Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

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humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

My farm blog
Welcome to my farm blog. As I try to document my game anyhow, I thought I could just as well do it publicly where there's a theoretical chance someone would be interested to look at it :biggrin2:

I'm a fairly new farm sim player, having started mid January 2020. Used a couple of week to try it out a bit, and thought I'd start a new farm on harder difficulty and do a bit of write up to try and get more into it :)

Feel free to comment in here if you want to.

I'll try to put technical details in spoiler mode so I can try to make it easier to get an overview without showing all the details.
Here might be lengthy reasons for why I chose tractor A or a calculation of sorts or something.
I'll try to make the blog in character, and leave text that is out of character in italics.

Game Setup

To make it a bit more interesting and force myself to start using cheap tools, I'll start from scratch with "only" $500.000 in my bank account.
I've chosen to start in Ravenport. I'm a new players so all maps are new anyhow, so I picked Ravenport because:
  • As the first map in the game, I'm guessing it leaves me best chance of not running into any map related quirks or bugs. (Only other map I tested was Greenwich Valley, but I had issues getting a harvester around the map and due to lack of field boundaries few fields had contracts)
  • It looks like it has content so I can eventually try out both fields, animals and foresting.
  • It has fields from small and cheap to fairly large ones.
  • The map starts without farm buildings so I get to build my own.


The economic difficulty was set to hard immediately and will stay there. I turned dirt off as I think it has no game impact and I'd rather look at a clean than a dirty machine and if I had it on I would not prioritize cleaning it. I also turned on Stop & Go breaking. I have no gear shift to put it in reverse anyhow, and having to let go of the break to push it again to reverse felt quirky.

Temporarily I have turned weeds off. Doesn't matter initially when I only do contracts, but when I start with my own fields I want to be able to record yield and try to document profit margins, and it'll be simpler without weeds interfering. Will turn it on once I've gotten my yield measurements.

Self imposed rules
  • It's too easy to exploit land sell and buy prices being the same with state of the property irrelevant. One can only get harvester gear, and buy land ready to be harvested and sell it after the harvest. Self imposed rule #1: Never sell land I have bought.
  • There's lots of mods making available great gear for a measly purchase price which just feels like cheating the game. We will stay away from these. For gear and equipment we'll mostly be using the built in ones. We will definitively not be adding solar cell mod for instance, which generates better return of our investments without even lifting a finger.


Mods

I'll be trying to limit the amount of mods I use. These are the ones I'm currently using. Will update if I add any. See spoiler section for some more details:
I'm playing on PC desktop. Have never played from console, but I guess they are limited to mods available in in game modhub. There's a lot of mods available on the internet which if you use PC you can download a zip file and stuff in the games mods directory manually to make them available in game.

The mods available in game have been tested by giants, which likely makes them a bit more likely to not have issues, but as a process is needed, the selection is limited.


Game changing mods

Seasons: Seems to be a noticeable improvement on the game. Actually having a year with seasons seems a huge improvement on the base game time management. I started of running a 3 day season (1 day = 1 month) with default GEO, though I've heard that short season may create weather issues. I ended up changing to 9 day season in year 2 to manage to create hay by drying grass in the sun.

Farm Forward: With seasons, there might be more downtime than otherwise, especially when running long season, and waiting 15 min real time to fast forward to next day using x120 time mode doesn't sound fun. I'll be playing in Real Time mode (though as 3 days = 1 month, I think of it as x10 mode), and use the farm forward mode to skip ahead when I'm just waiting for more contracts, next grow stage or whatever. (Or to skip nights if I don't have a sleeping trigger available)

Workshop Tabber: Nice small utility allowing you to tab through gear in the maintenance shop (of the gear you have in the target square), so you don't have to detach gear from tractor to repair tractor, or to detach and drive away from gear to repair gear. Very nice.

Vehicle Explorer: Allows parking a vehicle so it disappears from tab vehicle switch, and alter the order you tab through. Thus you can avoid having to change through your harvester outside of harvesting season and move vehicles operating together close to each other in the list. This mod gets better the more vehicles you have.

Place Anywhere: This mod allows you to place buildings in a lot more locations. I've heard this can potentially cause issues and may break the savegame, but I'll give it a go. It also allows landscaping to landscape bits otherwise not allowed. For instance, with this mod I can bury the junkyard in the landscaping tool. There are too many strange objects in the way of placing buildings otherwise. Objects that are invisible that you have no idea what is. Without this mod or something similar it's very hard to create a decent farm yourself. At least on the maps I've tested. (Global Company mod says it conflicts with it, but I have yet to see a problem as long as GC's own similar but inferior functionality is turned off)

Courseplay: Don't know yet how much I'll be using this or not. Testing it a bit for now. It's a way to automize driving, and also enables you to have workers that does just about anything, like driving across the map to sell your stuff at some sell point and drive back, without you even having to have the vehicle active. It makes the game more about administrating what to do than actually doing it, so I'm not sure yet what I'd prefer. Testing it out to automize some repetative tasks to start with. (Like driving from farm to shop and back)

Other nice to have mods

Wild Grass 0.9.0.0: Gives an option to seed wild grass outside of fields, which allows growing back grass in terraformed areas and has the side effect of destroying bushes. To begin with I'll just use them to destroy bushes in the parts of my yard I want to use for something. This may allow me to use free land to grow some grass. The bushes aren't technically in the way of anything. You can drive through and place buildings on top, but the farm looks cleaner without all the bushes, and it's easier to see elevation details, which could be useful to plan the future farm. With this mod, I've been able to get grass/hay for animals early on without needing to use a field to grow it. You can get quite a bit of grass from the areas in between everything else. Once I've got more land I'll get a grass field though, and then I guess I will try to remove growing grass from farmyard as it gets high, and make it hard to see if I drop a pallet fork in it for instance.

Multiple Contracts: Seem an unrealistic limitation that you cannot take on two contracts at the same time. Nice to be able to pick up multiple contracts to possibly due some bits in parallel to be more efficient. I have never seen a contract disappear after accepting it, so this might help me a bit to not lose any. New contracts doesn't seem to come that often during regular play, but a game load seems to trigger new ones, so if you play mostly short sessions you get a lot of chances to get more contracts in during the day regardless of this mod. Playing with this mod it was easier to collect multiple missions to cut down on travel and changing of equipment. Early on contracting is way easy income. Probably gonna limit how many contracts I'm allowing myself to do in later games, so not so sure I'll use this mod next time around.

Egg Pallet: A cage on a pallet that you can put in chicken coop to collect eggs in it. Thus you can use a forklift to move 2400 liters of eggs at a time, instead of manually having to load 16 boxes instead. Makes selling eggs quite a bit less tedious. (Found another egg pallet mod called refillable egg pallet or something in version 1.0.5, but that seemed to bug graphic vice, and was way cheap to buy)

Tajfun EGV 80 AHK: This is a winch that you can use to haul trees around. Awesome alternative for low budget forestry. You no longer need to cut trees into pieces you can carry. Just get away with the small branches and leafs, cut it into decent lengths and drag them to sell point.

Placeable mods Sadly there are very limited building choices in game. Want to use some mods mostly to make the farm look more like a real farm.

Farmhouse v1.1: I don't like the rundown default farmhouse full of stuff inside, as there's no game functionality for painting the house and I can't clean it inside either. Getting a mod just to be able to get a decent farmhouse I can walk into. This is the only alternative I've found for a house you can actually move into. It's way too cheap though. Decided to fake the price to $200.000 by editing savegame, to at least match the in game house. It doesn't cost $250 upkeep per day, but the 20k extra means I've payed that for many years into the future. Likely more years than I will play, and even if not, the rest are payed by interest of the extra sum.

Modding Welt Farmcomplex US Edition: Many nice buildings here. Got it first to use the old style 2 story barn, with cows in first floor and some available parking space on top. Also used some sheds from this mod. They look nice, apart from the Modding Welt commercial bits. I wanted a red barn that made the farm look like a farm to me.. The default in game ones looked a bit too strange and modern to me. The old barn has same capacity and same daily upkeep but is slightly cheaper to buy. The sheds looks like around the price of other sheds I've seen. Cheap, as the ing ame ones are too.

Bale Storage Barns: I store bales to ferment grass and to keep hay and straw for cows. The bale barn makes it possible to stack bales without a ton of manual handling.

MF Shed Pack: Various sheds and buildings here. Some looks like cheating. For instance a cheap silo with underground storage taking up virtually no space but has tons of space in it. I got it to get a repair shed looking a bit better than the default, and I may use the washing station there later. Both are at least as expensive as the base game variants.

Big Chicken Coop: The base game chicken coop is easy to work with and works just as well, but having chickens live outside in winter in GEO where it snows felt wrong. Got this mod to get a good looking chicken coop with indoor space for chickens. It's a bit large to place (Maybe twice the size of the in game one), but it has only one entrance and all interaction points are within it, so only need access to one corner of it. It's got space for 500 instead of 400 chickens for same daily upkeep, but it's a lot more expensive and take up a lot more space, so I'd say the base game one is technically better.

Manure Storage 1.1: (from CJFarming) The manure pit in the cow barn I use has a max capacity of less manure than I need to fertilize a single field. It stored more elsewhere, but it takes so long to get it into pit after emptying. This separate pit has a simple area to offload manure, and a built in system to fill it in a trailer fast. Now I can ferry between pits with a large trailer when the cow barn is full and use the secondary pit when actually fertilizing. A minor bonus is that the new pit only gets new manure when I dump stuff there, thus I can track how much manure barn generate, regardless of whether I have used manure from the other pit in the meantime. Would be nice if the graphics showed different amount of manure in it depending on fill rate, but other than that it works great.

Other minor mods

Locomotive Stop: To avoid train running rampage all the time. Railway crossings sadly start blinking and lowering barrier at the same time just a few seconds before the train is there. I want to be able to drive with a wheel without having to use a mouse to look sideways before crossing as there's so many crossings on this map. I'd not use this if the light could start blinking in reasonable time before lowering barrier so one could have time to break. (I later also added vehicle explorer, which I think might also stop train, so I may not need this anymore)

Ursus T127: Round bales just seems so incredibly handicapped in base game. This small bale trailer has an animated pickup of bales you drive by, has half the capacity of the square bale one and isn't overly cheap. Square bales is still better, but round bales are now a workable cheaper option. Used this early on in game before I could afford square baling gear which is still better.

1976 VW Golf GTI: The car I drove into Ravenport to start my farm. Cheap, but have no use in game anyhow.

Placeable Camper V1 Cheap trailer with sleep trigger. Can't afford the farm house early but it isn't really needed for anything either. But felt better roleplace wise to have an option of a sleep crappy accommodation, so I figured I'd use this one. (And I don't really feel I break self-imposed rule #2 above as the house isn't really needed for anything)

2020 Superduty F-Series: Just to get a nicer looking pickup than the default one. The default one is cheaper and probably works the same for what I'm using it for.

Heizomat HM 4-300: A small, cheap handfed woodchipper. Tried chipping some wood and this was a cheap entrypoint. But it was hard to find sellprice for chips to compete with selling it unchipped, and the process of feeding it was tedious, so not gonna do it anymore.

NMC 320H Pro Snow Blower: When there's snow it's really slippery to drive. Hard to drive water tank out of pond. Slides around so need to drive slowly. Thought it was fun to have something to clear snow with, and I found no plow or other alternative so I got this one. It's tedious to use though. It looks like snow in game is implemented as grains with another look, and the blower is implemented as a special sort of harvester using harvester mechanics. Thus you have normal grain limitations of not being able to dump it on the ground without specific ctrl-i usage, not being able to dump it on property you don't own, and as something that blows the "grain" away, it prefer to do it inside something, so as I drove by I started filling my front loader bucket laying around. If you are careful of storing away properly all your gear so there's no container in sight though, it kind of works. But to be honest, I mostly added this to show my 3 year old son :D

Last edited by humbe on Thu Apr 23, 2020 9:54 pm, edited 20 times in total.
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

Current status on farm

Have played through 4 years where income was mainly from contracts. Played a fifth without any contracts, and analyzed gains more in detail. Took a long break from this savegame, and then a quite sizable break from playing fs19 at all.. Continuouing a bit now.

Left my savegame extractor halfway through refactoring. Not sure if I'll bother getting it up and running anymore, so may play a bit simpler now.

Details on play up to now can be seen in threads below. This post has been updated after the fact ;)
Last edited by humbe on Sat Aug 21, 2021 8:43 pm, edited 6 times in total.
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

Finally I have sold all my belongings except for my old excellent Golf and have driven out here to Ravenport where I hope to start a farming career. I've heard rumors that there's a vacant farm yard here. The old farmer went bankrupt and the farm is burnt to the ground years ago. The economy here is still rough but we'll start small and see if we can make it.

Image

I've heard rumors that there's decent money in logging and animal husbandry, but as I know nothing about it, I think I better start of getting some income by growing crops.

I visited the bank, and I can take up a loan, but they ask for 10.7% yearly interest. For a 500k loan, that is above 50k in interest alone. Before knowing anything about profit margins in the current economy I think we'll try to keep loaning to a bare minimum. I have a feeling income from own crops per year will be less than that until we own quite a bit of acres. But maybe we can get a side income to begin with to boost profits.
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

Oh what the...

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$362.712 for that old farmyard with minimal fields available, and the only farm house available is some old rotten cabin I can get moved over here for $180.000. It doesn't look like we can even start of with the farm. I think I'll just have to start of getting some farming gear and see if I can earn some money by helping other farmers in the area. The local paper seems to indicate the other farmers here are on the lazy side and are eager to pay others to do the dirty work. I guess we'll just stay at the inn and abuse public parking until we can afford to set up a farm.

Tractor(s)

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Lets see what equipment we should prioritize getting. We need at least one tractor. The Fiat 1300 DT here is the cheapest one, and at 150 horsepower it's quite powerful for a small tractor too. Definitively not a bad choice. However, it can't mount a front loader which would be useful and it also have a measly 25 kph max speed. That will be slow driving around the map to do contract work.

The Fendt 500 Favorit series looks really interesting. It's the cheapest tractor with a front loader, it has a front 3pnt and PTO connection, can have narrow wheels, and decent max speed. It basically offers all utility options, and it can even be upgraded to 150 hp when we need to. The only cheaper 150hp tractor is the Fiat.

The Valtra N Series can be upgraded to 201 hp, and also have all the utilities, making it an excellent starting tractor too, but it's expensive compared to the Fendt.

The Case IH 7200 pro series is also a very interesting tractor. Being upgradeable to a massive 261 hp and still be cheaper than the upgraded Valtra N. It lacks front loader and a PTO connection in front though, and it's a tad slow with 40 kph max speed.

A bit further up the price chain, we have the Massey Ferguson 7700. It's the strongest tractor with all utility options available. Narrow wheels, front loader and front 3pnt+PTO. It's also stronger than all the tractors mentioned above.

Having looked through the available cultivators and seeders, it would be good to be able to haul equipment requiring 180 hp. The Fendt might make it, just being a bit slower when pulling them, but a stronger option would also be nice. We can start of with the Fendt and see how that goes, and buy a Case if we need more horsepower. But if we end up with both, we could also have just started with an MF 7700 for about the same price. However, having two tractors we also have the option of getting a helper than can drive the second tractor so we can do two things at once. We started of with the Fendt. Upgraded when needed to delay costs, and we ended up getting a Case too. The Fendt was able to pull the equipment we got, but having a second tractor was useful so we could to two things at once.

We also need a front weights I guess. Without knowing much about how heavy a weight we need, we ended up using SB1000 weights when we used cultivator and plow.

Plow

When we get our own land, we likely need a plow to try and maximize the fields we can grow crops on. There's also a lot of plowing missions available early spring, so would be good to start working those. Unfortunately, a subsoiler is not accepted for contracting plowing missions, so plows are the only option. We also don't have 300 hp available, so a cheap simple plow is all we can handle on budget. Let's get the Agro Masz POH 5 to at least get 2.5m working width instead of 2.

Cultivator

For cultivating our own fields, I think we'll be using a seeder that can also cultivate, but the uninformed farmers around here refuse to let me cultivate their fields with a seeder, so we'll be needing something else. They do accept a Disc Harrow though. The Amazone Catros 6002-2 Disc Harrow looks like a great machine. It requires 180 hp which we might be able to pull with the Fendt, but if that ends up a bit slow we can always get the Case too. On the plus side it's got a 6 meter working width, meaning we can cultivate even the bigger fields around here without it taking forever, and speeding it up will also save us fuel and maintenance costs, possibly enable us to use the spare time to do another contract too, and we may also be able to hire a worker if needed without them stealing the entire profit margin.

Seeder

We'll be plowing and cultivating before seeding, but we will need a seeder shortly anyhow. The Lemken Solitair 12 would be awesome for contracts, only requiring 150 hp, having a large seed storage and a massive 12 meters working width. However, I think it's too expensive for our starting budget. Also, for the seeder we want to use on our own lands, it would be nice if it also cultivated so we didn't need a second pass for that. The Horsch Pronto 9 DC is another good option. At 270 hp, a upgraded Case tractor would likely pull it fine, and we could fertilize own fields with it too, but it is also costly with our tiny budget, and I don't think the fertilize functionality is really that required for us. It won't help doing contracts, and we'll get a fertilizer with much larger working width that uses less fertilizer, so that might be better anyhow.

We could go for a cheap one and save money, but I think we'll take the Väderstad Rapid A 600S instead. It's also a bit expensive, but at $76.000 I think we can make it. With a 6 meter working width we can also save money in fuel and maintenance, and possibly hire a worker. Its 180 hp requirement also matches the requirement of the cultivator we got.

Fertilizer

Here the choice is simple. It will cost us though. We also need to be able to get lime on our fields. The only two available machines that can do that is the Bredal K105 and K165. These can also be used to fertilize, and rumors have it they use the least amount of fertilizer per acre so it's also the cheapest option in the long run. They state they have a 12m working width, that can be extended to 18 with a spreading unit, which is true for lime. But when fertilizing, that 18m actually becomes a massive 30m working width. There's two available models, but only the smaller one can get narrow wheels, which will be really useful to be able to fertilize in later growing stages without destroying the crops. The smaller one can get a sizable extension for only $750 extra, making it hold 14000 liters, which is quite a lot of fertilizer, and way more than you'd fit in a sprayer. It'll cost us $48.250 but is there really another choice?

Utility

On top of the above we'll also get a front loader with a pallet fork and a cheap Strautnabb SEK 802 trailer configured as a bale trailer, so we can do transport missions, and to extend the seed capacity of our seeder, we also got a Väderstad FH2200 tank that we can haul in front of the tractor

Budget

All in all, our equipment and vehicle budget then became as follows, with a total sum of $433.250 spent. That still leaves us with some dollars to get fertilizer, seed and cover some unforeseen expenses.

Code: Select all

      Vehicles:       Case 7250 Pro                 $143.500
                      Fendt Favorite 515c           $ 93.500
                      Golf GTI                      $  1.500   $ 238.500
      Field tools:    Catros 6002-2 Disc Harrow     $ 31.000
                      Agromasz POH 5 Plow           $ 14.000
                      Vaderstad rapid A 600S seeder $ 76.000
                      Bredal K105 Fertilizer        $ 48.250   $ 169.250
      Field utils:    SB1000 weight                 $    900
                      SB1000 weight                 $    900
                      Vaderstad FH 2200 storage ext $  8.000   $   9.800
      Basic utils:    FrontLoader FZ30              $  5.400
                      Pallet fork                   $    800
                      Fendt Fav Frontloader Ext     $  1.500
                      Strautmann SEK 802 trailer    $  8.000   $  15.700
                      
      Sum:                                                     $ 433.250
After these purchases, our bank account shows $66.750.

I can't remember having seen grass fields around here, so I guess there might be no grass baling missions here. We'll need a harvester in autumn if we're to avoid leasing one. And I'm guessing we'll end up getting straw, so baling equipment will also be needed. Hopefully we'll save up some more money before that time.

Not much left for land purchases though. We're excited to see what our profit margin will be.
Last edited by humbe on Sat Feb 08, 2020 12:18 am, edited 2 times in total.
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

March went by in a breeze. Me and a friend kept busy doing contracts, and the profit margin for contracts were higher than expected.

The march account ended up as follows, ending up with a $110.672 gain from we started. We did a massive amount of work though. Basically all the contracts we could get our hands on. And the plowing missions were really tedious with a 2.5m working width plow. We avoided the biggest fields at least.

Code: Select all

    Incoming balance:                                                     +$ 500.000
    Incoming assets:                                                                     $       0
    Vehicles and equipment purchases:                                     -$ 433.250    +$ 433.250
    Seed bought:        15.000 liters                                     -$  13.500    +$  13.500
    Seed used:           9.897 liters.  5103 liters still in stock.                     -$   8.907
    Fertilizer bought:  14.000 liters.                                    -$  26.880    +$  26.880
    Fertilizer used:     1.224 liters. 12776 liters still in stock.                     -$   2.350
    Fuel usage:                                                           -$     765
    Vehicle/equipment maintenance cost:                                   -$     862
    Contracts income:                                                     +$ 123.557
    Rounding correction:                                                  -$       1
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                           $ 148.299     $ 462.373       = $ 610.672
    ================================================================================================================
I'm sure the locals are starting to get annoyed with our abuse of free public parking though. Here is all our gear:

Image

As the profit margin is higher than expected, I'm hopeful we can buy that farmyard before summer. From a pure money perspective, we might be better off doing contracts and use our earnings to get a good harvester and other good gear for doing contracts fast, but I don't want to annoy people any more than needed, so I think we'll get that farmland as soon as we can.
Last edited by humbe on Sat Aug 21, 2021 8:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

April was also a hectic month with tons of contracts done. You know it's hick country when you get coffee delieveries by tractor :lol: We stopped storing all the contract data, but currently we see only three fields in Ravenport that has yet to be seeded, and all the other fields are also fertilized one step and have now reached the first growth stage. Fertilize missions are really fast with our 30m working width spreader, and seeding also works pretty well with 6m working width.

While we managed to get $123.557 from contracts in March, with only 7.8% of that in expenses, we now managed $238.433 in April, but now with 24.7% expenses as we had to provide seed and fertilizer. ($113.920 profit in March and $179.540 profit in April) All that assuming our vehicles and tools are worth just as much now as they were last month.

The complete budget for April:

Code: Select all

    Incoming balance:                                                     +$ 148.299
    Incoming assets:                                                                     $ 462.373
    Investments:                                                                   0
    Vehicle/equipment maintenance cost:                                   -$     732
    Fuel usage:                                                           -$     477
    Seed bought:        20.000 liters                                     -$  18.000    +$  18.000
    Seed used:          5103 in, 4364 remain, 20.738 used                               -$  18.664
    Fertilizer bought:  21.000 liters.                                    -$  40.320    +$  40.320
    Fertilizer used:    12776 in, 13409 remain, 20.367 used                             -$  39.105
    Wages: (Accidentally enabling worker:)                                -$      56
    Contracts income:                                                     +$ 238.433
    Rounding correction:                                                  -$       1
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                           $ 327.146     $ 462.924       = $ 790.070
    ================================================================================================================
With $327.146 we thought it about time to get a farm of our own, so we borrowed $50.000 from the bank and bought the vacant farm down by the river in the valley. We're naming it Riverdale Valley :smileynew:

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As we cannot afford a farming house as of now, we managed to find a used camper wagon so we at least can get out of that inn. It cost us only $2.500 with an added $5 to help secure it on our land. We'll save up for a real house later. We're hoping to pay back the loan within May, before the bank collects interest on it.
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

Finally got land to work, we bought a chainsaw to remove some trees around the fields to make it easier to work them, and possibly be able to extend the size of them a bit. Hopefully the wood will be worth a little too. The trees up there are really annoying to cut down. They are full of leafs, and its hard to find a position to cut off and clean the branches to get the tree into pieces. If that wasn't enough, the bushes keeps covering up the parts so parts of the tree is hard to see.

We also need to start working out. I didn't even manage to lift this one and had to split it in two to load it. Seems these leafy trees are really dense at the bottom of the trunk.
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The lone tree north of one of our fields gave us $2393 in the woodshop. Not bad for a small tree, though it was annoying work to get it to sellpoint. Not exactly a perfectly balanced nor secured load. Seems our trailer don't have loading bands when the sides of the trailer has been mounted.

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Maybe there's some tree gear we should invest it to simplify things a bit, though it does cost money and we have other stuff to prioritize.

Shelling out for the land, we now have a loan we want to pay back, and once we manage that, we need to start saving up for a harvester, and hopefully a bigger trailer for harvesting, and maybe even some baling gear.
Last edited by humbe on Fri Mar 06, 2020 11:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

Hrmpf.. Hit a bug where my fertilize missions was auto-completed on game load, when I had done nothing but accepting them before saving. Ended up getting $76.972 for missions I didn't do which felt very wrong. The fertilization stage of the fields in question did not change, so I edited savegame to remove that cache from my bank and remove it from latest accounting info, hoping I was back in a good state, but now I seem to get very few fertilize contracts, as if the ones I reverted will not be offered again. Missing out 70k profit will surely be noticeable. Hoping the game will reset at some time so I get those contracts reoffered.

Still only May though, several months during summer to complete fertilization, so should be more fertilization contracts down the road I hope. When trying to play with main goal being getting money to advance, it's demoralizing to hit issues like this.
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

Sadly no fertilization contracts offered even though there's 13 fields that could use fertilization this growth stage. Have farmers started doing any work for themselves in Ravenport? Got some transport contracts offered, but they are getting on my nerves. Only doing a few. Have been doing a bit of logging instead, to clear place for a farm on my newly acquired farmyard. Have also been cleaning up the farmyard, cutting down most of the bushes and sowing grass around the area. That makes it both look cleaner and I might get some grass to mow later. (I found the Wild Grass mod, which enables me to remove the bushes and sow grass outside of fields. Nice to be able to clean up the field without using landscaping, which just creates dead terrain that never change)

Still some trees to cut down. They are an annoying amount of work with a chainsaw and a trailer where I can't strap them down. Maybe trailer works better configured for bales with straps rather than with sidewalls. Mostly annoying to get the tree into bits with the trees falling in bushes where they are hard to see, and me not knowing how big of a chunks I'll be able to move with my hands. Getting some better forestry equipment to be able to use a crane to move trunks around is tempting, but saving my bucks for now.

Image

The junkyard is a disgrace though. Don't want my kids playing there if I eventually get some. Maybe I'll just try to fill it over with dirt when I have the money for some landscaping. Not much money in our bank account, but we've managed to pay down our loan at least.
Last edited by humbe on Fri Mar 06, 2020 11:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

Still no fertilize missions :/..

Cutting down a couple of trees more.. One fir tree and one leafy non-straight tree.. The fir was a lot easier to handle. There I could carry a part of the tree that was several foot long. Opposed to less than half a foot for the other tree :/:..

Tried to use trailer configured for bales rather than load and that worked surprisingly well.. Seems like loading bands hold together anything even though it doesn't look like it. Are they magnetic? I would figure the bits in the back here would fall of, but no. Much easier in this configuration than in other where I couldn't use loading straps. Also, if getting close enough to trailer I can fasten and loose the straps while besides the trailer which was useful.

Some other tricks:
  • Seems like cutting into trunk when you don't cut all the way through does nothing. Starting cut the main trunk seems to be easiest way of cutting the small branches that just disappear once cut.
  • You can strap down a few bits on top and then throw more on top of straps and just remove and reattach strap to include those bits. That way it's easier to stack higher without anything falling of.
  • By holding the middle mouse button one can rotate log in two dimensions so it's easier to lay it in a good spot.



Image
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

Mai sadly got less hectic than expected. I got lots of fertilizer contracts, most were abruptly canceled. I still managed to get some small ones, but mostly we've been using spare time to cut down trees to make space for bigger fields, which we planned to use next winter to do. As mentioned earlier I seemed to lose out on fertilizer contracts due auto-complete bug so I removed income I shouldn't have gotten without doing the work

This made our earnings from contracts far less than in April. The income from logging have made up for some of it though, and hopefully we'll get the fertilizer contracts, just in summer instead of spring.

Code: Select all

                                                                          Cash flow:       Assets:
    Incoming balance:                                                     +$ 327.146
    Incoming assets:                                                                     $ 462.924
    Land purchase:    Field 24-26 with farmyard                           -$ 362.712    +$ 362.712
    Investments:
      Buildings:      Camper                                               -$  2.505    +$   2.505
      Basic utils:    Chainsaw - Jonsered CS 2252                          -$  1.000    +$   1.000
                      Tree stump cutter - FSI PowerTech ST 65 T            -$  5.000    +$   5.000


    Seed used:          4364 in, 3732 remain, 632 l used                                -$     569
    Fertilizer used:    13409 in, 3981 remain, 9428 l used.                             -$  18.102
    Fuel usage:                                                           -$       0
    Vehicle/equipment maintenance cost:                                   -$     471
    Property Maintenance:                                                 -$       1
    Other costs:   (What on earth is this?)                               -$   1.171
    Contracts income:                                                     +$  68.980
    Selling wood income:                                                  +$  44.567
    Rounding correction:                                                  +$       1
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                           $  67.834     $ 815.470       = $ 883.304
    ================================================================================================================
We were also billed $1171 for unspecified costs I cannot figure out what was for. Quite a bit of cash to use without having any idea of why.

We got quite a bit of logging experience, as seen before here. Our property has a variety of trees of different types.

Image

Not sure if my guesses for what kind of tree they are are correct, but there's a lot of what look like elms here, which are truely horrific to get processed. The oaks are a bit easier with straighter pieces. Pines I haven't tested yet, but guessing they are fairly similar. Firs were a ton easier. All the branches are small and cut of easily leaving only a straight main trunk to handle and sell. While an elm got me twice the money, I could cut 3-4 firs in the time it takes to process an elm.

The firs I can also carry what I thought I'd be able to carry, so didn't have to saw it into tiny pieces.

I'm about to get religious here. I've tried to remove the tree stumps, but a part of one of the stumps are hovering in the air (see in picture above between the elm and the oak) and won't budge at all. I don't manage to remove that part, and it still blocks movement of tractors and tools. Hope it won't prevent me from terraforming or placing buildings.

Summary of budget forestry tips I've managed to gather
  • For budget forestry, get a flatbed trailer with straps for transport. (The SEK 802 is the cheap and only available flatbed I know of in base game)
  • If you want to forest for income, find woods with tree types that aren't a total pain to cut down. Stay away from Elms if possible :)
  • You can attach and remove straps on trailer on foot if you're close enough.
  • A log touched by a strap is basically dead stable in position regardless of what part the strap touches.
  • You can strap one log in position and put the next log through the strap. This way you don't accidentally move the log you've already put in position when moving in the next.
  • When you let go of log and it falls on top of straps, it is often locked in place because it has touched the straps and cannot be moved again without removing straps. Make sure it is in a good position before you let it go.
  • You can even hold it in position while attaching strap to get it to stay in a position it would otherwise just fall off from.
  • For smallish trees like the once around farm in Ravenport, you don't seem to get less money for trees at sawmill even if you cut it in tiny pieces.
  • You can often jump on top of trailer while holding a log to make placement of it easier.
  • You can rotate the log in two dimensions with mouse if you hold down middle button. Right button throws the log while left just drops it.
  • When cutting the tree in pieces, if you are in bushes, try to throw the pieces out of the bushes so you find them easier when moving them to trailer.



As seen, firs are a lot easier to get on the trailer due to pieces being straight, more equal in size, and you can carry bigger pieces:
Image
Last edited by humbe on Fri Mar 06, 2020 11:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
humbe
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Re: Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

Just adding some pictures of farm before and after Mai.. Cutting trees, removing bushes and sowing grass made quite a difference:

Before:
Image

After:
Image

Was hoping to find a solution to remove the junkyard. I saw a suggestion of just burying it, but I don't seem to find a way to actually do that. Wondering if I should get in some big'uns to clear them away for me.
Terraforming tool refused to touch the ground where it was at. I could raise ground around, but not so it affected the junkyard. Considering trying to use Giants editor to remove it and deduct $10.000 or something to represent some contractors that could have done it for me
humbe
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Re: Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

Now in June, contracts are coming back. We even got a fat grass baling contract for field 9. $18.453 income, and only $984 reduction to borrow gear which I guess I have to with my setup. The gear was good too.. Square baler and auto-loading wagon. Too bad I can't actually verify those bits before borrowing. Wondering how many extra bales we will get out of it.

Got 3 fertilizer contracts too, and expecting to get more later in later sessions when I end up reloading the game.

So what would I have to pay for baling gear?

Ideally I'd afford square baling gear:
Square Baler - Kuhn LSB 1290 D - $105.000
Auto-loading wagon - FSX 63.72 - $70.000

Budget option for round bales:
Round Baler - New Holland Roll-Best 150 - $49.000
Ursus T-127 - $39.000

Or to be able to make silage, rather use Kuhn FBP 3135 Baler to avoid the need for bale wrapper and extra pass.

If I want to be able to mow and wrap own gear too I'd like to use the Pottinger Novacat setup for $61.000 for mowing, the Kuhn Merge Maxx 902 windrower for $110.000 and I'd need the Kuhn SW 4014 to wrap the bales. Not a cheap setup.

So preferable solution if I want to do bale missions on my own would then end up costing me $400.000. I could get away with around 200.000 if I go for a cheap solution though. Or possibly, I can just get the square baler and autoloader wagon for $175.000 to be able to handle straw from grains and get mowing and wrapping gear later.

We do grow grass on farm ourselves though, so some mowing gear would be nice.

We're still saving up for a harvester and a bigger trailer though, which may be higher priority. And if we have extra money, it is tempting to rather use it on a better harvester than on mowing gear.
humbe
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Re: Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

Some economics on fertilizer contracts on hard difficulty. On a rather big field where I stopped spreading fairly fast after reaching contract completion, fertilizer cost me around 15% of the income from the contract. On a small field where I typically just do all of it, the figure was around 30%.

So bigger fields are much better targets for fertilize missions as you get much less overlap with the large 30m working width, and you also get less driving too and from per acre.
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Riverdale Valley - A farm blog - Ravenport, season, from scratch on hard economy

Post by humbe »

And some baling details.. $18.453 - $984 for borrowing equipment. Field of 3.08 ha. Generated 35 bales.

After delivering first 16 bales mission completeness is 54%. X being bales delivered, and Y being percent contract completeness,
remaining bales to be delivered for contract is:

X * (100 - Y) / (Y - 20) = 16 * (100 - 54) / (54 - 20) = 21.65. Rounded up to 22.

The contract is actually for a given amount of liters, so they don't necessarily want a whole number of bales, but as you cannot deliver half a bale you have to round upwards :)

(The number that pop ups on screen when you sell is not mission completeness but percentage bales given, so this number is better to use but you can't check contract screen to find it. In the above example, that was 42% and I could then have calculated:

X * (100 - Y) / Y = 16 * (100 - 42) / 42 = 22.10. The values aren't entirely correct due to rounding errors with no decimals in the completeness percentage, but this last one is slightly more accurate as it has range of 100 instead of 80.

That means I'll have 13 bales extra I can use myself. I can sell them, but they need to ferment first to get any money for them, so I have to store them a while before I see what I get for them and can calculate total contract income, but it looks good :)

I did the classic mistake of accepting money before I was finished moving all the bales I wanted to keep though :)
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