Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

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humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Took a break to make use of my hoe ;)..

Driving back, I feel terrible about this new tractor looking so shabby and dirty. About we took some time to clean it up..

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We've always prioritized the necessities, but loaning another five grand to be able to wash our vehicles and tools sounded about time..

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Getting into a clean cab made a world of difference ;)..
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

The sorghum field is pretty big.. At least with our small harvester.. Have gotten quite a bit done, but now the harvester seems close to broke.

No straw from sorghum as we got told. Haven't calculated on yield numbers, but guessing that means it's an expensive alternative for chicken/horse feed compared to barley/oats.

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We see the harvested sorghum parts aren't handled well outside good quality circle. The brown color is a huge contrast to the remaining straw within the good quality circle. There looks to be a different texture up close here, but that is just the effect of looking upon it from a top down angle, so more of the ground is visible through it. The unharvested sorghum parts looks pretty nice though. The color outside the good quality circle matches the crop fairly well, so it's easy to not notice. Driving within the cab kinda solves the issue, at least in these flat terrains, as you then don't really see much at all between the trees in the distance and the crop that is within the good quality circle.

And that's that.. A bit above 50% of the field done, and the harvester is totally broke... It won't move forwards while the head is running. Backwards work though but can't harvest backwards. I seem to be able to get crops into the harvester by continuosly switching it on and off to get a bit of momentum to move forwards, but not exactly a working solution...

I call up gramps and wonder what to do. We're already loaning more than half a million pounds. Now doesn't seem an excellent time to buy a harvester. I guess we either need to find a mechanic that can fix it, or we'll have to lease a harvester for now.. Well.. With few options, I guess we'll just have to sell it and lease one for the remainder of the field.. A bit disappointed in the mod, as I can't repair it.. Otherwise it has been working well though. As I can't even repair it I can't even sell it with the +20% price, or the increase in price for repairing and repainting it first..

All in all, I'm getting £2.985 for the harvester and £594 for the header. Doesn't even cover the lease cost ;) We lease the Rostselmash Nova 330. It's not that much bigger than the Bizon, but a modern harvester, and a fairly cheap option for leasing. We coulda leased a New Holland TX32 a bit cheaper, but it only has a 4m header, opposed to the 4.2m of the Bizon and 5m of the Nova 330. The TX32 does have good storage for grain at 5600 liters though. Even more than the Nova 330.

One great upgrade for the Nova 330 is the pipe extending quite a bit up, so no longer in danger of hitting the pipe if we don't drive perfectly to the end of it.. The grain tank isn't big though. Would be nice if we were able to find a harvester with a bigger tank for next year..

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This means, a priority for next year is to get a harvester, as we don't currently own one anymore. Hopefully we can find a used sale sometime during the year. We've seen the John Deere T560 for sale used twice, and that would fit us great I think.
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

We got 108002 liters of sorghum from it. Some data seems to indicate field is 8.085 hectares, but not entirely sure that is a correct measurement. Doesn't really seems to fit my yield expectations. Guess I should make a proper recording of field size for the next field work there.
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

8.085 was indeed a correct measurement. We expected sorghum to have base yield of 8200 liters/hectares, but I'm pretty sure we had limed/plowed/weeded/rolled and had two fert steps, so should have had a ~97.5% yield gain in total, with a few exceptions around the border of the field where a few dots needed plowing.. But that don't fit well with the 108002 liters we got, being 13358 liters per hectares after yield bonus. If the bonus indeed was 97.5 that means the base yield should be around 6764 liters/hectares..
paul_c
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by paul_c »

My figures for Sorghum yields are:

15111l/Ha (65% yield bonus)
16000l/Ha (98% yield bonus) (from Elmcreek, accurate field areas)

That's with the guess of the area of field 23 as 4Ha.

ETA field 3 is 8.03Ha (from contract jobs).
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

We planted barley on the new field in September. Now it's October, and we're weeding..

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Weeds seems to be another transition that could be handled better. Not so bad on the field here, where it's at least green and green, but at the distance there it looks like we've completed but we haven't. Worse at neighbor here, where there's weed on a field with nothing on it, so it's brown in the distance and flower guarden within the circle.

This hoe is working out great. Soon done weeding field. Then the last grass harvest of the year is upon us. Then we can wait for winter until we can start selling our produce and reduce the loan.
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Weeding done.. 3rd grass harvest done.. Made hay, as supply was getting short (though there's lots in the troughs).

November is here, and we're checking the papers. This looks interesting:

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We could really use a bigger trailer.. This one has more than twice the space of the one we have, and in addition it is possible to reconfigure to use as a manure spreader if we want. Our loan is huge, but £30.000 won't budge it a lot more, and we'll soon be able to repay some of it. With a big trailer, we just lack a decent harvester to be able to be fairly efficient for arable farming.

In December we decided to sell our Canola. Our new trailer could fit 45.000 liters in one go. That leaves only 936 liters in our silo. Lets just hang onto that last bit instead of bothering an extra trip just for those. The new tractor was down to 3 kph going uphill with that big load, but we got up at least. Thankfully still no winter conditions. That's £98.830 income ;D. About time we got some. Got more to sell once January come.

In January we start selling our bales for a massive £217.250. Winter has come and there's snow, but we managed to get up the hill to Cotswold Stores anyhow. Finally we got some milk for the milk truck, so we asked him to stop on his next run..

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I was hoping to model milk selling by a milk truck coming buy, so used a mod for a nice looking trailer. But doesn't seem like the trailer mod works with the filling point :/.. Seems milk/water triggers in FS22 are sensitive to what they wanna fill. Do the milk/water triggers have to have special code per trailer? Grmpf.. Had to switch out trailer with default game one.

A bit over 20.000 liters of milk and another £48363 income. Then we figured we could sell a couple of loads of Sorghum. Useful as feed, but we can grow more feed, and we have a big loan now. 90.000 liters gave us £168442.

Woah.. That's a massively good winter. Just £65000 left of our loan. And once we sell the wool in spring, we're probably rid of it..
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Finally, in April, we sell the massive amount of wool.. Can't believe how much we get from these sheep...

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A massive £242258 for the wool, putting us £178400 in plus after paying back our loan. Income sure is through the roof on easy economy ;)

Spring is here again. And time for grass harvest yet again..
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

After spring grass cutting in April we got another 31 150 cm silage bales.

Hmm.. Been out for a while.. What was the state here again? :).. Wonder what addons and updates have come since last time..
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Spring, summer and autumn flew by with 3 grass harvests, harvest and seeding.

Now in October, we have a decent rack of products lined up for sale.
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Of the 3 grass harvests we've made hay of one, to use as food for our 30 cows and 200 sheep. The other two we have made silage of, lined up waiting to be sold. Next to it, quite a bit of wool, with more incoming before prices hit the top..

We have sadly not seen any harvesters on sale lately, but we really needed one.. Should we lease one for this year, and look for more sales the upcoming year? Or should we buy one? Even found a Fahr M66 on the market that woulda been a really cheap and economic choice.

The Rostselmash Nova 330 seems like a fairly economic alternative.. Above that the Deutz Fahr Topliner 4090 HTS also looks like a great choice with a 6m header and a lot more grain storage than the Nova. The New Holland CH7.70 and T560 seems like fairly small technical upgrades on the Topliner, but for twice the price.

If the economy woulda been harsh, I would feel compelled to go for a cheap one, and at absolute max the Topliner, but as the economy have been so good lately, we end up tempted into buying the John Deere T560. Pretty much the biggest harvester that seems practical to get around Calmsden. (With a header trailer still possible to reverse)

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We harvested canola and barley.. And with barley, we bought the little chicken pen and got us 30 chicks and a rooster, in hopes of getting some eggs eventually. Ended up seeding canola on both our fields, which now seems to be growing well..

With the pricey harvester we had to take up some loan, but when spring comes and we have sold our produce, I think we'll be out of depth again. Some more land would be good to save up for.
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DEERE317
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by DEERE317 »

For loan stuff I’d check out the Community Trader, they have some pretty good rates compared to the basegame.
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FS Comunity Trader: https://fs19communitytrader.freeforums.net/
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Deere, Fendt, Claas, and sometimes the rest of Agco.
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

DEERE317 wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 6:34 pm For loan stuff I’d check out the Community Trader, they have some pretty good rates compared to the basegame.
Interesting concept.. Might look into that when I start a game on harder economic difficulty. Currently, I play on easy to test bits. :)

And of course.. The month after I buy the harvester new, there's one for sale that would have saved me a lot of money. Actually could still save a little bit selling my new one and buying the used one (And considerably money over time due to how repair costs work). But I let it go.. Poor timing :/..

After selling my canola and barley, my short-term depth is paid back, and we got almost 50k on our account. I noticed an add for someone selling a used McCormick that looks like a good deal. I've been thinking about scaling my grass operation up a bit, and it would be nice to have a second tractor able to pull the baler, so we could create a work train and mow, windrow & bale all in one go. For just 102k this sounds like a bargain, so we take up a small loan and get it..

A bit later when we are trying to get a hold of the milkman to sell our milk, his truck is broken. We'd really like to sell while the price is high, so we borrow the milkman's trailer and do it ourselves..

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We failed to find the milkmans truck that we stored away with farmid 0, to roleplay a milkman, but after buying a new trailer and selling the milk we located it again. So I hacked the savegame to undo the trailer buying. ;)

January has come and go, and no snow have been seen, so driving up the steep hill to sell bales wasn't an issue. Now we've sold all but our wool, and we're 231.829 € up ;).. And we have quite a bit of wool.. I also see that our slurry storage is full. 100.000 liters of slurry produced by the cows. Should we get a slurry spreader to try and fertilize our fields cheaper? Or should we just get a tank and sell it? I notice this in the used equipment adds, and figure I might buy it for when I can afford a slurry tank.
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The Veenhuis Premium Integral 30000 seems like a fitting tank, but new at 161.000 is a bit more than I'd like to pay now.. The slurry ain't worth much, so for now I think I'll just buy the cheap spreader unit for sale, and check if I find a tank later..
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

And after selling wool, the income this winter is through the roof.
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372.520 in wool income from 200 sheep, fed with hay from their own pen. Haven't tracked expenses in detail, but they should be fairly low compared to that sum. Easy economy setting. My biggest expense is typically repairing the tractor after having idled at home while still sitting inside it.

201.362 for selling excess bales from sheep/cow pens as silage.. 53.503 in milk with only 40 cows where most was bought fairly recently.. (Though I don't remember last time I sold milk.) And harvest income from sorghum and barley for 174.786. I think I sold the canola in November, so that is in addition.

April again, and it looks like it's time for the first grass harvest. And with € 562.917 in the bank, it sounds like a good time to invest in some more land.
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

With the new tractor, we can mow a bit more time efficient. I got gramps and a neighborhood kid to help me, and doing it together felt like much less work.

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Tested out follow me with the new tractor, and that just worked awesome. The follow me AI managed to perfectly stop to drop bales and continue on without driving over patches of grass to come back for.. That removed the most annoying part of doing it manually. With another small tractor I could collect the bales in the same go too, but getting the bales afterwards isn't a big deal.

Still a bit annoying that the grass fields are relatively small and I feel I should mow close to the fences. Getting a big grass field might be more doable now..
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

We did end up buying grass fields.. Field 7 and 10 we could afford.. On top of that, we found a Zetor for sale, so we bought a Zetor Forterra HSX 120. At around €40.000 it was a cheap option to get a half decent tractor with a cab with 117 hp.. We'll use it to pull the windrower in our mow train, so the old International can go last and pickup the bales. That leaves only rolling the field out of the mowtrain.

Trying to mow the new fields before April has passed, we had to work some late shifts..

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After mowing all our 4 grass fields now (new 2 and sheep and cow pens), we have ~105 silage bales. With 3 grass harvests, a quick calculation shows our yearly grass income could get close to a million euros, paying back the land cost in a single season. Lets see if we calculate that correctly..
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