Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Share your creations with us!
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Sold wool for £3,721 / liter for a total of £130.482. Yay. No loan and we're finally in plus again. Almost £90.000 credits in bank..

After selling wool, I tried to park the trailer neatly into our shed, where the middle chamber was totally free. We didn't touch the bales at all, and had at least half a meter clearance to neatly stacked bales, but somehow they came alive and started jumping around the shed :/... What's happening? Are there ghosts in the town? Have anyone put small explosives in my shed to scare me?

Image

Probably not an easy problem, but it's sad to use lots of time to stack bales neatly, when the stacks destroy themself. Looking forward to a bale barn being available, as the Bale Storage Barn in FS19. As of now I'm tempted to build modified hayloft that cuts up bales, but I'd need to modify it if I want to store silage there too. At least silage bales can be stored in the open field where I can try to stay clear of them so they don't implode. On the other hand, cutting up the bales and storing hay/straw in bulk may simplify feeding animals.
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 »

Do you reckon the silage pit is faster than the wrapped bales?
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: Fri Feb 11, 2022 2:23 pm Do you reckon the silage pit is faster than the wrapped bales?
For me now, I can only transport 15.000 liters of silage in my bulk trailer, but I can transport 24 x 6500 = 156.000 liters in one go on my large bale trailer (given 150cm bales which are the biggest ones I can currently wrap). As the bale trailer also have autoload functionality (thankfully realistic and animated so it doesn't feel like cheating), handling the bales are far quicker now.

Once I want to make silage for TMR, I'll require front loader duty to use bales. Then some kind of bulk silage storage able to dump straight into TMR mixer might be good, and if such bulk storage doesn't have a good way of accepting bales as input, using forage wagon, silage pit and conveyor belt might be simpler. However, I know of no such storage available right now, and the conveyor belt is also kind of tedious.

For now, I'll just be using bales, and will see at some point if I up milk production and get tired of front loader work to mix TMR, if I find a simpler alternative, but I expect to be staying with bales for a good while now. A bit surprised the pit wasn't a manure pit. Think I mighta had more use for that.
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'm staying away from cows (and pigs) until I have MUCH more money. The feeding isn't the hard bit, its the slurry or manure handling. The equipment for that is kinda pricey. But it would be interesting to see the % profit uplift possible on a well-run dairy farm vs just selling the silage.

Regards feeding, in real life (and in FS22 I think) a telehandler can handle more, and better, than a tractor front loader. And there is also the dedicated loader, I've not tried one of those so possibly more still. Most dairy farms, even big ones, in the UK would use a telehandler + TMR mixer on a tractor for feeding. I think the dedicated machines are in there for completeness but realistically only come into their own for 10000+ herd sizes.
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Yeah.. As a non-farmer, there's a lot of information lacking on what tools are, why they exist and what they are for.. I sometimes buy gear I have no idea how is supposed to work either in game nor in real life, and if I guess half-way correctly I might figure out a use for them in game, but still have no clue whether the use I found was actually something they do in real life ;)

I have an uncle that was a farmer, but his cow barn probably had ~20 cows, and feeding them was about getting grass/hay into barn silo with some kind of trailed forage harvester and feeding them with a pitchfork. Mighta been more complex, but that was all I could catch as a teenager ;) No wheel loaders at that scale at least. He liked to collect old tractors and harvesters though ;) Hadn't heard of TMR pre farming simulator.

I did like the production chain bits with cows in FS19 though.. I get grass, feed cows, get manure to fertilize fields to cut down on solid fertilizer costs/use for grain crops and get milk and beef production as a high value product. Was tedious getting through winters though, as I didn't want feed/water/cleaning/straw handling for cows to be 70% of what I used play time for... More fun at low scale ;)
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 average diary farm isn't that big - something like 120 cows in the UK. There's lots of farms operating reasonably well with 80-100 cows but that means little money to re-invest in decent equipment, so the parlour, tractors etc are all getting old. But with decent grassland management including cow tracks, sensible breeding (or breed choice) and not "pushing" the yield to the max, its quite possible.

Get up to something like 200-300 cows and the economy of scale really starts coming in, it becomes worthwhile buying a decent telehandler (BIG time savings) and being able to specify a feed mixer nicely (vertical chop preserves more fibre length, so fat yield is higher, so more valuable for cheese etc), being able to leverage additional feeds, etc and then you can push yield more and more.
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

So.. April is here. Wool has been sold and all our other produce earlier in winter. First grass harvest just completed, making us 34 150cm silage bales.

We figured we'd sell some old equipment. The trailed forage harvester was no longer needed with our new baler, and it was kinda useless anyhow, only being able to pickup grass. We figured we'd get rid of the old Massey too.. It has done it's job, and it was starting to get hiccups. I liked the mod. It looks the part, can have front loader, has enough hp to be able to do some simple jobs even though there isn't really that much small equipment available. It did seem to bug a bit though. Unless it was made hard to use on purpose ;) That also mean I can dump the Ursus mod with the front loader. If we need a front loader again, we should afford to get a front loader on the new MF, which has more weight to counterbalance it, and can use a front loader with a much bigger bucket. Dunno if we mentioned it, but the old baler making small bales and the old chopper has also been sold some time ago.

We finally had money to fill up the fuel tank on the farmyard, leaving us £80.000 to spare. About time to try and make some plans about what to do...

Some possibilities:
  • Expanding milk production. Get quite a bit more cows. A TMR mixer. Get a straw harvest to cheapen TMR. Maybe a bigger grass field to simplify hay/silage production and ensure we have enough for lotsa cows. Maybe a manure pit to get manure.
  • Get another field for arable farming. Scale up field work, so we can defend getting better equipment for harvesting/plowing/rolling/lime cart and a large bulk trailer.
  • Look into expanding to horses/chickens. Should probably get a year producing food first, be it barley for chickens, oats for horses, or maybe sorghum to be able to cater both. Either option provides straw useful for cows later.
As we currently have Canola growing this year, we won't be able to get our own straw/grain food crop ready before autumn next year, so I think we'll leave horses/chickens until then. But as we now have pretty decent gear for grass, we're considering buying a fairly big grass field, to make money on silage, and provide hay/silage for TMR later on. If we can live without the income, it would be nice to avoid having to chop grass in the animal husbandries, to not scare the animals more than needed. Field 7 looks like a pretty big and nice grass field..

A field for arable farming would also be an interesting option. Field 6 looks tempting, as it's close to our farmyard, fairly big, but still affordable with a bank loan. If we get a new field for crops, we could get straw/chicken/horse food this year too, though we'd probably use a year to pay back enough loan before we could invest in something else anyhow ;)

Lets sleep on it a few nights..
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

We're tired to look at withered crops just outside our farmyard. We went to the bank to scale up. A big loan, but with the good prices we're having around here, we should be able to handle it. We're buying field 3, mostly financed by taking up loan. That means we are pretty tight on money until we can get good income again. Likely mid-winter if we can afford to wait selling until prices boom again.

The new field needs to be limed, and while our fertilizer cart supports lime, it can only hold 700 liters, which isn't much lime at all. We might need to buy or rent a bigger lime cart. If we end up buying a fert cart, we will have expended about all the money the bank will loan us. On the other hand, apart from some fertilizer and seeds, there's not much we need before harvesting season.

Image

Tried to start creating a big square in the field, and then take the headlands outside it.. That leaves a big square in the middle that is easy to handle. For now we're drilling oilseed, which should come up just in time for us to sow sorghum this season. We're fertilizing with the seeder at the same time, so this pass should leave the field fully fertilized. Afterwards we'll apply lime while the field is brown and it's easy to see where we cover it. Then we'll likely await until we can sow the Sorghum, and then finally roll to get rid of small stones and improve seed conditions. And then we expect to need to go over with the hoe late spring.

This should leave us with some horse/chicken food if we want to and plenty straw. We may keep some for animal bits, but as we're out of money, I guess we may need to sell quite a bit of it too...
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 »

Straw is only from wheat, barley or oats.
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: Sat Feb 12, 2022 5:36 pm Straw is only from wheat, barley or oats.
Are you sure about that? I seem to recall getting straw when I harvested sorghum on Elms Creek. Anyhow.. Will find out soon enough I guess ;)

Image

Ended up rolling to get rid of some stones, though I guess it was a bit wasteful as I likely need to roll after seeding to get yield bonus. Was a bit surprised of these field edges though. Would expect my drill to be able to sow upon them, but that didn't happen. Could the edges here be outside the field edge? I guess I'll grab a plow and plow over the edges here to get rid of it.
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-game, yes. In reality, there is OSR straw. Don't know about Sorghum, we don't have that in the UK.
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Got rid of the field edge remainders with plow.. And it was on the field.. I guess it might have refused to drill it with oilseed because its already fully fertilized..

Had to roll a second time after sowing sorghum.. I kinda new, but after starting doing some tests, it was hard to leave the field not in a uniform state the first time around, and getting rid of the stones was nice ;)
Seemed no weeds started to grow in the middle, but a few did on around the field that we took care of with the hoe. Now July is coming to an end soon, and we're almost done with the 2nd grass harvest from our 2 pens.. Just need to collect the bales to store them a bit more out of the way. Looking forward to harvest season, to check out how much stuff we have to sell during winter..

Oh.. And the new field needed to be limed. We waited a while in hopes of seeing something useful sold used, but didn't find any, so we eventually bought the Bredal K105 lime cart.. Our old fertilizer/lime cart could hold 700 liters. When we need like ~35000 liters of lime to apply to the field, that didn't seem up to the job.

This puts us pretty close to the £500.000 bank limit for loan, but we should hopefully not need anymore before we get more income. Though I hear from the bank that our limit has actually been upped a bit.. But we're not gonna take advantage of that now anyways..

Image

I guess you could call this my favorite piece of machinery, as I've pretty much had one for all my games. Can only remember my FS19 no mans land save being without it, as I found a model looking a bit older that fit it better.

Only the 2 Bredal cart wagons can apply lime, so you pretty much need one of them. In FS19, only the smaller one, K105 here, could equip narrows, but in FS22 now both can. Thus, while in FS19 I preferred this smaller one as it wasn' t much smaller, and 14.000 liters is a ton of space for fertilizer which is the regular usecase, I guess in FS22 the bigger one is a bit better when adding lime, but also much more expensive.

This thing is awesome if you wanna do fertilize contracts. Can just fill it up and drive around the map to fertilize a lot of fields before you need to refill it.
norfolk farmer
Posts: 2305
Joined: Sat Oct 13, 2018 3:36 pm
Location: United Kingdom

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by norfolk farmer »

paul_c wrote: Sat Feb 12, 2022 11:48 pm In-game, yes. In reality, there is OSR straw. Don't know about Sorghum, we don't have that in the UK.
I think here it is known as Millet not overly common but it is grown. The same as Alfalfa where we more commonly know it as Lucerne.
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

We had an incident trying to get bales from 2nd grass harvest out of the way for sheep and later grass harvests..

Image

This took us quite a bit of time to get out of, and of course we messed up the bales close to it too.. It seemed stuck, as it didn't wanna move backwards either to get out.

July is here and it's time to harvest our Canola. The old Bizon works fine, but it gets in worse and worse state and we don't know how to repair it. At this rate it might become broke before we manage to harvest our Sorghum in August.. Not decided what to do yet.. Repair it by editing savegame and deducting money to get through our next harvest, or actually buy a new one this year.. Think we'll delay buying new until next year, and repair manually if needed to get Sorghum down. We'll replace it soon though. Disappointed that it's not possible to repair it in game..

Managed to harvest 45.936 liters of Canola. And again, the remains after harvesting counts for a fertilization stage, so we can do second fert stage, cultivate and seed in one step with our new seeder, and only need a hoe pass later to get rid of weeds and we'll be ready for next harvest.
humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

After liming field 23, it's September, and the new big field is ready for sorghum harvest. Got up at the break of dawn to start of at 06:00..

Image

The old Bizon only have front lights, which makes this a bit tricky, and with the poor light it is actually a bit hard to see what parts we have harvested. The pipe is also annoyingly small. Not tall enough to go above the tractor, and to get above the trailer it needs to do it at the very end of its reach too... It's still clunking along at 7-9 kph though. Can we manage to get through the field before it's broke? I fear not.. That's also part of the reason to start early. In case we need to have a backup plan to be able to finish up the field..
Post Reply