to the policeman, the range was 4 km in all directions, so I guess this map is 8x8 kilometers. Is there anything here?

2454 people living in Rennebu, where I guess most of them lives around Berkåk not covered by the map. How many lives on this map? 50? I guess we should drive through and see what's there..



And this is it.. Not even a gas station around. Apart from farmland and a few farms, this small shop is all we can find. And the shop looks like the extension of someones house living on the other end of it.. I'm all for supporting my local food store, but this time that's critical. If this one goes out of business, I'm pretty much screwed..

Looking like the closest thing to a community center around here, we walk in, and see if we can find something about job openings or something. I guess noone around here needs a home page on the internet.. What else can I help them with? I guess with the money in my pocket and what's in the bank (is there a mini-bank around here? I guess not) that's a total of 25199 kroner. Pretty much what I've saved up so far, so can pay for groceries for a while, but other than that, not much to start over with.

[humbe]

The scenario

So this time around I'm starting in 1996 where and when I actually did get a speeding ticket back in the days.

• This is a start from scratch game, where I've repaid the loan, bought a 1983 Golf GL, and then adjusted the amount of money in game to leave me with 25199 kroner.
• I'm using currency conversion, so that is basically $2500 dollars in regular in game money. So basically, all prices seen in this game is x10 of what you'd expect in base game.
• The settings is default for start from scratch, with default hard economy of course, but I've turned off stones this time around.
• I will try to buy some time correct gear where I find something I like, and the time will move forwards, but I won't be strict about it. In Norway, both European and US gear should fit well, so hopefully it should be a bit easier to find time correct gear than in my '75 series, and also starting later will help.
• Other than that I'm not going to put any limitations on how to earn money.

[humbe]

Walking into Joker, I was greeted by Lise who works there, and she actually do have a board where locals are posting stuff.. But it seems everything happening around here is farming related. But wait.. I don't know much about farming, but this looks off..



This guy named Erik wants someone to mow their grass, and he's offering up 281292 kroner for the job!! I would guess the work would need to complete before winter, and sounds like something that would be less than a months work, but the pay sounds like a yearly salary for a low paying job. He badly needs his grass mowed I guess.. How can he make a profitable business paying that much? On top of that, I can borrow all the equipment I need from him for only eight grand..

I don't think we'll be able to get the job, not having driven a tractor before, but I guess we have no other option than trying. Erik didn't seemed phased at all, giving the job to a 20 year old city slicker, which didn't make me less suspicious.

We managed the job in just a few days, and were expecting a hoax of some sort when we got back to Erik, but he actually just paid up. What?? We even got 27155 extra kroner from selling the excess grass, as the contract was for a given amount of hay from the field to be delivered.

That was a lot of easy money.. Do I dare to take on another job? Got a feeling this might be a front for some criminal activity, and if I do several, the courts will say I woulda had to understand and put me behind bars. It is tempting though..



Not being able to get out of here, I guess I should try and get to know the female population here.. Silje wants her field harvested, so lets give it a shot.. 115 thousand kroner. That's a lot of money.. Why isn't farming everyones number one profession? 24 thousand kroner to lease equipment cuts into the profit, but it's still good, and what a mammoth of a harvester. This huge thing should make it fairly easy to harvest the field.



Silje didn't specify what to do with the straw.. I guess we'll just leave it here.. We don't have machinery to do anything with it anyhow.

Lovely map, but sadly graphics rendering limits view. Pretty sure the hills behind there are covered with trees, though we can't see it. We can see far a lot of places here, but there's only good quality rendering in a circle around the player, so the view doesn't look as it is supposed to. Massive effort by Ola Haldor to make so many custom buildings. There's quite a few ghost shells of building around the map though. Not sure if he intends to make all custom. Hoping for some of them to materialize with updates to the buildings of Norway mod, but I'd totally understand if it takes too much time.

Where's that grain mill I should deliver the oats too? Other side of the river it looks like from the map.. Closest bridge being further north.



Woah.. Is that a pedestrian bridge? What do I do now? I've got two trailers hitched here, and the one has a swirling axle.. I'm unable to reverse.. Noone is around right?



I know how to swim at least.. There's noises I don't like coming from the bridge, but we actually make it over.. With some scratches on the tractor. Hope Silje won't notice..

In a few days, we manage to finish. Silje didn't complain about the straw swath remaining on the field, and we got paid for the contract. Even got 36017 kroner extra for selling the excess oats. We already have 457719 kroner.

We're close to earning half a million, and it's still august. Something's definitively fishy, but we can't put our finger on what.. Driving by Lise at Jokern, we figured we'd try to find out if any properties are for sale around here.. I guess if farming is really that lucrative, and we're stuck here anyhow, why not...

Surprisingly, we learn that almost all properties in the valley are actually for sale. If farming is so lucrative here, why do everyone want to sell? I guess they want to move closer to civilization. Not only are most for sale though, prices are extremely low. Property 101 with 2.41 hectares is actually for sale for a meager 160305 kroner. I can't even buy a tiny student flat in Trondheim for that price. Driving around to get to know the valley a bit, I'm looking at property 105.. That's 1154286 kroner. Enough money for a decent flat in Trondheim, or a shabby old house a bit outside of the city. But here it's actually a 17.35 hectares land plot that looks idyllic.



We can't afford this property currently, but with the outragous prices people are offering contracts for, it looks within reach soonish. Not so far from the grain mill. A bit high up, and not exactly flat, but you can't get everything.. On the plus side, there's a lot of hectares for the money here, so as long as we can cope with the hilly terrain, we might develop it into something. This is just one of 140ish properties for sale though, so may be more interesting prospects to look at..

[humbe]

There's more contracts with high incomes.. I'm surprised to see Rennebu farmers are multi-cultural. His family migrated to Norway a generation ago.



Jon Olav is offering 250 thousand for baling, but that's on 3.44 hectares, so Gunnars 1.62 acres for 230 thousand sounds like a much better deal.

First time around, we first moved the mower parts and started mowing right away, but both mower parts can actually be transported up front, so to save a trip, we transported both mower parts and the tedder in front towing transporting baler, loading wagon and windrower behind. The field wasn't that big, so one trip to the animal dealer actually sufficed.



This tractor sure looks hyper modern. Sadly, leased gear is whatever it is, so doesn't fit my timeline, but I want to be able to lease gear, especially now early on when I can't afford any.

The tractor won't go faster than 53 kph, so there is some traffic behind me.

Another 22211 kroner in extra income from bale selling, and a generous salary on top. Tax free it seems. I guess I'm doing work not tracked by the state.

That leaves us with 707530 kroner in total, and I'm considering buying a plot of land. We found another interesting plot, next to the one we looked at earlier. It was smaller, but costs only half a million, and still it has quite a bit of space.

The tractor we've been leasing to do baling have had 347 hp, but even so, it has struggled a bit baling and mowing upwards fairly steep slopes, so for the tractors we might afford early on though, a hilly land plot might cause some issues.

[humbe]

We decided to buy plot 104. Seemed like a decent bargain for a piece of land.



The plot contains 4 small fields and little bit of forest and a bit of meadow. 7.55 hectares in total. Having a little forest here, we decided to buy a saw and a trailer.



More than 2000 kroner for a saw? That better be a good one. Those chainsaws looks tempting, but I have never used one, don't have protective gear, and I figured I'd try to save money where I can. At least this one I know how to use and maintain.



The trailer cost us 22679 kroner. Guess nothing to complain about. It also comes with tension belts.



Lets chop some wood, and see if it is worth any. We saw a sawmill right by the field we did the first baling mission. Sadly, pretty much as far as possible from my new property. We got 13282 kroner for the wood. Not bad. Another load and we have paid back the trailer.



Actually, this didn't work out as well as expected. Seems the wood was unstable back on the trailer with the tension belts on. I'll try a few more loads and see if it happens every time. Seemed like some of the logs didn't lock in place with the tension belts, and these kept on moving about causing the trailer to look to have a life of its own

A tractor and a tractor trailer would be much more fitting to transport wood, but they are expensive. I guess we should start saving up for one. Seems a half way decent one is at least half a million new. Also, would be nice with one that has a decent road speed, and for the hilly ground, maybe a few horses extra.

We went by the shop to have a look.

The salesman initial suggestion was Fendt Favorit 511c. Looks like a decent option.



115 horsepowers and can drive 50 kph on the road. The salesman also boasted front loader option, talked about the front 3-point hitch with PTO and narrow wheels available. Can pretty much do anything, as long as its not hindered by the engine. It's still 776 thousand kroner though. Last year, a newer model 515c came out, with 150 horsepowers, but that's 942 thousand, though the salesman seemed to indicate it was possible to buy the 511c and possibly refit 515c engine at a later time, though that sounds strange to me.

He had several other options too. Not any as fast as the Fendt on the road though. Some cheaper, some a bit more expensive, some a bit stronger, and some cheaper alternatives if we can get away with a smaller engine. Though, in this hilly area with quite a drive to get anywhere, road speed and engine strength sounds like a priority.

Either way, we need more money before we can get a tractor

[humbe]

Tried another trip to sell wood, and got into a situation when stuff didn't want to stay on the poor little trailer.



That was a lot of honking. Seemed the trailer preferred not having the back hitch open. At least it seemed a bit more stable with it up, even though the wood was then leaning on the sides more and not on the trailer bed.

Finally managed to get the load to the sawmill and earned another 17121 kroner. That accident got the blood pumping though. That was a lot of honking..

Maybe I should prioritize contracting to get enough money for a tractor before hauling wood.

Nice with all the traffic queueing up Didn't know there was so much traffic that could be blocked

[humbe]

After a few more careful lumber runs, we are earning a bit more, but it's heavy work with no machinery to help, and the trailer is far from ideal.. A tractor with a front loader and a half decent trailer would help a lot. So we decided to see if we could fit in a final contract in August.



That field is massive.. But so is the harvester. So hoping we'll manage to finish, and his crops needs to be harvested this month anyhow. I don't get why he hasn't started doing it himself, as August is already close to an end. That's a huge field of canola worth quite a bit, so how he dares leave it that late in hopes of someone can do the work for him, I don't know..

Anyhow, the owners don't seem too careful about calculating exactly how much yield to expect, so with such a huge field, we might get a decent portion we can keep and sell for ourselves.



This harvester is very nice to drive around in. Makes the work comfortable.

After selling two full loads in the mill, I feared we might already have sold more than we need. Quite a bit of field left to harvest and already at 93% completion. If only we had a place to temporarily store the grain, so we could get max percentage from harvesting before selling. I've used railroad silo for that before, but none such here. Anyhow, turned out we didn't need to. Didn't get much completion from harvesting the final part, so quite a bit less than a full load extra at least.

At contract completion we earned 78729 kroner selling excess canola. That leaves us with 469 thousand kroner at the end of august, and we bought a piece of land for half a million too. Buying the trailer, we made pretty much close to a million in a month's work. I feel like I've partended in some shady criminal business. Hoping the farmers here are legit..

And this is hard economy.. Seems contract prices vary little with economy difficulty levels. A contract giving 250k on hard gives 300k easy and 275 on medium.

[humbe]

Getting up early in September.. One day per month The sunrise sure looks nice..



Going by Jokern, we find a post for a cultivation job.



Even young Sander here doesn't like to do his farmwork himself it seems. Sounds like good pay for a fairly limited job. Also, this time around, the field is close to where I can lease equipment.



Was expecting cultivator to be wider, given all the metal that was folded together, but it's long instead .. Nice to only need one trip to carry gear needed for the work.

After finished cultivating we checked back on the board at Joker.



Mama mia.. Sounds good to get to know Ingrid.. That's a lot of cash.. And we likely get some money from leftover bales too.. A bit tired of baling but if we finish this, we should afford a tractor.



Something seems off to me. This tractor has 374 hp. The mowers require 160 + 70 hp. Even if I turn the mowers off and raise them, I can still only go ~6kph uphill manually.. (Helpers move much faster) I guess I might need to test a bit without any mods at all, but with the mods I'm using I've got a hard time thinking it's a mod conflict. VCA would be the most likely one I guess, but tested without in my last scenario without it making a difference.

A nice mower set, but far too expensive for me to buy currently.



This baler both bales and wraps.. Sadly, the bales are very small and it finish collecting a bale much faster than wrapping it when I have windrowed. Got to time when it's full to stand still waiting for it to be ready to start collecting again, and as the bales are small, I need to do that a lot of times. I think I counted 51 bales from this field..



The bale loader was awesome though. I love the "autoloading" trailers that animates and looks like the real thing instead of just teleporting stuff on top.

After this job, we have almost 850 thousand kroner saved up. Time to look at tractors again I think

[humbe]

We saw a plowing contract offered too.. Figured we test it out for diversity.. Nice way to test out gear we haven't used before and getting to know the map.. Not to mention getting money to invest.



Gunnar is offering up 105 thousand kroner, though reduced by 16k to lend equipment, and in this contract there's no extra income.. But it's at least one machine and one trip to the store to fetch the leased equipment.



What a nice backdrop. An old church is next to Gunnar's field here. And thanks again to Ola Haldor for all the great looking buildings on this map.

Decisions, decisions. We see a very nice Massey Ferguson for sale.. Almost half price, so could get a really nice utility tractor with 200 hp for less than 800k, but it's a modern one. Do we just run with any gear even if my scenarios starts in '96 or do I try to stay time correct where that is easy.

If I do try to stay time correct, I think I need to add in some mods to get some choices of time correct gear, and then I can "cheat" by getting cheaper gear compared to what's in the base game. Also, used market is useless unless I use mod to increase size of it, as most of the gear will be too new. If I ignore it and just buy whatever I want, I can try to stay true to base game prices and used market works as is. For now, it resolved itself, as the tractor disappeared from the market while I was plowing.. Somebody else bought it I guess..


Not easy to decide on tractors.. So many to choose from. The Fendt looks like a very nice option having the high road speed, but I can get the horsepowers cheaper. The MF 3655 for instance, seems like another very nice option. 690 thousand for 155 horses. Even stronger than the Fendt, but considerably cheaper to buy. But that's 40 kph max.

Another alternative would be to go for a really cheap one. Like a Zetor 6245 for instance. A 59 hp tractor that I can get for only ~100k. But then I'd be locked into using tiny implements until I get a good tractor. On the other hand, then we can delay that longer so we could go for a stronger one when we first shell out a ton of money.. And I can likely only afford small implements to start with anyhow..

Well.. We found another baling contract while thinking about it..



As I can't go to town to meet girls, I guess I have to *censored* up to whomever I find here, so lets do something for Julie..



Vehicle Control Addon (VCA) is great to enable looking backwards when reversing. Makes it much more feasible to drive from within cab.

After some thinking, we decided to go for the Fendt. Once we get stronger tractors, the fendt will likely be on road transport duty still quite a bit, and the 50 kph road speed will be awesome. It has all the options needed. Narrow tires and enough power to run a sprayer/weeder/hoe, front loader options, front 3point to easily switch weights if needed. Front PTO likely not so relevant with limited power. In any case, likely a tractor that will be useful for us for a long time.



We got a John Deere HX20 mower too. A nice looking machine. This one ain't new, but it will still do the job well I think. Cost us 151199 kroner, but I think it'll be worth it. New from store in game, but don't think they still produced them in '96. Came into production in '79 I think.

With the baling job for Julie, we still have 222000 kroner spare. At least we can lease a baler, wrapper and bale wagon if needed. But maybe we can afford one more machine to own too.. Lets see what we can dig up..

[humbe]

We have quite a bit of grass up at our plot, so would be nice to be able to make silage to earn some money. We went by the shop again, and asked about balers and they had this new baler from Claas.



I don't know anything about balers, but new is better right? Also got advised to get a weight to easier handle it with the tractor. So got a baler for 171359 kroner and a weight for 8063 kroner.. The weight looks a bit homemade, but it's solid.

Very cheap compared to having to buy base game gear, but all of it is from very recent. On the other hand, not looking forward to make 125 cm bales, thus lots of them, and having to stop every time they are full. Will be a good update to get a modern baler later. Also considered the New Holland D800 or D1000 baler, which makes much nicer bigger bales, where you don't need to stop while making them either. But wrapping and picking up and carrying square bales seems to require more expensive and modern equipment too. Figured round bales was a good start point.

We're lacking a windrower though. Will be a lot of driving with baler without one.

Decided to test a fertilization contract to see how much money we could earn from that..



Looked good, but we used up 549 liters of solid fertilizer worth 10071 kroner, and used 8330 kroner to lease equipment, so end result less than half. It was a fairly quick job though, but we needed to be careful applying the fertilizer. The field had a pretty steep incline, so if we had sprayed going upwards we would have used so much fertilizer that we lost money on the job. Only managed a few kph going up the steepest bits to get to the top, so we decided to only fertilize when going downhill..

That still leaves us short almost a 100k for a windrower. Decided to loan 100.799 from the bank so we could buy one.



This mod says it's from '97, but found add online for someone selling a used one that was made in '96.. Anyhow, few options for old windrowers, so this was pretty much the only thing I found that fits the bill, that is big enough to be worth actually using.

Now we should have enough gear to make ourself some bales. We can't wrap or carry them though. We might need to lease something, but for now, lets make some bales.



Round bales are you know.. Round.. Sorry down there.. A front loader and a bale spike would be useful around now.. But we managed to push the bale onto the side of the road so the traffic could pass.

The baler works, but it's pretty picky about what to pick up.. Several times I've driven right over grass that wasn't picked up, thus I get dots here and there. Could be due to a bit of a bumpy field.

Looks like I might get around 20 bales.. Maybe a bit more.. All 3500 liters of grass. If I do get 20 bales, that's 70.000 liters of grass, which at a good sell price is around 35.000 kroner. If I turn it into silage first, I may get around 133.350 kroner. Sounds like it'll be worth it to lease a bale wrapper if we can't afford one.

20 bales is around what we've created for others on baling missions though, and thus I'm pretty sure there is something shady going on here. They seem to be paying me more for baling missions than the value of hay or silage produced. If we dare to try another, we'll track the content to be sure. Working our own grass field doesn't really seem worth it in comparison. With my smaller equipment, it's more work, and I'll end up with less cash than if I had did another baling mission. On hard economy no less

But at least, we know that we're doing honest work now, and even if we can't make the same amount as doing contracts, we know this part ain't shady at least.

[humbe]

September is coming to and end.. Sunrise coming already a bit after 18:00 hours now. Winter is coming..



We miscalculated earlier. I think we managed to create 40 bales of our land. And that's without one of the grass fields that hasn't grown up yet, and leaving the meadow parts that's the most hilly..

Should earn us a decent income. Lets shoot for selling silage in winter.

October 1996

And October is here.. And sunrise is around 07:30.. We have a nice view of the valley here..



We found another baling contract that looks good and shady. Let's record how many bales we actually deliver for that price.

[olahaldor]

Lovely to read and see!
For photos you can force render distance to max with this, and even move the camera around for interesting shots.
Press PAUSE to toggle photo mode.
https://www.farming-simulator.com/mod.p ... tle=fs2022

[humbe]

Lovely to read and see!
For photos you can force render distance to max with this, and even move the camera around for interesting shots.
Press PAUSE to toggle photo mode.
https://www.farming-simulator.com/mod.p ... tle=fs2022

Thanks Tested out the pro shot here.. Got to see trees on the background hills.. Yay ..



If only I could play with that render distance.. I had issues getting out of that pro shot mode afterwards though. I take the screenshot, and I unpause the game, but I'm still locked to the location I was taking photo add, can't tab to vehicle, can't move or anything. Can't seem to find a shortcut for getting out of photo mode. Only way I found to get out was alt-F4 and reload

I can't remember ever to have seen a square bale wrapped up on the field while driving around Norway.. Yet most of the farmers here seems to own big square balers. They are really nice to use, as we can just drive on while baling, and I can make 8000 liter bales here, compared to the 3500 liter bales I make from my own baler. I guess we should consider an upgrade at some point.

We're delivering the first 14 bales now. As the trailer seems to handle 14 bales regardless of their size, we made the biggest size bales the baler could manage. (2.4m). We have actually already delivered what Silje was expecting, and got 4693 kroner for excess hay already. With the current price 0f 0.581 kroner/liter, that's 8077 liters we got payed for, thus Silje expected us to get her 103.923 liters of hay from her 2.09 hectares field.

With the current price, that's 60.379 kroner. So, after deducting for leased gear, she's paying us 256 thousand kroner to mow and get her hay worth 60 thousand? Are we sure it's hay and not cannabis? We need to dig deeper here, but who to talk to with the least amount of risk.

I guess she may be using it for something else than selling it, and in that context it is worth more. You'd think she could then just buy the hay instead, but we can't seem to find anyone actually selling hay. Is there hay shortage as animal food maybe? If so, why aren't that reflected in sell prices? This makes no sense.



Grmpf.. I was eager to check how much I needed to deliver to complete, but even though I haven't pressed collect and finishing the mission, I'm still unable to continue. I can still pickup the one bale I had made, but I can't windrow anymore. Neither can we bale.. Wondering if I can use my own gear if I fetch them, but not sure if we can be bothered. We'll just sell the one bale and collect :/

[humbe]

Went by the shop again, and wondered if they had anything useful to wrap bales, and they showed me something they called the AutoWrap 1300. Costing 151.199 kroner it was inside my price range at least. It could be connected to a 3-point connection on the tractor, but with my bales rolling everywhere inside ditches and what not that sounded tricky. It had options for connecting to a front loader too though, so we decided to buy a front loader to use it too..

Me: What's the difference between all these frontloaders?
Shopowner: Bigger is better?
Me: How big a front loader do I need to use this bale wrapper?
Shopowner: Damn if I know.. I guess you just have to test it out.

We went for the cheapest Quicky 3M for 70.559 kroner, and had to shell out for attachers for our tractor too, so money went flying. We failed to pay back our 100k loan.. Well well..

None of these pieces are time correct, but I really don't care much about the front loaders, and I failed to find a wrapper with an earlier date. It's tagged 2001 in game, so not that far of. And I don't think I'll survive until 2020 with this one either. Sounds tedious to have to pick up every single bale with a front loader, but we'll test it out for now. I'm pretty sure they wrapped bales in '96 too, and this thing ain't exactly overpowered.



I like the look of this thing, and it's got a nice animation.



The majority of the time, it just works. If correctly aligned towards the round end, it teleports onboard when it's a few meters ahead of the device and starts wrapping. However, it does not always do that. If it doesn't teleport on board and I pick it up, it just stays there. No button to press to start wrapping it. Some bales seemed harder to trigger than others and I had to dump it out and retry many times. For the worst bales, maybe like 5 or 6 times. Very annoying. One bale disappeared in thin air. I had picked it up, and another bale teleported onboard, and the one I had already picked up just vanished. This happened 3-4 more times, but those times, the extra bale not being wrapped got under vehicle, or pushed the vehicle away.

It helps to get to know it a bit though. Non-intuitive you gotta remember to press V to lower it, or else it won't trigger picking something up. Sounds strange as it's on a front loader, though I guess it makes more sense if it had been connected to a 3-point hitch. I guess that could be related. Maybe it's very sensitive to the exact position and angle I've got it on the front loader.

But this thing should either teleport things on board easier, or it should have a button to activate wrapping with the bale I'm actually carrying within.
[/i]



Finally we're done.. 42 bales if we count correctly. Stack'em, pack'em and rack'em.. Well.. Didn't manage to stack them with the wrapper, but apart from the 1st row we created, they are fairly neatly organized at least.

But I guess now it's time to mow the last field we have that wasn't ready last month.

If you spot the grass not baled on the far side there, we had a dispute with the neighbor. He got angry we mowed his grass, claiming he owned the land the end of the field is on. Looking at our plot description he looks correct. I guess the previous owner tried to extend his grass field a bit further than he was allowed to. He eventually calmed down. Feel free to grab the grass I mowed there.. I'll stick to the piece I own..

[humbe]

I guess we'll have a look for another contract, in hopes of paying of the loan. Just baling contracts offered. Which are very lucrative, but we're starting to tire of baling.

Prices vary a lot if compared per hectares.. We don't want to take the smallest contract, as the gear for rent isn't much to speak of. We want to lease a decent loading wagon and not having to go back and forth with a few bales at a time to the dealer.

I guess we could consider using own gear at some point, but own gear is small and not as fancy as what we can lease, and it doesn't cost us much of the profit. Especially considering diesel and repairs are included in that fee. There are some baling contracts fairly close to us too though. Maybe we can consider doing one of those with own gear.

We ended up doing a baling contract for Jan Ivar. First we screwed up though, making a deal without specifying we needed to lease gear.. I tried to come back.. Hey.. Jan Ivar.. We need to lease gear.. Can that be arranged? No sorry.. All deals are final.. Hmm.. But what's the consequence of breaking the deal?.. **reading**.. Hmm.. Nothing at all.. I guess we'll have to break the contract then.

But then we see Jan Ivar posting the same contract again, though now for 5500 kroner less, we jump on it again. Ok.. I'll sign this if I can lease the gear.. Ok then.. A bit too easy to sign a contract without leasing gear.

A baling contract later and we're stopping by Lise to hear what's up.. I decided to open up a bit..

Me: Lise.. You know.. I've done some baling contracts around here, and they're actually paying me more than the value of the hay I'm delivering is worth. Is there something strange going on here? Lise laughs at me..
Lise: Silly boy.. The money around here isn't coming from selling produce. It's all about government subsidies. In case the world don't want to trade with us anymore, we want to have some food production, so the government is paying us to produce some to make it more lucrative.. Otherwise the farming here will just dry up.
Me: But why isn't farming lucrative around here? I seem to be making plenty money fast..
Lise: Here we have to pay a decent wage for people that could otherwise do something else. We don't have slaves working around here.
Me: Slaves? Slavery has ended..
Lise: Let me rephrase.. We don't have access to a lot of people in such a bad situation that they have no better opportunity than to work for us for virtually nothing to survive.
Me: But above 400 thousand for a single baling contract? That's a lot of money..
Lise: Yeah.. Another issue is relevant too.. So many youngsters are leaving for the city, so there's little manpower to do many of the jobs around here. The understaffed farmers are likely all too busy tending their animals and happy to contract for some of the work, even if they have to pay a lot. I guess the prices reflect the lack of people willing to do those contracts.
Me: For 400k for less than a months job, I'd think they'd pour in..
Lise: Possibly, if they knew about it.. Who'd think of coming to Joker in Rennebu to look for work?
Me: Phew.. At least I guess there's nothing shady going on then.. I was worrying I was becoming a criminal without knowing about it..
Lise: Haha..

Me: While I'm here.. I don't suppose you know why my grass up at the hill is growing less than the grass down here?
Lise: Are you rolling it?
Me: No.. I'm not gonna smoke it.. Haha
Lise: Right.. There's something called a grass roller you can use to make it grow better after you harvest it..
Me: Ah.. Always something new to learn I guess..

I guess we need a grass roller..



I didn't really find any old grass roller.. But this thing fits the bill I think.. Not that big working width and works with our tractor.. Who's to know.. I know nothing about grass rollers, but this doesn't look like tech that couldn't exist in '96.

The grass roller cost us 166k.. Leaving us enough to pay back half our loan.