Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

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

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by paul_c »

I remember back in Germany, leasing a spud harvester to do 2 medium sized fields. In the end, I ditched the job because the lease was costing more than the value of the spuds....and that was unloading them at a railway silo (for storage and later selling probably to the railway town), so no need to double handle them.

It will be interesting if you do the sums and can make it work!

With a combine harvester, the smallest one has the best £/(working width x speed), so long as it doesn't make your harvesting day 25+ hours long, it was possible to make money off that, but the lease was about 25% of the value of the resulting grain crop even then.
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Pretty sure I would lose money on the potatoes if on hard difficulty. But lets see how normal or easy will be

This plow of ours isn't much to praise.. Think we're just going to buy a slightly bigger modern one. Getting £151 for the piece of junk after a £24 repaint job. The Pöttinger Servo 25 isn't much bigger at 1.2m working width but hopefully works a bit better. At least it has a 3rd blade.

The mod plow I found looked the part, but it didn't have correct collision detection and could disappear inside things..

I'll try to put in an effort to get this field plowed and seeded now in September. Then it'll definitively be 3 more years before I plow this field again ;).. Will need some kind of cultivator for next years seeding. Possibly a disc harrow to avoid stones. A direct drill would be awesome, but likely it'll take some time before we can afford one.
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Shoulda taken a picture of the new plow and the seeder in action, but forgot.. The new plow is a massive 1.2m working width.. Up from 1.1m of the old one.. So still a massive effort to get the field plowed. Also.. Not sure if it's the small tractor or not, but we're thrown left and right while plowing. Not a comfortable experience. Then we seeded, with the Kongskilde seeder, and the seeder felt so excellent at 3m working width after having worked a ton with that plow. Now we're using the old rusty roller we found up on the farmyard. Works decent enough, but a bit impractical to move between farmyard and the field.

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I roleplay that I'm doing all the work as the farmer, but I use the AI helper a bit to cut down the playing time of driving. I drive some myself, and then I use the AI helper if I tire. But neither old nor new plow worked well with AI helpers. The old one stopped all the time. The new one stopped at every other turning point. The seeder worked with the AI helper, but the roller here it won't do squat with.. So I've been doing a lot of manual driving here ;).. I'm using a modified AICost addon to make the AI helper free. If my operation gets bigger and I start using actual helpers that do stuff while I'm elsewhere, I'll modify it so they get a decent (but not ridiculously overprice) wage.

Oh.. And I think there's twice as many angles on the field compared to FS19.. Though still 22.5% degrees between them I think, so not exactly a smooth change. On top of the field here, I'm moving in the middle of two angles, so slight variations in direction switches angle, so I get a jigsaw pattern up there then driving. Would be nice if they have doubled the number of angles yet another 2x or 4x, but I guess it eats up resources many people need for other stuff..
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

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Finally done with field work for September. Huge field harvested, plowed, seeded, rolled and fertilized. Just have to wait until a bit later to fertilize it again and we can let it be until harvest I expect. Seems no weeds grow around here if the land is plowed, and only two fertilization applications are needed nowadays.

Fulfilling to look at the clean brown field with no stones in it..
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Grr..

After plowing I drove the Massey to the shop and repaired it.. But seems I have done something wrong.. Afterwards I can't get out of reverse. I can't drive forwards!!! Not even after killing the game and reloading it

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I had to call a real mechanic to look over the vehicle. When I got it back, I could finally switch between forwards and reverse again.. Wonder what wrong I coulda done.. A reset did the trick

The guy wasn't kidding when he said he needed to pick up the tractor and take it to his shop, but he wouldn't take on anything attached to it. How did he manage to get the tractor out without moving plow or front loader? Or did he move them back like this to pull my chain?

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He apparently needed to empty half the fuel tank to fix it though, so we lost some fuel. Suspicious.
paul_c
Posts: 414
Joined: Thu Nov 25, 2021 4:13 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by paul_c »

Good to see you've planted something! All I've planted of my own so far, are 20 trees....
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

paul_c wrote: Tue Jan 25, 2022 7:52 pm Good to see you've planted something! All I've planted of my own so far, are 20 trees....
Well.. You're working your ass off elsewhere I see ;D...

October here now, and we've applied the 2nd fertilization layer on the field. Not 100% coverage though. After first growth stage we no longer see on the field where we have applied it or not, and we didn't go for enough overlap to cover everything. Should have covered more than 95% though.

Sheeps are fed and we have plenty of hay stored. We've got 902 liters of wool so far.. Going to horde it until spring time when I hear prices for wool should be decent. Potatoes should sell in winter though, so looking forward to get some income. Currently we've got a £55.000 loan.. And just before taking the rest of October off, we notice a sales add in the paper.

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Can I let that pass? That's a darn cheap drill. Granted, I don't have a tractor able to operate it, but I'm tired of plowing day in and day out to get through that field. If we're to keep that field and work it we need a decent tractor. The ones I've got are nice for easy jobs and small jobs, but I need some more horsepowers for bigger jobs..

Granted, this seeder is well used, but that's also why we can get it for a quarter of the regular price. If we manage to find a used tractor before we need to seed again next autumn we might still have a sizable loan, but at least we should have better equipment going forwards. I think I'll just have to take up another 30k loan..
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Sweet...

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Now we've got a £85.000 loan, but we need no cultivator anymore. A disc harrow would have cost us at least £19.500 it seems. (We want to avoid regular cultivators as we have nothing to deal with bigger stones yet)

Also, with this direct drill, we can fertilize with oilseed radish easy if we want to.

The shop owner raised an eyebrow when he saw what tractor we came to pickup that big piece of machinery with though ;)
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

It's November, and the grass is fully grown again. Better mow it down before winter comes. We should have plenty grass to keep us until summer and another grass harvest though, so what should we do with all of it? Maybe just sell it? In which case, I was thinking, maybe we could just collect it in a forage wagon instead of handling all the small bales..

We take another spin with our mower. Sadly found out it is incompatible with workers. They just fold it up immediately and don't care to unfold it. So we have to mow every single inch ourselves

Hay sells for more than grass, and we have a nice tedder, so we ted the grass.. And all that is left is picking it up.. Well.. I guess some windrowing might be good, but looks like the forage wagon has a decent pickup width and we have a very small windrower so not sure..

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But but but.. It's not working.. Turns out the forage header can only pick up grass but not hay.. What is this? It can only pick up wet grass? What am I not getting?

Looks like all forage harvester headers only pick up grass.. Why is that? Looked in the mod to see if there was something in the XML of what it could pick up but haven't found anything. As all other harvester headers only say grass too, I guess it might be a forage harvester thing and not necessarily something I can fix in the mod easy. Grrr..
paul_c
Posts: 414
Joined: Thu Nov 25, 2021 4:13 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by paul_c »

In days gone by, a farmer would deal with loose hay but nowadays its never really seen. Loose silage, to go into a silage pit - yes. But hay is always baled, it seems. I think its more to do with the end use of hay. Hay has a lower energy content per DM than silage (or grass, or a lot of things) so its not really suitable for feeding cows. Sheep, maybe. Or as part of a diet with other things too. But then we're into a more complex set up than simply making silage (which adds 1 additional step of wrapping bales, for small quantities). So I can understand why Giants would impose a limitation that a forage harvester just never would pick it up, and that it channels you towards, if its "dried grass" (shaded lighter than (wet) grass) it can only be baled, then its "hay".

In-game, silage is worth so much more than hay, so its kinda logical to just go for silage, even if you don't have animals to feed. But then you need a wrapper. I spent a LOT of my original £300k on a baler+wrapper (£99,500) which was a step up from the small baler and also did 150cm rounds, to save a pass, ease manual handling and maximise grassland (there is quite a lot of it in Calmsden). Its not been a particularly wise investment YET....but I'm hoping!

I think if I were to try economise on it, I'd have gone for the basic round baler (£48,000) and rented a wrapper as & when (since its basically unaffordable...) but there is also the Claas Rollant 455RC Uniwrap which is a bit more affordable at £78,500, but it only does 125cm rounds. If you can't physically lift 150cm bales it would be a good choice.
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Just really wanted this sweet setup to work.. But I guess I might bale this, and create a small silage pit for the next grass harvest. Oh.. Silage prices are of the chart compared to grass/hay, yeah..

Creating hay for sheep, and possibly later for cows. Not planning to make the operation big enough to do it just to sell silage, but we'll see what happens. Grass operations are hard to automate field work for, so I don't want to make them too big.

I'm not a real farmer, so dunno how stuff actually work, but for bigger grass operations in FS19, I've preferred the square baler so I could keep on driving instead of stopping each time it's full. And then a separate wrapper and that fliegl base game trailer with animated autoload. Those round balers that also wrap looks sweet, but I can't make myself to make 3998 l bales or leave grass on the field, so it takes time to handle when it's full ;)
paul_c
Posts: 414
Joined: Thu Nov 25, 2021 4:13 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by paul_c »

The beauty of FS22 is that you can just leave the part-bale in the machine and it doesn't rot. So you don't "lose" it, its just delayed until the next harvest. Unless you use the same baler for grass and straw, of course...
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Tried another way, stacking bales on trailer instead of just throwing them onboard. Took more time to get them on.. But at least we could fit more on there.. If only we had a way to tip these off without messing with the stacking.

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I guess we have to move the water trailer somewhere else, so we can stack bales on other side of shed too. Lets see if we can create a slightly neater stack than the last one.

Tempted to reload the game here to see if my bales are still stacked ok on the trailer. In FS19, I would expect them to be thrown all over on load ;)
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

The baling police came to checkup on my stacking.. Some even walked up on my trailer..

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Driving into the shed to try and tip the bales of, I forgot this is the autoload version, so I pressed I, and all the bales just appeared fairly neatly stacked on the side of the trailer. I guess it just moved everything of to the side and let it fall to the floor, and then it shuffled a but, but not too much.. (It doesn't support autoloading bales though as far as I could see) There was no way to stack more in neatly that way.. The stacked pile eventually collapsed, after I possibly bumped it with another bale later. When dealing with so many bales, it's easy to trigger some bad collision behavior, and the bales come alive and juggles around and destroys the stacks. Happened once while I was stacking on the trailer too.

So in the end, it didn't matter how neatly I tried to stack on trailer and in the shed, eventually it ended up a mess.. Gramps was not impressed ;)

Well.. We have hay for a long time coming now I think. All next years grass harvest can be made silage if we find a pit or bale wrapper to use.

Once this grass operation is done, we can take a break, only feeding the sheep until mid-winter when we will sell our potatoes.. Looking forward to a paycheck..
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

December has come.. We've seen snow at nights, but nothing have stuck to daytime yet. Checking todays paper, we see an interesting add..

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A conveyor belt would be awesome for getting potatoes off ground, and this one looks cheap. We've got some experience with the Grimme SL 80-22 Quantum, which looks far superior. First of all we can tow it from the shop. Secondly it locks together with the Lizard S-710 pickup I believe.. But it's far more expensive and we're already broke..

Together with the Meridian belt, we'd need that S-710 pickup but it's not terribly expensive.
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