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

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

Post by humbe »

We have some more contracting to do and harvest of our own field, but it's time to plan what we want to do next year. We'll lay of contracting in order to:
  • Get a better overview of what the income and costs are for dealing only with our own stuff. In theory we could do that with calculations while contracting, but skipping contracting simplifies tracking it and the result will be easily viewable in that years accounting numbers.
  • See if it's more fun to just deal with own stuff. While we will certainly make a lot less cash, we will be using far less real time to play that year, so we may find it more rewarding to play faster.


While not having that much to do, we will use the opportunity to gather extra statistics to get a better overview of actual income and expenses. Income is easy, as all income is through explicit selling of goods, but tracking the expenses to the correct income sources is difficult. So what do we want to find out?

  • The chicken pen should be fairly easy to figure out. The forklift and trailer in there will only be used in chicken pen, so we can just track total usage of those for the year. Other than that, we just need to track the total number of eggs we get, and the total amount of barley we feed them. (We assume they eat the same of either barley or wheat, and as wheat has slightly higher sell price, giving them barley sounds best). The chicken pen is full. All chickens should be old enough to lay eggs, and none should be so old they die during the year.
  • The cows are a more complex story. We have already looked at manure and tried to figure out how much we get, and give it a value based on cost of alternative fertilizer. Tracking how many cows we have at any point in time that is actually giving milk is tricky. And tracking exact amount of food and bedding is also a bit more than for chickens but certainly doable. We need to give bales a fitting value, and the correct measure sounds to be the income we'd expect to get from a field if we didn't need bales. Thus, likely we had sown something else and sold something that is worth more than the bales we ended up producing.
  • Then it is field income. Here we will still have skewed numbers. We haven't worked the same fields perfectly 3 years in a row, so the crop rotation bonus will not be the same across the entire field. This will make calculated yield numbers incorrect. We'll do as best we can to track the numbers though. Hopefully they will get more correct later on. But apart from the yield and actual sell price we manage to get, we'd also like to check how much expenses needs to be tracked with it. Fuel and maintenance costs, and seed and fertilizer usage.
  • Our tractors cost different maintenance, and use different amount of fuel. When fertilizing, some tractors might not be able to keep full speed up a hill, so we may use extra fertilizer. Try to do job with different tractors to measure differences. Especially fertilizing that we need to do multiple times.


If we're careful about tracking numbers, I hope we will get good values we can use to estimate how much expenses to track here and there. We'll leave our fields as is after harvesting, to track all preparations of the field in the same year as we get the income.

We're considering writing something that digs data out of savegame, and save the game between all jobs, so we can track data like numbers of hectares worked and operation hours added to vehicles and gear. If we don't do that, we'll need to manually track operating hours, or repair/refuel often to track usage with the task using it.
Last edited by humbe on Thu Apr 09, 2020 10:10 am, 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 »

And August numbers are in:

Code: Select all

August 04:                                                                Cash flow:       Assets:
    Incoming balance / assets:                                             $  55.041     $ 3.696.657
    Investments: Field 23 land                                            -$ 202.992    +$   202.992
    Landscaping around field:                                             -$     387
    Vehicle/equipment maintenance cost:                                   -$   1.325
    Animal Upkeep:                                                        -$     396
    Property Maintenance:                                                 -$     164
    Fuel cost:                                                            -$     482
    Seed bought:        22.000 liters                                     -$  19.800    +$    19.800
    Seed used:          3.932 in, 2.843 remain, 23.089 l used.                          -$    20.780
    Fertilizer bought:  18.000 liters.                                    -$  34.560    +$    34.560
    Fertilizer used:    3.930 in, 6.233 remain, 15.697 l used.                          -$    30.138
    Sold Wood:                                                            +$  51.265
    Sold Milk:                                                            +$ 122.993
    Harvest Income:                                                       +$   1.490
    Contracts Income:                                                     +$ 232.816
    Rounding correction                                                   -$       0
    Silo inventory: Type:  Liters: Price/1000: Value:       Total:
                    Wheat   28.675  $400       $  11.470
                    Barley  55.487  $360       $  19.975    $  31.445
    Bales:   Grass Silage      123  $60        $  29.520
             Hay Bales          66  $50        $  13.200
             Straw Bales        46  $40        $   7.360    $  50.080
    Milk:                   11.917  $750       $   8.938
    Eggs:                    9.088  $1900      $  17.267    $  26.205
    Total value of stored goods:                            $ 107.730                   -$    75.675
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                           $ 203.499     $ 3.827.416   = $ 4.030.915
    ================================================================================================================
Wood selling income was divided between several days so I missed that earlier in report. It seems we got back around 25% of the cost of buying new field by selling the wood, and there's still some wood to sell there if we want to. As we see, we've started doing some sowing and fertilizing missions, but we didn't get to do much harvesting. We harvested some wheat where we got a little surplus. Also some barley but the surplus wasn't higher than the amount eaten by chickens this month.
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 »

I've had a little programming break. Created a program that parses the savegame files for some interesting info, and then starts listens to the files and report changes when I resave the game.

When I do start it up, it loads the current savegame and prints this:

Code: Select all

savegame1 Ravenport Hard: 2004.09.02 01:39 Cash: $ 91,700
  TraveledDistance     2,012.607056
  FuelUsage           13,072.332031
  SeedUsage            7,991.899902
  SprayUsage         428,101.812500
  WorkedHectares         164.699539
  CultivatedHectares      14.405825
  SownHectares            19.998726
  FertilizedHectares      73.712273
  ThreshedHectares        41.100216
  PlowedHectares          15.482475
  WorkedTime           3,321.621826
  BaleCount              390
  PlayTime            21,164.873047

  Accounting:                  2004.08.01:         2004.08.02:         2004.08.03:         2004.09.01:         2004.09.02:
  Construction Cost               0.000000            0.000000         -387.000000            0.000000            0.000000
  Field Purchase                  0.000000     -202,992.000000            0.000000            0.000000     -280,032.000000
  Vehicle Running Cost          -30.034029         -164.064194       -1,131.709839         -773.202515          -18.163145
  Animal Upkeep                -131.093124         -132.462296         -133.450424         -134.392181          -76.634987
  Property Maintenance          -54.895100          -55.089546          -55.283993          -55.478439            0.000000
  Sold Wood                       0.000000       26,366.921875       24,899.976563            0.000000        4,212.052246
  Sold Milk                 122,993.187500            0.000000            0.000000            0.000000            0.000000
  Purchase Fuel                -482.869385            0.000000            0.000000         -161.468979            0.000000
  Purchase Seeds                  0.000000       -7,200.000000      -12,600.000000       -6,300.000000            0.000000
  Purchase Fertilizer             0.000000      -15,360.000000      -19,200.000000      -23,040.000000      -26,880.000000
  Harvest Income                262.268188        1,228.280640            0.000000            0.000000            0.000000
  Mission Income              3,000.014893       92,532.804688      137,284.375000       94,100.210938      127,881.812500

  Equipment:                                              Price: OpTimeSinceRepair: Content:
  Fendt 1038 Vario(37):                                $ 329,000      18,646.406250 456.955719 Diesel
  Rostselmash RSM 161 Harvester(21):                   $ 299,000      19,854.625000 454.144592 Diesel
  Kuhn LSB 1290 D Baler(27):                           $ 105,000          31.919922 2,351.740723 Hay
  Case IH 7250 Pro(9):                                 $  98,000       3,099.625000 406.899689 Diesel
  Vaderstad Rapid A 600S Seeder(12):                   $  76,000      30,967.265625 1,595.091919 Seeds
  Fendt Favorit 515c(36):                              $  76,000         876.687500 79.614487 Diesel
  Arcusin FSX 63.72 Bale Trailer(39):                  $  70,000         984.328125
  Lizard MKS 32 Liquid Trailer(51):                    $  68,000       1,644.317139
  Strautmann Aperion 3401 Trailer(38):                 $  65,000      27,647.070313
  Rostselmash Draper Stream 900 Harvester Header(22):  $  58,500      19,602.765625
  Kuhn SW 4014 Bale Wrapper(24):                       $  54,000       1,092.173828
  Siloking TrailedLine Duo 1814 TMR Mixer(29):         $  53,000       5,185.951172 2,237.779785 Hay, 4,666.558105 Silage, 2,237.779785 Straw
  Ford 2020 F-Series(41):                              $  48,710       4,694.291016 74.003242 Diesel
  Samson SP 14/17 Manure Spreader(35):                 $  43,000      14,081.639648 16,900.000000 Manure
  Pottinger Novacat X8 ED Mower(19):                   $  42,000          21.113281
  Bredal K105 Fertilizer Spreader(16):                 $  39,000      47,507.578125 3,522.976318 Fertilizer
  Grimme SL 80-22 Quantum Conveyor belt(34):           $  38,000       9,426.853516 1,200.000000 Manure
  Manitou MC 18-4 Forklift(42):                        $  37,000       2,423.242188 69.559235 Diesel
  Amazone Catros 6002-2 Cultivator(7):                 $  31,000       7,204.343750
  Heizomat HM 4-300 Woodchipper(32):                   $  28,000      26,183.455078
  Agroliner TKD 302 Trailer(23):                       $  27,000       1,763.203125 16,665.435547 Barley
  Kuhn Primor 15070 Straw Blower(48):                  $  25,000         820.323730
  Joskin Betimax RDS 7500 Animal Trailer(43):          $  24,000       1,658.418213
  Kuhn SR 314 Windrower(20):                           $  23,000          27.638672
  Pottinger Novacat 301 ED Mower(18):                  $  19,000          39.335938
  Kuhn GF 8712 Tedder(26):                             $  16,000          23.315918
  Agromasz POH 5 Plow(11):                             $  14,000      40,769.484375
  Joskin Aquatrans 7300 S Trailer(28):                 $   9,500      25,682.005859
  Krampe Dolly 10L(50):                                $   9,000       1,667.811768
  Thunder Green FST 990 Fuel Trailer(25):              $   8,500       2,426.051025 2,328.050781 Diesel
  Vaderstad FH 2200 Seed/Fert Tank(13):                $   8,000      29,322.546875 2,200.000000 Seeds
  Strautmann SEK 802 Trailer(40):                      $   8,000       3,428.195313
  NMC 320H Pro Snow Blower(44):                        $   7,950       1,749.233276
  Stoll FZ 30 Front Loader(14):                        $   5,400      41,986.000000
  FSI Power Tech ST 65 Tree Stump Cutter(17):          $   5,000      21,356.226563
  Lizard S-710 belt loader(33):                        $   5,000      48,614.593750 493.721497 Manure
  Tajfun EGV 80 AHK Winch(31):                         $   4,500      37,780.855469
  Stoll Universal Bucket(30):                          $   1,400       6,823.344238
  Egg Pallet(46):                                      $   1,000           0.000000 2,400.000000 Eggs
  Egg Pallet(47):                                      $   1,000           0.000000 2,400.000000 Eggs
  Egg Pallet(52):                                      $   1,000           0.000000 2,229.055908 Eggs
  Egg Pallet(53):                                      $   1,000           0.000000 2,400.000000 Eggs
  Egg Pallet(54):                                      $   1,000           0.000000 55.741978 Eggs
  SB1000 Front Weight(8):                              $     900      18,592.296875
  SB1000 Front Weight(10):                             $     900      11,654.625000
  Stoll Pallet Fork(15):                               $     800      16,591.648438
  Lime Big Bag(55):                                    $     450           0.000000 494.162109 Lime
  Egg Box(45):                                         $       0           0.000000 150.000000 Eggs
  Egg Box(49):                                         $       0           0.000000 97.745003 Eggs

  Item:                                                   Price: Content:
  Large Grain Silo(11):                                $ 180,000 28,675.281250 Wheat, 36,478.242188 Barley
  Large Chicken Coop(23):                              $  86,900 2,240.124512 Barley
  MW HOF USA Cow Barn(19):                             $  70,000 5,366.858398 Straw, 17,906.318359 Milk, 1,539.756226 Grass, 1,253.968262 Silage, 12,119.925781 Forage
  Square Bale Barn(26):                                $  48,000
  Edwards Modding Farmhouse(24):                       $  25,000
  MF Workshop Shed(30):                                $  22,000
  MW HOF USA Vehicle Shed B(18):                       $  15,000
  MW HOF USA Vehicle Shed A(9):                        $   5,000
  Water Pump(28):                                      $   5,000
  Dog House(5):                                        $   2,500
  Square Straw Bale(4):                                $       0 412.776825 Straw
  Square Silage Bale(12):                              $       0 4,000.000000 Silage
  RailRoad Silo West(15):                              $       0
  RailRoad Silo East(31):                              $       0 55,418.871094 Canola
When it detects that I have saved the game again, it prints something like this. (In the meantime here I've only let the engine run on the case with the 2 gear bits connected to it):

Code: Select all

New data:
savegame1 Ravenport Hard: 2004.09.02 01:41 Cash: $ 91,700
  TraveledDistance   +      0.009643
  FuelUsage          +      0.012696
  PlayTime           +      2.519531

  Case IH 7250 Pro(9):                                 $  98,000+         11.750000 -0.012818 Diesel
  FSI Power Tech ST 65 Tree Stump Cutter(17):          $   5,000+         11.765625
  Tajfun EGV 80 AHK Winch(31):                         $   4,500+         11.765625
I expect I can see quite a few interesting details if I save the game between work items. For instance:
  • I can measure exact size of fields.
  • I can measure exactly how much of a field I managed to harvest (so I can calculate yield ignoring the bits that didn't make it).
  • I can track operation time and fuel usage per job. Thus I can tag that on the job. I'm guessing fuel cost is a constant per liter. I'm not sure about the repair cost formula, but I have tested it scales linearly, so when I do repair the vehicle I can divide the cost based on percentage use of operating hours. Thus, I can assign such costs to the correct income bits without constantly repairing and refueling to measure it. That means I can likely just delay all repair/refuel until the end of the year I measure.
  • I can auto-create most of the asset numbers. No need to keep tracking deltas.
  • I can probably use numbers to automatically categorize many bits. For instances, it doesn't seem like contract work adds to the hectares worked categories. Thus, I can possibly see that I've used the cultivator, but I have not cultivated hectars, so I have likely done a cultivation contract. And I can see that straw and TMR measures in barn has gone up, so I have likely been tending cows, so I can assign tractor maintenance from that bit to that category etc.. Given that I save often enough to only have one job in there at a time.
Excited to see what I can make of the numbers :D
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 »

We did get quite a few sowing contracts, and we are getting lots of fertilizer contracts, so we're doing just as well there as previous years. Good enough so we actually got money to buy field 22 before harvesting our own crops. Have just done so and have started clearing some forest there.

Image

Buying up fields 22 and 23 have also given opportunity for more grass. Area around field 23 have already been harvested for grass that we managed to make hay off. The grass around field 22 is also fully grown. Might be hard to get drying conditions in Autumn but we'll see. I can stock up more hay, but pretty much at capacity in barn with silage now.

I'm saving often to see diffs, and that makes some more game mechanic easily visible. For instance:
  • You can't repair hand tools, so I guess that's why they count maintenance per use. All the time the chainsaw is on you get subtracted for vehicle running cost, even if you never actually use it. The season Lizard MT 9 measure device also gives you vehicle running cost per use, but at least only when you actually measure anything and not just hold it. I'll try to watch out for other sources of vehicle running cost, but I'm hoping this is it, and I can count any running cost I don't explicitly get by repairing stuff as hand tool maintenance.
  • My tree stump cutter and winch count operation time any time they are connected to a tractor with engine running. It doesn't matter if they are used or turned on, they count the same operation time as the tractor (which also just count when engine is running of course)

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 »

Paid $981 to make a path around the new property around field 22, to be able to easier walk around it and get an overview of the size of it. Well spent money. Also nice with this drone I can use to take pictures from the air for a better overview (Flight mode)

Image

We've cleared the trees in front and on the hill, but we now see that all the trees on the border to field 21, and all the trees on the hill behind the field are also included in the property. This field can get a lot bigger, and we now have a lot of grass to move here too, which would be good to take advantage of before we start working on extending field.

Would be good to cut down the rest of the trees, but it's hard work. Considering delaying it and just work on the bits we have cleared for now. Currently it's raining anyhow though, so not a fitting time to start mowing grass. Looks like we'll get enough money to buy field 21 before next fiscal year starts anyhow, so at least the trees in between there would be good to get down..
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 »

After more logging, we have cleaned up land around field 22 pretty nicely. The income from the wood even made us able to get field 21 too, and we cleaned up a bit there too..

Image

I feel like Sarumann ripping up all the woods around here.. But at least I'm not making Uruk-Hai.. The Ravenport Herald isn't impressed. Saying there's enough farm area and they need the trees in the valley for recreational value for inhabitants..

Forecast is more rain, but from tomorrow the weather is better, so when we're going to move all the grassy areas around the fields here. Afterwards we'll look at extending the fields, and we likely want to get in some bulldozers and excavators and level the area a bit to be able to utilize bigger part of the land. (Landscaping) There's still a few trees left. Some between road and field 21. Some around barn area, one down at the road, and some behind field 23, but most of the land area can be taken advantage of without removing these, so I think we'll leave those for now. Nice to have some trees around too.

Looks like there's a lot of grass to mow around those fields. We're at capacity with silage bales already, and we've accepted baling contracts for all 3 grass fields where we'll get quite a few extra of those anyways. I guess we should make an attempt to create hay of the bits around the fields. If we manage we might be able to fill the bale barns hay quota too.
SimpleFarmer
Posts: 468
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2019 6:03 pm
Location: Boise

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

Post by SimpleFarmer »

That's pretty cool with the coding pull. One reason I kind of wish I was on a PC. This farm is progressing really well.
One thing I was starting to notice was that the seed usage reported in the statistics doesn't actually correspond to the seed usage in the planter. I was planting cover crop and seeing how much money it saved me in fertilizer and the value in session was like 400 liters used, which really would have been expensive, but in the planter I only used like 150 liters or less. I wonder why this is, or if the same applies to fertilizer or something else. I'm guessing it has to do with the efficiency of different crops with seed, with oil seed radishes being super efficient. Not sure.
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 »

When I start seeding I'll see for myself how the numbers move. I could run an Oilseed Radish experiment myself too. Have never tried it. I'm guessing it has to apply the first fertilization step, and after I see it I can potentially seed right away with new type if I have seeder that cultivates too. I'm a bit unsure of timing though.. If I want to be able to seed early spring, when do I need to get it into the ground in order to get to first growth stage in time.. But I guess I can test and see. Worst thing, I'll just have to apply fertilization step normally..
SimpleFarmer
Posts: 468
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2019 6:03 pm
Location: Boise

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

Post by SimpleFarmer »

humbe wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 12:36 pm When I start seeding I'll see for myself how the numbers move. I could run an Oilseed Radish experiment myself too. Have never tried it. I'm guessing it has to apply the first fertilization step, and after I see it I can potentially seed right away with new type if I have seeder that cultivates too. I'm a bit unsure of timing though.. If I want to be able to seed early spring, when do I need to get it into the ground in order to get to first growth stage in time.. But I guess I can test and see. Worst thing, I'll just have to apply fertilization step normally..
I've been on and off about Oilseed, but lately I have really began to see the advantage of it. I plant it whenever the ground isn't frozen, even in late autumn and it still grows. But I usually plant it right after I harvest. If you plant it while it's raining, it usually is grown by the next day (on 6 day seasons). It uses barely any seed, and I would like to see how much cheaper it is than using fertilizer. Off the top of my head I think it is like 10% of the cost. You can till it under as soon as you see it, there are no growth stages. I am going to try next year on my save to plant it in late summer if I can get the harvest done then and then plant it again in the autumn and see if I can get two or three fertilization states with 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 »

I'll do an oilseed radish test myself going into next year. Will sort of break my plan to delay doing anything with fields until start of next fiscal year where I'm not doing contracts, but I can track cost of it well, so shouldn't matter..

Numbers from September are in. We got a lot of fertilizer contracts. Still a few fields not fully fertilized, but not that many. With lots of income from contracting, and some payback from bought fields by selling wood we managed to buy the land of both field 21 and 22 now.

The fields had large areas of fully grown grass around them, so we got an overload of silage bales doing contracts for baling, and an overload of hay from getting the grass around our new fields. Our bale barn is thus full of both and we have stacked the remainder outside. Not sure if the hay bales will take damage from rain though. We might need to think of some other way to store them. We'd put them in a shed, but our current bale trailer lifts too far up to be able to unload inside, and using the front loader for each one will take a lot of time.

We harvested field 27 late September. (Field around old 24-26). Getting new measurable details, we harvested 31532.048828 liters of Soybeans from 3.504471 hectares.

Also sadly hit autocomplete fertilize mission on load bug 3x times this harvest. Deducted $10.000 from our game, which is about the amount we got in for free.

Code: Select all

September 04:                                                             Cash flow:       Assets:
    Incoming balance / assets:                                             $ 203.499     $ 3.827.416
    Investments: Field 21+22 land                                         -$ 428.016    +$   428.016
    Creating path around new fields.                                      -$   1.494
    Vehicle/equipment maintenance cost:                                   -$   1.157
    Animal Upkeep:                                                        -$     405
    Property Maintenance:                                                 -$     165
    Fuel cost:                                                            -$     161
    Seed bought:        7.000 liters                                      -$   6.300    +$     6.300
    Seed used:          2.843 in, 3.722 remain, 6.121 l used.                           -$     5.509
    Fertilizer bought:  34.000 liters.                                    -$  65.280    +$    65.280
    Fertilizer used:    6.233 in, 5.863 remain, 34.370 l used.                          -$    65.990
    Sold Wood:                                                            +$  86.234
    Sold Milk:                                                            +$  16.096
    Contracts Income:                                                     +$ 278.175
    Rounding correction                                                   -$       2
    Silo inventory: Type:  Liters: Price/1000: Value:       Total:
                    Wheat   28.675  $400       $  11.470
                    Barley  50.013  $360       $  18.005
                    Soybean 31.532  $1200      $  37.838    $  67.313
    Bales:   Grass Silage      160  $60        $  38.400
             Hay Bales         138  $50        $  27.600
             Straw Bales        40  $40        $   6.400    $  72.400
    Milk:                    2.252  $750       $   1.689
    Eggs:                   10.324  $1900      $  19.616    $  21.305
    Total value of stored goods:                            $ 161.018                   +$    53.288
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                           $  81.024     $ 4.308.801   = $ 4.389.825
    ================================================================================================================
We have harvested the other field early October. 28468.339844 liters of Soybean from 3.164062 hectares. If we get good prices for our crops, we may even be able to buy another field before next fiscal year starts.

Now, the plan is to work a bit on the new fields and join and extend the fields there. We'll plant some Oilseeds, measure stuff, and maybe do a few more fertilize missions, and then its likely back to tending animals through winter.
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 »

Takes a while to plow a new field with a 2.5m working width plow. Was very tempting to use the opportunity to buy a bigger plow. But plows cost money, and I shouldn't need to plow new fields often, so trying to cope for now. Also the big plows don't seem to pack away well. They take up a lot of space and his hard to back into sheds.

Image

Hope we did a good enough job to smooth out the area for our seeder to work well. It was tempting to try and income some of the territory we have up on the hill there, but it's costly to try and level it, and it would be nice to create a field that was fairly easy to work..
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 »

Doing Oilseed Radish run on new field now to measure field size and cost of applying radish per hectares..

Did a bit more landscaping in southern end of field, to get a nice and straight line to drive close to the hill, being reasonable compromise of not wasting field in one bit, and not having to go too invasive driving away land masses.

Image

Hopefully final bill for landscaping around here at $32.519.. A bit more than we had planned for, but was trying to avoid issues like in field 29 where we had to redo bits to get seeder to get to all the parts. Still putting field close to ends though, requiring us to drive headlands to make space for later turns.
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 »


Oilseed Radish report. According to our measurements, the new field is 4.779632 hectares, and we used 482.170654 liters of seed to seed Oilseed Radish in it, increasing operation time by 2380 on tractor, seeder and seed tank, and we used 21.4 liters of Diesel to do it.

That sounds utterly cheap compared to price of fertilizer. Lets calculate a bit.

After looking at the detailed numbers (helps to get 6 decimal points to see things getting close to exact) I found what looks to be the maintenance cost formula:

MaintenanceCost = (SecondsUsed / 3600) * BasePrice * 0.000323651

The above formula calculates the cost correctly for my tractor, seeder and seedtank, with 3 first decimal places exactly correct. Base price is here the price you bought the gear for originally, not altered for any type of customization done later, so to save on maintenance cost, buy the cheapest version first, and customize to add options afterwards.

The formula above, means that I used $21 in tractor maintenance, $16 in seeder maintenance and $2 for tank maintenance. When I filled fuel, I got that the fuel cost 1.25000013 per liter, so I'm pretty sure fuel prices are static and the real cost here is $1.25 per liter. Thus we used $27 worth of fuel.

So to calculate total cost:

Code: Select all

Seed cost:            $ 434
Maintenance cost:     $  39
Fuel cost:            $  27
Total:                $ 500 = $105 per hectares
From earlier notes, I see we used 1.123 liters of solid fertilizer to fertilize field 27, which is 3.504471 hectares, so the fertilizer cost there is $615 per hectares alone. There's maintenance and fuel cost on top of that, but less of it, as I use a 30m working width fertilizer.

One big difference though, is that seeding don't make overlaps, while spraying fertilizer do. You could get the $615 number down if you had a square field and did an optimal run so you had no overlap.

In either case, Oilseed Radish seems the way to go to apply first fertilization steps on fields. I'll do it on my other fields too. I should be able to use cowdung to fertilize other two stages on those original fields, so I only need solid fertilizer for last 2 fertilization steps of this new field. That'll reduce the cost of fertilization considerably.

Getting it this cheap, it does matter what tools and tractors you use. If I had used my Vario, I'd payed more than 3x the cost in maintenance for the tractor. However, using a bigger seeder I might be able to cut down on the time it takes to save some there. The Lemken Solitair 12 for instance with a 12m working width for $107.000 would less than double seeder maintenance, and reduce time we use by almost half.
SimpleFarmer
Posts: 468
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2019 6:03 pm
Location: Boise

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

Post by SimpleFarmer »

humbe wrote: Mon Apr 13, 2020 11:51 am
Oilseed Radish report. According to our measurements, the new field is 4.779632 hectares, and we used 482.170654 liters of seed to seed Oilseed Radish in it, increasing operation time by 2380 on tractor, seeder and seed tank, and we used 21.4 liters of Diesel to do it.




One thing that I am thinking is the 482 liters of seed. I seeded two pretty good sized fields and only had like 340 liters of seed in the seeder. When I was done it was only at like 300, if I remember right. I am going to keep better track next time I do it, but I think it only used like 40-100 liters of seed, but when I checked the usage in the statistics it was saying 400 liters were used, which there wasn't even 400 liters in the drill. So if you're taking your 482 and multiplying it by the price of seed, I think you might be off on the final cost. Not sure if this is how you're doing it tho.
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 »

I'm tracking the content of seed in my seeder. Not using statistics for seed used. Actually, my seed usage statistics didn't move at all.

It has moved afterwards I see now, adding 361 to seed usage statistics. (For second field so that is correct but as it wasn't updated straight away, it's hard to say if one is looking at updated values or not). I use vehicles.xml file in savegame to track amount of seed in my seeder and seed tank and measure difference before and after..

I'm guessing you have been looking at an outdated value of the seed usage statistics, and it didn't include all the seed you actually used, or it wasn't updated when you checked before starting, but it was updated before you checked it afterwards, so the result seemed less than expected..

Code: Select all

savegame1 Ravenport Hard: 2004.10.02 04:05 Cash: $ +3,705 (72,733)
  TraveledDistance   +      6.500488
  FuelUsage          +     21.914062
  WorkedHectares     +      3.606751
  SownHectares       +      3.606750
  WorkedTime         +     34.597656
  PlayTimeInMinutes  +     37.419922

  Accounting:                  2004.09.01:         2004.09.02:         2004.09.03:         2004.10.01:         2004.10.02:
  Sold Animals                                                                                               +2,171.472412
  Vehicle Running Cost                                                                                          -12.355713
  Animal Upkeep                                                                                                  -4.186508
  Sold Wood                                                                                                  +1,550.091431
  Wage Payment                                                                                                   +0.015713

  Equipment:                                              Price: OpTimeSinceRepair: Content:
  Case IH 7250 Pro(9):                                 $  98,000      +2,087.625000 -18.120270 Diesel
  Vaderstad Rapid A 600S Seeder(12):                   $  76,000      +2,087.609375 -360.675049 Seeds
  Fendt Favorit 515c(36):                              $  76,000        +854.812500 -3.794281 Diesel
  Siloking TrailedLine Duo 1814 TMR Mixer(29):         $  53,000                    +111.111084 Silage
  Joskin Betimax RDS 7500 Animal Trailer(43):          $  24,000        +278.151611
  Joskin Aquatrans 7300 S Trailer(28):                 $   9,500         +18.146485
  Vaderstad FH 2200 Seed/Fert Tank(13):                $   8,000      +2,087.609375
  Stoll FZ 30 Front Loader(14):                        $   5,400        +111.062500
  FSI Power Tech ST 65 Tree Stump Cutter(17):          $   5,000        +320.773438
  Lizard S-710 belt loader(33):                        $   5,000          +4.753907
  Tajfun EGV 80 AHK Winch(31):                         $   4,500        +360.359375
  Stoll Universal Bucket(30):                          $   1,400         +38.449218
  Egg Pallet(54):                                      $   1,000                    +12.903320 Eggs
  Stoll Pallet Fork(15):                               $     800         +25.195312
The above is the diff from the second field I applied fertilizer too.. But I also did cut down a tree and did some small bits, so not just the seeding in there.. But as you can see, the Vaderstad Rapid A 600S Seeder got 360.675 l less seed in it, but the seed usage statistics was not updated at the time I completed.. But I see it got updated later, counting correct 361 extra..

So for field 27, my cost of applying Oilseed was:

Code: Select all

Seed cost:            $ 325
Maintenance cost:     $  34
Fuel cost:            $  23
Total:                $ 382 = $106 per hectares
(I rounded of many times during the calculations here, not adding decimals above, so the difference may be there. Also, operation time used is not only driving over field, but might include driving to and from field and parking equipment etc. Also, fields will likely have a bit different overlaps in the actual seeding, so the time I use per hectares is not equal everywhere.)

A note about the maintenance cost formula. There is a factor of vehicle/tool age that is not included in the formula. I ran some tests some time back and saw that it got a bit more expensive to repair once age got really high, but it needed to get really high to matter, so I think the formula is a decent approximation.
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