Calmsden Farm Adventure

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paul_c
Posts: 414
Joined: Thu Nov 25, 2021 4:13 pm

Re: Calmsden Farm Adventure

Post by paul_c »

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No contracts so far but I have a bunch of my own silaging today.

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The new shed is proving useful.

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The silage storage is basically full. The bits in between are needed to feed the various animals and collect eggs etc.

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Another area to clear and develop.

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Tree clearance.

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A new purchase.

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Buying sheep at 11pm, best time to buy!

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The new sheep don't look too healthy.

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Strangely, no contracts generated in July at all. I guess, its too early (or too late) for sowing/spraying and there's nothing needs harvesting. Fortunately, 2x OSR contracts come up in August. They have supplied this completely oversized and inappropriate truck for Calmsden though!

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First job is field 20, fortunately it doesn't have a gate, but open access from the side of a track, so this will fit. Connecting up the header trailer is a pain in a combine (no birds eye view) but its worth it because its the opposite side of the map and the truck can't help with the towing.
paul_c
Posts: 414
Joined: Thu Nov 25, 2021 4:13 pm

Re: Calmsden Farm Adventure

Post by paul_c »

The updates haven't been as frequent. Partly because I'm now settled into a fairly neutral routine on the farm; and partly because I've been playing less. I'll still keep plugging away, just not so often, and bring notable highlights.

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Contract job - the rear window helps - a lot - on Calmsden.

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Gathering for the 2nd field to be harvested (OSR).

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Harvesting. I think the header is 12m?

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Jacki helped for a while, and I drove the truck. It kinda worked out.

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A little rain shower so I switched to ploughing my own field.

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Then disaster. During cutting this down, an, "object", popped up. I wasted a lot of time trying to deal with it, even so much so I switched time to 0.5x but nothing could shift it (and its still there). I guess I'll have to live with this bug.

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I even tried this tree cutter thing, wasting about £20k on its hire - nope, no cutting down of the thing.

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Never mind.....more contract spraying, to try make up the shortfall.

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Sowing oilseed radish in my own field.

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Some late night contract work.

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And on to September....more silaging.

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A new present - a bigger drill which also fertilizes. I can't get it to work properly though, might leave it until October.

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The new shed/area is proving useful. I hardly need to pop into the old farmyard now.

So...the yearly calendar is now quite settled. I'm doing 3 cuts of silage instead of 4 for 25% less work and only a small drop off in yield, which is more than made up by being able to work more grassland (now I can afford it). The silaging takes about 5-6 hours. The year looks like this:

Mar: silage fields #1 1st cut
Apr: silage fields #2 1st cut
May: other work inc contracts
Jun: silage fields #1 2nd cut
Jul: silage fields #2 2nd cut
Aug: other work inc contracts
Sep: silage fields #1 3rd cut
Oct: silage fields '#2 3rd cut
Nov: other/forestry
Dec: forestry
Jan: transporting & selling
Feb: catch up jobs

With an estimated >650 bales of silage to shift in January, I'll have to make ~27 trips, so its now an all day job. And I've planted about 140 trees and more to come, so next winter or the year after's forestry will go up a gear too. Also the sheep and chickens are ticking along - there is some VERY weird data in keeping sheep in FS22, so its still in the data gathering phase.

For example in FS22, the sheep stocking density (land required to produce the grass to feed them) is about 400 sheep/Ha. In real life this is ~24 sheep/Ha so the figures are severely unbalanced, it might be due to the 1 day/month thing though. But it means I could in theory support >6000 sheep, although I think the wool pallets would drive me crazy. Also, the price of wool in FS22 and the fact that its profitable at all, is incredibly misleading. I've been focusing my data on lamb production, eg best time to sell lambs etc and ignoring wool so far. I'll need to keep going long term to properly gather the data on sheep - I did a thorough internet search, the info isn't out there so its worth a post elsewhere once complete.
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Spunky_Dogg
Posts: 249
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2020 11:55 pm
Location: Illinois

Re: Calmsden Farm Adventure

Post by Spunky_Dogg »

I am enjoying the detail in these updates. You're making me a little jealous, Paul!
See you up the road!

- Spunky Dogg Logging
paul_c
Posts: 414
Joined: Thu Nov 25, 2021 4:13 pm

Re: Calmsden Farm Adventure

Post by paul_c »

Just to let you guys know, I have now concluded my "Calmsden Farm Adventure". Basically:

* In FS22, silaging is profitable even on hard settings - because there's 3-4 cuts/year, the equipment is affordable and it doesn't need sowing/ploughing etc each year. Also helpful on Calmsden Farms, a lot of the land is in grass already.
* Traditional arable farming seems very marginal - BASED ON THE AMOUNT OF LAND I AM CURRENTLY FARMING. I dare say, if it emulated real life and I had 15-20 fields, instead of just the one, it would work out better but then I'd have to set 28 days/month and it would be pretty much real-time playing and take for ever (well, not literally for ever). Also I'd need to find about £15 million for the land. This is what farming is actually like in real life, guys like Jezza Clarkson can afford to go buy a farm but the average Joe rents land (tenant farming) and is still running a fair sized business, or inherits it. Or is just a "worker" for some rich landowner (AKA contracts in FS22).
* Keeping animals enhances profits a lot. But sheep feeding seems way out of whack. And there's wacky stuff involving breeding (like....all year round; and they get pregnant by miraculous conception - so you can't keep 100 sheep in a 200-sized pen, without little ones appearing). "Animals" in FS22 are so distorted that you really need to run tests or do internet Googling rather than using some common sense starting out.
* Tractors and other equipment on Calmsden Farm, aren't that expensive, because the land and contract work prices are (expensive).
* Forestry....I didn't get properly into it but its EITHER labour intensive OR you rent/buy a £0.5m machine.
* Artics don't really fit in sleepy little English villages. At some point, the size limitation on equipment and trailers will be (ignoring actual legal limits as they apply in UK) will be a little smaller than an artic truck size, and towed by a tractor not a semi.
ice_boii_1207
Posts: 346
Joined: Wed Nov 09, 2022 7:28 am
Location: Somewhere on earth

Re: Calmsden Farm Adventure

Post by ice_boii_1207 »

paul_c wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 2:38 am

The backstory is, my uncle used to own and run the farm, but in 2021 he bought his first ever smartphone after visiting a strange other-worldly place called "a town", then discovered online dating and is currently living in Barbados with his new 27-year old girlfriend. So, he gave me the farm to work.....I say "gave", he gave me £300k and a £200k loan which he wanted back. He did a bunch of weird land deals and sold most of the farm to the locals, who fortunately don't know one end of a tractor from another but they know my phone

At first i thought you ment irl😂 :lol:
Ice_boii :gamer:
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