Figgered I'd test out the manure spreader we've stashed behind the shed now that we had a bit of manure, but it turned out a bust.
Around three meters working width on a spreader is sadly low, and all the manure we've collected this far only ended up in 1.5x times down the tiny field in our backyard. Wonder if there's something else we can use manure for. We won't have enough to fertilize any decent part of our fields anytime soon, and with this large manure usage the capacity of this manure spreader is just useless. Even if we had the manure, we'd have to refill it literally a thousand times to go over our fields.
Found a *censored* in the settlement willing to pay $240 for it.. Sold. I think he was going to convert it to a regular trailer.
Last edited by humbe on Mon Jun 08, 2020 10:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Our fancy new seeder has an implement to take soil samples to measure fertilization levels, and the result was baffling.
Fields 2 (north on plot 26), field 3 (north on plot 27), field 4 (south on plot 27) & field 5 (plot 25), have all been fertilized once with our new fertilize spreader. The big field (field 6) not at all.
However, the portion of the field 6 where we mowed grass two years ago, already has 2 fertilization levels, even though we haven't fertilized anything. The grassy bits we have never mowed has one fertilization level, and the bits without any grass has none. We see the same on field 5, that the part where we mowed two years ago are already fully fertilized, while the forested areas have mostly only been fertilized by our single fertilize run. Fields 2-4 have been harvested before, and all of the soil there has gotten normalized fertilization levels.
Should we mow before plowing up new ground to get a fertilization level? Should we have sowed grass where there wasn't grass too, so we didn't get patches that wasn't fertilized? Sounds strange, but the soil samples tell a story..
March is done and April is starting. The weather is becoming warmer, but I'm worrying if the oilseed will come in time for seeding. I just noticed that the oilseed radishes require 6 degrees to germinate and what I sowed of it in autumn didn't have temperature to germinate before winter. April came and went, but early May, finally the oilseed popped..
We need more oats for the horses. Thinking we'll likely grow that on field 5. Field 6 will get some crop with low yields. I guess likely Soybeans so we can sow in June too, giving us a bit more time to complete. We'll seed the other fields first, and see when we complete those.
Other than that, some wheat/barley would be good for the chickens. That still leaves us a couple of fields to grow something. We'll take a closer look at what might fit in the crop rotations tomorrow and plan in more detail..
The barn is also coming along nicely. It's ready enough to start moving the cows soon I think..
So what have we grown up until now? Two years of crops for the first two fields. Nothing in the rest. So I guess the plan is something like this:
Field 1 (The original small field in backyard):
Year 1: Potatoes
Year 2: Canola
Current year: Corn (Test out our planter. Field is too small for serious business. Maybe test out feeding to pigs)
Field 2 (The bigger field north on same plot):
Year 1: Barley/Oats
Year 2: Canola
Current year: Soybeans (Fits crop rotation. Cash crop/pig food)
Field 3 (East of field 2):
Year 1: Fallow
Year 2: Fallow
Current year: Barley (Pig/chicken food?)
Field 4 (South of field 3, east of lake):
Year 1: Fallow
Year 2: Fallow
Current year: Canola (Limited what crops we can grow. Start somewhere else in crop rotation than other fields for flexibility)
Field 5 (West of farm):
Year 1: Fallow
Year 2: Fallow
Current year: Oats (Horse food. Hopefully enough for 3 years at this field size so it can grow oats every 3 years)
Field 6 (Large field out west):
Year 1: Fallow
Year 2: Fallow
Current year: Soybeans (low yield cash crop due to small equipment)
Oh.. And waiting for oilseed to grow, the soil temperature is now at 9 degrees which should be plenty, and no frost should come before harvest. Crop moisture fro the oilseed is 20% but soil moisture is only 8% so I guess that means it's dryer than it should be, and no rain in sight for the rest of spring sadly, so we'll just have to seed and hope.
Takes time to seed all these fields.. Have completed seeding fields 1-5 by the middle of May, so we can likely finish seeding the last big field while it's still May too.. Still sticking with Soybeans though, as we want a low yield crop there.
Grabbed the weeder to weed some of the newly planted fields for weed showing up while still seeding, but after I checked state I found that I had grabbed the old cultivator instead Grmpf.. Well.. At least early enough to resow those parts..
The new modern cow barn is finally complete enough to move the cows over. That's something else than the other old buildings on this farm.. The cows will have plenty of space here, and if the winter gets cold, they have much better protection. Should be simpler to feed and care for the animals too. Mom is teasing us though. Our farmhouse is a rotten old log cabin so now the cows will live much better than we do. I guess we need to upgrade our house at some point, so at least the kitchen is a bit more modernized. Ira is not a big fan of the outhouse either, but there's no sewer system to connect to out here.
We picked a design at the firm we got to built it, so we need to familiarize ourselves with everything about the new barn. I see there's a belt system to get manure into the manure pit, but can we use it to load manure onto trailers too I wonder?
The barn looks neat. Can even raise the sidewalls to open up the barn. The family has also helped out, and as we're finally building something decent we've gone all out and bought red paint to protect the wood so it can withstand the weather for many years to come.
This is of course the modern cowbarn from MW Placeable HOF USA mod. With a small dds change to not scream MW FARMS through the entire valley. I've used the other barn in this mod before and it was excellent, so now I'm testing out this one.
We did a gross miscalculation when ordering lime, seed and fertilizer though. Firstly we forgot to order herbicide, which we need to correct. Secondly, with a full big truckload of lime, and half a load with seed and fertilizer, we thought we would have plenty for a couple of years, but we're not through spring yet, and we're already as good as empty.
There's not enough seed left to finish seeding field 6. The fertilizer has run out, and we have only fertilized field 1-4 after seeding them. (Though as field 5 and 6 had some initial spotty fertilization levels here and there, it might not be worth it to fertilize the spots left missing third step)
We have plenty of lime at least. Field 1,2,5 & 6 are limed. But strangely field 3 and 4 won't take the lime I'm offering. We've tested before the oilseed got above ground, after we seeded what we wanted to grow there, and after we fertilized the final step, but at neither step did the soil want to include the lime. I guess we'll just have to keep trying later. What restrictions are there as to when one has to apply lime for it to work?
In any case, we need to order more seed to complete seeding this year.
We call up our delivery guys and order 20.000 liters of seed, 20.000 liters of fertilizer and 20.000 liters of herbicide. The prices are still $0.9 per liter of seed, $1.92 per liter of solid fertilizer and $1.2 for each liter of herbicide. They have a dual storage truck they can use, so we manage to get away with paying $2.000 for the transport for the 2 truckloads. That's a total of $82.400.. That's more than half our reserve in the bank..
Quite a few weeds seems to have grown just during planting. Thankfully not further than I've been able to remove with weeder, but it's quite a bit of work, and once the crop starts growing I can't use the weeder I reckon.
Thought I'd try preventing spraying of herbicide to see if that helps. The big field has tons of weed in the oilseed radishes. I don't want that much weed in the real product.
A bit sad that it's not visible where we've sprayed though..
Didn't manage to spray all our fields before night came, but now we have eventually sprayed them all.
Felt good to get the big field sprayed, before the weeds take over. Quite a few weeds appeared while seeding and overnight though, but we caught them all before they got big with the weeder. Now, hopefully we should be as good as weed free this year.
It doesn't seem financial worthy though. Used almost $20.000 in herbicide, and if I did nothing the weeds would probably not cover more than 10% of the field, and 20% less yield in 10% of the field is just 2% less yield overall. To break even, I need to get crops for a million dollars, and I'm pretty sure that isn't going to happen.
It's very nice to look at the overview map without all those weed patches though, but I guess the sensible thing would be to weed with a weeder what you can be bothered for and ignore the rest.
Didn't manage to spray all our fields before night came, but now we have eventually sprayed them all.
Felt good to get the big field sprayed, before the weeds take over. Quite a few weeds appeared while seeding and overnight though, but we caught them all before they got big with the weeder. Now, hopefully we should be as good as weed free this year.
It doesn't seem financial worthy though. Used almost $20.000 in herbicide, and if I did nothing the weeds would probably not cover more than 10% of the field, and 20% less yield in 10% of the field is just 2% less yield overall. To break even, I need to get crops for a million dollars, and I'm pretty sure that isn't going to happen.
It's very nice to look at the overview map without all those weed patches though, but I guess the sensible thing would be to weed with a weeder what you can be bothered for and ignore the rest.
If only the 40 series was out before you bought that JD
Dairy farmer, college student, part-time modder, always looking to drive a tractor
What's the deal with the new 40 series? The one I found looks decent to me at least. I like the sound of it. Not as dandy inside as I might have expected from a JD, but this one isn't new either.
May is half done, and our barley, oats and canola have germinated. Soybeans and corn have not germinated yet, but it's not until now that soil temperature has reached ten degrees. It was nine yesterday. So hopefully they'll germinate before June sets in.
We see that there's a small patch where germination failed on our barley field. We thought we could attempt a reseed there, but direct drill seeder doesn't want to replant the patch with failure. It's not big, but I figured as it is still early, we should have time to retry the process on the patch.
We're not able to see the crop coming out in first growth stage it seems, but we should have transitioned eonugh for the soil to take on some lime at least. Gonna lime last two fields. (Fields 3 & 4)
After liming the two remaining fields, the spot where germination failed is clearly visible
We grabbed a plow and the new weight and plowed the plot and resowed. That worked. Though it was hard to not take a bit extra with the plow, and even a bit more with the seeder, which didn't detect not to seed where crop has already germinated, as it does for crop already planted.
Here's the weight we created too. Had some traction issues here and there, so thought we should throw together a weight we could use.
Summer has come, and the corn and soybeans have also germinated, and currently, the crop looks close to perfect. We have done the final fertilization step in spots to not cover too much of the crop that was already fully fertilized. So we've left some spots with only one or two fertilization levels, but overall, at least 90% is fully fertilized.
It's summer and the grass is fully grown in the valley. We have covered almost all our land in fields though, so not much areas to mow. The steeper part of the land north of the big field contains some grass, and there's a bit south of the main farm, but not a lot. I guess we can mow it and see how much is there though. Not that much else to do right now.
We still got more than 500.000 liters of hay and more than 100.000 liters of silage left from previous efforts though, so no rush to get more with our current set of animals. We can likely add quite a bit more new cows without getting silage/hay shortage until we can mow next year.
We currently have $104.908 in the bank, and a bit above 8k liters of milk that adds a bit to that. I guess for the plan forwards, we should try to figure out what to use that money for.
If we add more cows, so we use up hay/silage faster, we'll need a bigger area to grow grass, and buying a meadow sounds like the simplest solution. But that's $85k. We can always turn one of our fields into a grass field though, so we have a backup plan there.
Seeding the new big field with the new seeder took quite a while with 3m working width though, and harvesting it with the Bizon will likely be a lot of work too. We'll see. But as we're starting to get quite a few hectares to work, we likely want to get bigger equipment at some point.
That also goes for the cows. As we start to get a lot of milk, a milk trailer carrying more than 2.000 liters at a time would be useful.
Do we dare to use our current money to invest in more cows, or do we want to save it until harvest to see how much work harvest is? I guess the safest option is to wait until after harvest by using our savings, to see where they're mostly needed..
humbe wrote: ↑Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:01 pmWhat's the deal with the new 40 series? The one I found looks decent to me at least. I like the sound of it. Not as dandy inside as I might have expected from a JD, but this one isn't new either.
I really like it, it's a very solid mod, and it has a US config!!! (TYVM BSM)
Dairy farmer, college student, part-time modder, always looking to drive a tractor
humbe wrote: ↑Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:01 pmWhat's the deal with the new 40 series? The one I found looks decent to me at least. I like the sound of it. Not as dandy inside as I might have expected from a JD, but this one isn't new either.
I really like it, it's a very solid mod, and it has a US config!!! (TYVM BSM)
US config is without lights in front. No wonder they had to create an EU config ;D .. Took a quick look. Looks cleaner and better inside.. More realistic prices. A few HP less in max hp config, which I'm assuming is realistic, and no option with PTO in front (that's visible at least). Not sure what sounds are more true to the real version, but I actually prefer the sound of the one I already had. Gonna keep that one around for now in this game, but looks like a solid mod.
Took a pass at mowing grass around the farmyard to see how much grass we could cut there in an emergency. Got around 49000 liters from it, and could have gotten some more if I went through every corner, but won't do that.. Taking the mower up north of the big field too, to check what's there.. I guess we could sow some grass in the part of the forest that is chopped down there too
Grmpf.. Well.. At least early enough to resow those parts..
