Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

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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 »

ImageWe borrowed yet another ten grand.. £95.000 loan at the moment. Really hoping for a good pay day soon..

The Meridian belt we asked the shop to deliver to us. It has an onboard engine able to travel at 5 kph, intended to maneuver it around the farmyard as it is heavy to push, but using this engine to move it from shop to our yard would be tedious and we don't own a lorry useful to carry it here, nor the equipment to load it on or off. Store Deliveries addon At +2.5% of the cost, it wasn't expensive for this cheap belt at least. We also bought the Lizard pickup, which has a trailer hitch so we could pull it on our tractor.. The shop sure looked busy today.. Looks like it may soon start pouring though.

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With both belt bits on the farm, we tested loading a trailer full of potatoes. This worked out pretty much as expected. Not a big fan of the meridian belt though. It is very hard to maneuver with its onboard engine if not on flat ground, but it works out and a ton easier than shoveling potatoes of the ground. Another thing is that the Meridian doesn't connect to the pickup, so we have to move both bits separately when moving the pickup to get the next potatoes.

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Also looked a bit like potatoes where disappearing, but the Meridian actually stores up to 5000 liters of potatoes on the belt, so the first 5000 liter picked up prior to us driving a trailer underneath it seems to just disappear into nothingness. And no indication of how much potatoes are on it. The pickup shows potatoes on the belt, so you see there's potatoes there, and it's a much smaller amount.

Prices of potatoes are soaring, but expecting to still go up to January, so just feeding sheep while we wait for a price top.

At 120 of 200 max capacity sheep, and 1 day per month, we actually have to fill water and food twice a day, otherwise it runs empty. I guess this would be "fixed" by having multiple days per month as the feed usage then is probably split between the days, but as long as we're aware it's no big issue. It's a bit annoying that we cannot decide to sleep to 20:00 or something to skip to the evening that way though. Now we just have to speed up time and wait.
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 »

Winter is here.. Wonder how it'll be driving on snow.. Potato prices are high. Currently farmers market buying for £647 / 1000l. (easy difficulty, 388 normal and 215 hard.. Setting easy difficulty to begin with). Guessing prices might go even higher during January at some point, but who's to know.. Price trend on highest price is currently downwards.. Anyhow we'll use some time for all the trips we need, so lets just start to sell...

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humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Driving up to the farmers market, we wonder how the steep hill will be in wintertime. It's troublesome enough to get up it in summer.. And sure enough we get stuck. Wheels spinning and throwing up snow, but no movement forwards.. As we let go of the throttle we're sliding backwards.

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We try to losen a bit on the breaks so we can steer again, and manouver the trailer through the hedge and onto a field. We manage to get onto the field over to the left, and driving over it to the access road there and get up the hill through a much slower inclimb. Lets see if we can plan out a better route for next time.

Have to be a bit careful here. Stopping 18000 liters of potatoes with our little tractor is more than its breaks are designed for I fear.. Gotta plan speed reduction ahead of time..

Great handling in snow so far.. Wonder if there are tire options that make grip differences here.. Haven't seen any tires with tire chains.. That would be a nice option too ;)

Finally there. Unloading our first load of potatoes.

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I very much like the graphics here, but a small comment. The backdrop outside the 2x2 map would be nice to have in a couple of different versions so it could for instance show snow there when there's snow on the map.

£11.659 for the first load of potatoes, hoping to be able to pay back the loan and get a bit of bonus on top after selling it all..
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Driving down alternative road from the farmers market, which we hoped was less steep, we eventually had to cross the river at a ford. A beautiful spot, but it was pretty steep down to the ford too. Eventually we figured the farm store would buy our potatoes for almost the same price, so we figured the road over there was much simpler. We are going to need many runs, so lets sell it there instead..

It's a nice winter morning, so quite enjoyable. Looks nice here in winter..
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The roads are hazardous though. We tried to see if anyone wanted to help us drive a bit, but nobody dared driving around here in winter. AI helpers pretty useless as they can't reverse or get out of any issues when they lose grip.

All in all we did 17 hauls to sell 302.825 liters of potatoes. Thats quite a lot of hauls and a lot of potatoes. After Boris kicked us outta the EU, and we no longer get food imported, people around the country are starving and desperate for potatoes, so potato prices are at a massive ~ £646 per 1000 liters, earning us £195.773. For normal that woulda been £117.403 and for hard £65.055. Thus we've made some money either way, but on hard it would be fairly little.. We haven't calculated exactly expenses for the potatoes, but we got some of it for free as it was already close to harvest when we got the field. But we fertilized once and leased equipment, so something like £48.000 in expenses.

That means our loan is payed back and we're £100.826 positive ;D.. Before autumn we'll need a bigger tractor able to use our new seeder. A hoe would be useful. We could get by with a weeder, but as weed grows fast with a drill, we'd need to weed before they show up above ground, which makes it harder to cover the field. A hoe would be great as we could use it after weeds show up, even if they grow quickly.

Other than that, a bigger trailer for hauling more goods at a time would be great, but at least canola is a low yield crop compared to potatoes, so it'll be far less than 17 hauls anyhow.

Buying up some more land would also be very interesting. We're eyeing the cow barn up here, which seems barely in use nowadays..

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We think we saw a silage pit in that yard, which we could use to earn some money of our extra grass, and milk production could be another good income.
paul_c
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by paul_c »

17 trips in the snow is a busy winter day! I still have about 300,000l of sugar beet but at least I'm in the modern world and could hire a big trailer or an artic for a few hours (~5 trips). The equipment lease cost looks about comparable and if you were on hard economy, would have basically wiped you out.
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

paul_c wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 12:23 am 17 trips in the snow is a busy winter day! I still have about 300,000l of sugar beet but at least I'm in the modern world and could hire a big trailer or an artic for a few hours (~5 trips). The equipment lease cost looks about comparable and if you were on hard economy, would have basically wiped you out.
Yeah.. If we had leased equipment for delivering the potatoes too, we'd probably not have earned a dime on hard difficulty. At least our basic old gear is keeping our costs low, and for our Canola harvest, we'll have an old cheap Bizon to harvest it, so the profit margin should be a lot higher.

March is here. We're just taking it easy and taking care of the sheep. Saw an interesting add for a tractor for sale used.. A Massey Ferguson 3700 AL. It woulda been a great little utility tractor for front load duty, narrows for spraying, and an actual cab that keeps the weather out, ABS breaks to help not locking wheels in the snow and so forth.. But while our tractors are old, they are usable utility tractors, so letting this one slide for now, saving money for something with more horsepowers. Wonder how much wool we'll have to sell once May come and we expect a decent wool price.
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Mai has arrived. April went without fuzz.. Saw an interesting ad for a used square baler, but even at half price, we're saving up for other stuff, so won't put £70.000 into a baler now..

In start of Mai we decide to sell all our wool, which at this time is 11889 liters. This general store bay want our wool, though non-obvious how to get the wool into there..

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£43.546 total for the wool. Nice catch. Actually, just driving through and removing straps, they just teleported away.
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Another used sale that looks interesting. A seed/fertilizer extension to use with our seeder. The seeder has a sizable tank already, so it's not like it's required, but the seeder could use a front weight regardless, so why not a front weight that could add capacity. This is fairly cheap anyhow, so think we'll just buy it..

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Not seen a usable tractor in there yet though.. Would be nice to find one. Could consider buying a new one, but I think we'll leave that as an option for autumn if we don't find a used one by seeding time. However, it looks like grass is fully grown again.. And we'd really like to improve that grass equipment to simplify that operation. And to do that a stronger tractor would definitively be useful.

How can we simplify grass operation best with not such a big investment, or an investment that fits other plans?

What if we buy the cow barn and use the silage pit there? Then we could use our forage wagon to pickup the grass and make silage of it. Earn some money of the silage, and not having to bother with the small baler. We have conveyor belts to get silage loaded up from bunker and could sell it in bulk. Would be nice to improve mower and windrower though. A better windrower would be a good plan, and maybe we could buy part of a better mower setup to at least improve it a bit..

If we buy the cow barn we will use most of our money there, so we might have to borrow money for bank to buy tractor later, but we should be able to get a loan, and we can hopefully also make a sizable downpayment on the loan once we get to sell our harvest in winter again..

Lets try it out and see how it goes..
paul_c
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by paul_c »

Would the silage load using the conveyor belt? Also I predict, many trips back and forth with the trailer transporting grass...
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

paul_c wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 9:47 pm Would the silage load using the conveyor belt? Also I predict, many trips back and forth with the trailer transporting grass...
Haven't tested, but I think the belts can pick up most stuff.. If they don't, I need a better plan than using my 450l bucket. Compressing could get annoying with small tractor too..

Want to invest in a better loading wagon at some point. If the bunker could be driven through I mighta been able to use a loading wagon to load it back up but alas doesn't look like that would work with this one..
paul_c
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by paul_c »

Personally I've never looked at forage wagon picking up grass things, basically because they aren't used around here in real life. Its either bales for small-ish fields and forage harvester + trailer(s) into a silage pit for bigger operations. Interestingly on my first dairy farm the forage harvester was actually a trailed one, where most people these days use a self propelled one. Translating it to FS22, it would inevitably mean using AI helpers, since you'll need 2 driving at a time. I nearly used AI help on the big sugar beet harvest but I worked out that the harvester took ~7 mins and the round trip was ~10 mins so it didn't quite click into place there; also you need to look at the rate of their working. With a small width, its a money loser, as the machinery gets bigger then the working rate starts to make economic sense.

So, for me, for now, the "end point" is to have a decent butterfly mower, a big baler and an autoload trailer. Experience on field 71 of Elmcreek shows that the picking up of the bales becomes the slowest task and thus if you can get that sped up, you can work more land in a day. The mowing and windrowing can be done by AI which helps (but then you need more tractors).
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

The building on top right up there is a storage shed, but the cow barn is the building behind it spotted to the left of it. Nice grass fields below it we could potentially acquire later to increase food production. Would be nice to avoid having to cut the grass where the sheeps are grazing.
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We took over 10 cows on the farm. 27 months old. But the previous owner have not taken care of them so their health is not good at all. There's a large feeding area, but using so little of the total capacity, I guess we don't need to fill it, but wanted to test how much fit in there.. A hundred small bales!! If we need to fill this often, manhandling all those bales are out of the question at least. So I guess it'll be ok while we have only a few cows in here, but before buying a lot more cows, we need a better setup to get grass/hay. And better look out for a TMR machine at some point.

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Tending to cow seems simplified compared to FS19. I don't need to worry about water, and there seems to be no need to clean the barn with a front loader either (which suits me fine). I don't get manure as I don't have a manure pit here, but I don't have straw to give them either, so not a problem right now.
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W1der
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by W1der »

Be careful with the doors on that storage sheed.
The story says the building is haunted and that when you drive close to them you may end up stuck midways in the walls.

I have heard of a ritual the previous owner used to do to avoid this ... he always kept them shut over night to make sure he never forgot to open them up at least once before entering the building.

Stay safe ...
[Win11] Intel Core i9-13900F Tray 5.6GHz / MSI RTX4090 24GB GDDR6 / 2x16GB 5600MHz DDR5
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Yeah.. Looks like there's quite some space in there.. But getting in and out will be an issue as we need a tractor to haul it, and they being narrow and long, it's impossible to make good use of the space
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Felt rich after selling potatoes and wool, and last time we made bales here we were hoping to get better equipment before next time, but buying the cow barn cost quite a bit of money, and we've seen no used sales for grass handling yet. Doing another pass with old mower and windrower.. But now I'm going to make silage out of this, so we'll be testing out our trailed forage harvester and not make bales needing manhandling at least.

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There is an interesting piece of equipment for sale now though..

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Fits well with our silage effort, but it requires 165 hp, so we have no strong enough tractors if that is a strict requirement. However, we've seen some other requirements that haven't been strict but just slowed down stop speed or similar, so not sure. In either case, we are going to get a stronger tractor to seed this autumn, so if it isn't useful this time around it'll be useful next time. On the other hand, compactors aren't that expensive so could possibly buy a new one if needed, and one that we do have horsepowers for..
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