A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

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humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

EUROFARMER22 wrote: Thu Jul 28, 2022 8:07 am Thank you for the shovel link.
By the way, who made those nice LEGO creations?
We went to Legoland in Billund, Denmark, and they had a ton of impressive Lego designs. They had less impressive capacity to serve food though ;)

We decided to grow Canola on field 1 again. Not much of a cash crop with this little field, but more than nothing.

So in field 1, we sowed 0.1515 hectares using 30.295 liters of seed, which is 200 liters/hectares for Canola. And we fertilized 0.1512 hectares using 35.412 liters of fertilizer, which is 234 liters/hectares. (Did we miss some spots as calculations show slightly less area covered? Doesn't look like it on map at least, but maybe map just shows if spot is above a given size) Tracking fuel and maintenance costs on this little field doesn't seem to make much sense. Figures will be too much off due to overhead being large compared to the field.

Still no stones in the field, but we rolled after seeding for the extra yield gain. Horses are ridden and cleaned, so I guess that's it for August.

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We planted some trees October last year.. Among them a few around the sheep pen to give the sheep a bit of shade.. We overshot on the "a bit" part I see though. Not a year has passed, and these trees are already looking fully grown.. I guess we may need to consider chopping some down when winter comes.. The ones we grew at the farm entrance now cast a shadow on 2/3 of field 1 ;)
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

September (1976) has come, and we have weeds on the canola field!!.. We didn't get any last year as we plowed up everything..

Time to test out the weeder..

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The JD 400 rotary hoe is an awesome piece of machinery.. It's all green, so have to use the JD tractor too ;D.. But should we use narrows or not? I guess we woulda gotten a bit more traction if we switched back to regular wheels, but that's a lot of work, so lets just use the narrows for now.. No crop destruction in first growth stage, so narrows not needed.

The 400 Rotary Hoe was made by JD from the sixties to the nineties according to the mod maker, so fits the scenario well.. Even though it's named a rotary hoe, it's classified in game as a weeder and not a hoe, meaning I have to weed in the first growth stage.


The canopy above field 1 sure is massive now..

We also decide to sow wheat on field 2.. Only having barley flour available is limiting in the kitchen.. We sowed 0.1554 hectares using 77.7 liters of seed, so that is 500 liters of seed/hectares. A lot more than the canola. And we fertilized with solid fertilizer again. 35.2265 liters of fertilizer on 0.1553 hectares, which is 226.8 liters/hectares. A bit less than we used on field 1, though it seems we missed a spot.
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

October 1976

It's time to harvest all that corn.. Lets see what the yield becomes. Our biggest field by far, so should net us some income.. Well.. We're interested in hanging onto it and use it for pig food, but we have no pigs yet and can't afford to build a pig pasture either, so we'll see..

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With corn, the distance between the plants is a bit higher than we're used to from the grains, so we feel it's a bit easier to try and drive straight. Not being able to see far, but just seeing into the corn is tiresome though.

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As can be seen behind here, we didn't manage to drive all straight :) Funny enough, the harvester can hold almost twice as much corn as our trailer can.. A bigger trailer would be nice at some point.. Getting pigs to eat the corn sounds good just to be able to haul it shorter ;D The Elms we planted sure do look nice in fall..

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While I've been harvesting non-stop, Laurie came up with an idea.. Hey.. Instead of me waiting around here for hours just to occasionally drive two trips to the farm to dump the load, why don't you just do it yourself? Why use the trailer when it can't even fit the same content? That'll save me tons of time, and I can come drive the harvester for your coffee break instead?

Who can argue with that..

All in all, we ended up with 21.347 liters of corn from the 1.5658 hectares harvested. That's 13.633 liters/hectares. Due to first fertilization level again was a bit shoddy from initial grass harvest, we don't know exact yield modifier, but it looked like it could be somewhere around 95% on average, which would mean a base yield of 6991 liters/hectares. As such, we're guessing that the base yield is 7000 liters/hectares for corn.

The current price of corn isn't great, but hoping the value will increase during winter. Hoping we can get to the point where we might get close to $1 per liter when selling it.
humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

After corn we have to plow, and that's a ton of work using our old plow with about 1.1 meters working width. With some overlap that's next to nothing..

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Reading IH magazine, we find that they just this year (1976) have come up with an update to their 710 plows, and they are now selling the new International 720 plow. With a massive 6 moldboards, it has a huge 3m working width, and is still pullable with 70 hp. Looks king.. At $8.000 it'll cost us a bit, but we'll be considering this heavily when we feel we have the cash to spare..
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

After the grass harvest in October, the old mower seemed to have issues. It's about time to replace that piece of archaic equipment. Calling around, we find someone selling a used John Deere 37 sickle mower. It was introduced in 1964 I think, and seems to have just recently gone out of production this year. I guess the seller might want to buy the fresh new replacement model.

We also find a buyer for the old mower. Sounds like a dude that collects all sorta old equipment. Amazingly, he's willing to pay $429 for the old piece of junk, while the guy selling the used 37 sickle is letting it go for $296 so we make money on the transaction too..

The new mower has a 2.1m working width instead of 1.8m, which is a small improvement. Max working speed is at 16 kph, down from 20 kph from the old mower (Though I wouldn't be surprised if that working speed isn't realistic) With modern technology, it doesn't demand as much of the PTO, and we can use it with any of our tractors. For some reason, the JD sounds fitting ;) (10 hp requirement)

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There wasn't anything wrong with the old mower really.. Worked well. Only annoying thing is that it can't be lowered or raised, so the max 20 kph working speed was also the max speed when transporting it.. I have no idea when something like this would be made, as it was an unbranded unknown thing for me.. But it looks too old at least..

I suspected sickle mowers were fitting for the time, and I have experience with the Gaspardo mod, so I was actually looking to see if I could find something similar that was American instead of Italian. Searching online I found that the IH 200 sickle mower should exist at the time, but didn't find it as a mod, so I started to see if I could find a mod that looked similar that I could trade of as an IH 200, and then I came upon the IH 1100 sickle bar mod. Initially I thought the 1100 model would be too new, and it looks a bit different than the 200 model, but then I noticed you could change branding on the mower, and the JD 37 variant came around 1964 and went out of production in 1976 as far as it looked from what I found online. Changing branding in the mod not only changed colors and name, but also made it look like the real JD model.

Afterwards, I checked a bit, and it sounds like the IH 1100 at least existed in the 1969, as an instruction manual was dated for January '69. Thus I coulda used that one too..

Looks like an awesome mod, and now I have a time period correct mower looking like it should rather than an unknown very old anonymously branded thingy. Woulda started with the sickle mower had I found it before ;)

For anyone interested, the mod can be found here: Scooter's Workbench (Facebook)
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

Finally getting rid of that old mower, we're thinking maybe we should look over the seeder situation and see if we can improve anything there too before we go to seed oilseed radishes in the cornfield..

We've heard of the Massey Ferguson MF33 seeder, and we know International also makes some.. But they are nowhere to be found. The only thing we find is this old magazine from 1940 that a local pub has had lying around since the war.. It's 10 years older than the old seeder we already have. Could possibly still be an option though. The old Amazone D1 does have a tendency to get its small wheels stuck in the mud, and this drill has a larger working width of 3 meters and a slightly increased seed storage tank.. Maybe we could consider one. Seems available cheap at least.

Searching for McCormick-Deering online I see they made many drills in this category, but I see none that looks identical to the image below from the McCormick mod. By chance I dumped onto this 1940 magazine, and the graphics seems to much closer represent the Moline-Monitor seeder here, from Minneapolis. With lack of info in the McCormick-Deering mod for what it actually is, and not managing to find a similar looking model with info, I'm going to use this McCormick-Deering mod to represent the Moline-Monitor, which is what it looks like anyhow.

Later, I figure the JD 8350 is a natural upgrade later, but I don't think it is available yet. I can't seem to find any information about the 8350 existing prior to 1980, however, I did find an Evaluation Report indicating the 9350 existed in 1978 which sounds like the next model, but maybe it isn't. Sadly I find no IH or MF drill, like the MF33, nor an older JD drill.


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For now, we'll keep using our old trusty seeder. It works at least. But as time pass, and we hopefully earn some more cash, lets be on the lookout for a replacement.

Hmm.. I do wonder when the first drill becomes available that eliminates the need for separate cultivation..
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

A sidenote.. Looking at our horses, that we're now feeding oat too.. We see that the horses are eating 25% oats and 75% hay (measured in volume). Six months old, at 100% health and fitness, they now seem to be worth $1.166.. I guess we should monitor how much they rise in value from month to month so we can see when we should sell them and get some new ones to train..

Also, as there's a common trough for both hay and oats, we need to take care to not overfill it with one of the components.

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We needed more seed to seed oilseed radish on cornfield.. Bought big bags this time around as they were a bit cheaper.. However, one of the bags had a hole in them, so some seed ended up in the trailer.. Misclick trying to see if tension belts worked in this configuration Thankfully, the spade was useful to get the leaked parts into the seeder so we saved the situation..

Hmm.. Guess we should start buying smaller 50 liter bags instead, as they likely fit better into the time period.

I guess that's it for this years arable farming.. Everything harvested.. Sown what we want to grow that can be sown in autumn.. Weeded and fully fertilized two fields sown. Planted oilseed radish on the rest of the fields..

I think we are ready for November to come..
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

November 1976

There's nothing like a morning ride to really wake up..

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The elms we planted last year got a lot more massive than we foresaw.. I think we might need to cut down some of them to get some light back onto the farm.. Also, at the edge here, we might be able to get space to add some building of some sort.. I have an idea...

Now, at 7 months, the horses are worth $1.294. Up from $1.166 at 6 months. That's $128 more than last month, and since we bought them as infants for $500, that is $184 per month on average now. It was $194 on average last month.. Hmm.. Gain per month seems to decrease, and I'm guessing food consumption is not. Does that mean we should sell them this early and get new infants to train? Lets monitor a bit longer before deciding.

Nothing much to do in November.. We just feed and take care of all the animals.

December 1976

In December we see that the horses are worth $1.422, up another $128. Maybe the worth rises extra to begin with, as they start of with 0% health and 0% fitness. Even if we keep increasing worth by $128 per month, they probably eat more as they grow, so we earn less and less..

At $128 per month, that's $256 for the 2 horses. Last month they ate 100 liters of oat and 300 liters of hay. That's oats we coulda sold for ~$100 and hay we coulda sold for ~$30. If we made silage of it instead, we might even have sold the grass part for ~$80.

Using the silage price, we earned around 256 - 100 - 80 = $76 this months on the horses. We also need to deduct the ~$10 maintenance of the horse pen, so $66, $33 per horse. If that continues, and they don't start eating more, that's $396 income per year per horse. Before we deduct costs for equipment maintenance. Not using much in maintenance just for driving tractor over to feed them though.

We don't lose money on the horses at least, but I can't say it seems lucrative..

Sorghum seems a bit less worth than oats.. Could that mean that it's cheaper to grow sorghum per liter created? If so, we should probably feed them that instead..

January 1977

And it's a new year.. Even some snow has come to the wilderness..

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The elms have dropped their leaves and the sun is shining through a bit more than it has during the summer..

I think we'll try to cut down a few.. See what they're worth as wood and see if we can make room for something interesting..
humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

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Cutting down the elms is a lot of work.. Above we see the first elm loaded and on the right the second. We got $2.389 and $2.394 for the two elms when selling them. Quite a lucrative business, as we only payed $30 per sapling, and we don't need to do anything with them but wait a year.

Loading them onto the wagon wasn't easy. If we didn't have tension belts it wouldn't have worked ;).. We shoulda probably drove more roundtrips.

The first load we drove out through the farm and through the alley of elms. That was a mistake we barely got out of. For the second load we stayed way clear of obstacles.

The collision box of tree parts doesn't seem to match their visual representation. We can get entangled with objects that looks to be quite a bit away. Also that likely explains why the trunks gets so much air in between them when stacking them. I guess more visible with these non-straight elms, than if we had logged something simpler.
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

Hmm.. This spade does have some sort of powers.. The snow falling around the spade has just stuck to it ;)

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Hmm.. We're not getting rich.. It would be great to afford a new landplot to scale up the operation a bit.. And we'd like to maybe get some more buildings to help make products worth more.. A silage put could be useful.. And we're thinking of trying to get a mill going so we could make our own flour and earn a few more bucks for the grain we create that is surplus after animals are fed..

The animal operation have been no win up to now though, as we haven't sold any produce yet.. However, our cows are about to get calves, and that should start milk production, and the sheep have multiplied and are starting to create some wool. We now have more than 5000 liters of it at least. The 7 hens have also multiplied a lot, but egg production isn't exactly massive.

Hopefully, with animals starting to produce stuff, we should soon have some income..

But we realize, we don't have any way of getting our milk to market? Is there any milk trailer useful for a tractor available? Or do we need to get a milk truck? Or could we get a milk buyer to come and fetch it?

Hmm.. Looking for a way of transporting milk in a '76 hopefully American way, but haven't found anything yet.
Mwal
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by Mwal »

The Mack super liner started being produced in 1977, the Mack grain handling pack on the mod hub is probably a pretty good bet, generally in America the creamery came to get your milk or hired independent truckers to do it for them. The super liner with a bulk tank would be pretty american or this https://whiskeysierramodding.com/peterbilt-352-cabover/ most any American brand truck with a cab over you can pretty safely say is from your time period.
humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

Mwal wrote: Sat Jul 30, 2022 4:20 pm The Mack super liner started being produced in 1977, the Mack grain handling pack on the mod hub is probably a pretty good bet, generally in America the creamery came to get your milk or hired independent truckers to do it for them. The super liner with a bulk tank would be pretty american or this https://whiskeysierramodding.com/peterbilt-352-cabover/ most any American brand truck with a cab over you can pretty safely say is from your time period.
Thanks for the response.. I found the mack grain handling pack and was planning to use that to haul grains.. Maybe try and see if I could find a tractor trailer a bit bigger than 3.500 liters while waiting to afford a truck.. (Found the Massey Ferguson 212 trailer but haven't figured out when it was made) I haven't found an old American looking tanker trailer that can contain milk and looks to fit a Mack truck.. But will keep looking ;)...

Around here, milk trucks over here also is something the farmer doesn't own himself.. They drive around and collect it.. Maybe I should just role play that here too...

Hmm.. Found a Chevy C70 mod, and it looks like the C70 might have been introduced in '77.. That mod has a tank allowing milk I think..
humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

With limited money, and a good potato sell price we decided to sell.. Saving them for pigs not being able to afford a pen yet makes no sense, and we don't need many tons of potatoes for personal consumption..

Ended up selling 23.708 liters of potatoes for $7.451 income. A price of $314 per 1000 liters. That's 28.8% higher than the average potato price of 244. Very lucrative compared to growing grains for cash. If we grew potatoes on our big field we'd probably earn enough to buy something, but it'll be a massive undertaking with our current gear. Especially scooping them of the ground using a front loader.

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Selling 23708 liters of potatoes using a 3500 liter trailer is kinda tedious though.. We split the work of taking trips over there.. The snow made it a bit slippery too, and the trailer wheels didn't roll all to well in the snow, digging in with the heavy load..

Actually selling the potatoes turned out to be an issue though.. As the selling points expects the potatoes to be dropped down on top into the train wagons. Not knowing a conveyor belt fit for the period I don't want to buy one.. Ended up making a ramp :/.. I just wanna sell my potatoes..
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humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

January is supposed to have good milk prices as far as I hear..

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However, they don't seem to be.. $762 is the average milk price, and even in January now, the price is a bit below average.. I thought it was now according to the graph it should swing the highest above the average price? Ok.. Just one selling point, so maybe bad luck on random part added?

God knows what the graph means though. Without values on the Y axis, what's the graph supposed to show?

Milk is probably sold as a fresh product only and not stored on the farm for months, so I should probably sell this every month to be in line with reality.. However, as I don't produce much milk that'll just end up tedious, so I think I'll just ignore that and play the market.

Would be nice if there was a milk truck mod, that just came buy once a month and collected your milk and you got the selling price at the time..
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

After a lot of work cutting down elms, and having sold potatoes to boot, we have some cash.. A bit above $50k currently. The elms got a bit too dominating, and we can use both the space, the money and a bit more sun.. We made a massive $34.316 selling the elms, trying to saw them into 6 meter bits. I think we cut down 14 trees in total, which would make the average money per tree $2.451. It paid insanely well, but it was a massive undertaking and none of us would really like to continue that path even with the good money. And I get motion sickness working that chainsaw :/ $11.694 for the potatoes was also a good amount of money. Especially given the small field we grew them on. It was a lot of work to get them of the ground and to the seller though.

So what do we do with this extra cash? I feel like saving some money so we might be able to extend the farm and get a land plot extra..

Bud: Bacon! Bacon! Bacon!

You really want pigs do you.. Will you take the job of feeding and cleaning pigs?

Bud: Bacon! Bacon! Bacon!

Well.. Maybe we can build a small pig den, and save the rest of the money then..

Brenda: Cake! Cake! Cake!

So you do want flour do you.. You know it is possible to buy flour in town if you drive over there?.. Well well.. Being able to sell grains for extra profit would be nice too, so maybe we can build a mill, and then someday you might be able to start a bakery.. But you know.. We need more grains to make flour of, as we hardly produce more than the animals eat, so more land would be useful here too..

Laurie: Honey?

You too? Ok.. I guess we may be able to get some bees too.. Sounds like we'll be broke again in no-time...

Laurie: No.. Honey.. What are you thinking.. We're able to wait a bit longer..

Well.. Pigs need a lot of different stuff to eat, which would also benefit from more land.. We need more land to utilize a mill too, and it would be nice to have big enough fields to be able to earn a decent profit farming. I don't wanna become a logger. The pay is good but It's breaking my back.

Lets save up for the $85.000 to buy a neighboring land plot, and then we'll be able to get more profits from farming and we'll prioritize pigs and mill then. Honey cubes is a bit of an investment too.. We'll see once we've gotten a mill built..

Lets start selling our milk. Milk prices should be decent in January.. Sadly I couldn't get the milkman to drive out here, so we'll have to improvise a way to get the milk to the market.

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https://farming-simulator.com/mod.php?l ... tle=fs2022

With a little help from some locals, we managed to make our own milk trailer. We washed that herbicide container over and over to be sure.. We welded a bit wrong, not taking into account the low hitch on our tractor, so it doesn't sit level, but it'll work.. It only takes 1000 liters so we'll have to drive some trips sadly.. Making it ourselves we assumed it would end up dirt cheap, but we actually ended up having to pay $1000 for it... That sounds hilarious comparing it to how cheap we got that International tractor.

We were really hoping to get the milkman to come to us instead.. But he didn't dare drive his fancy new 1977 Chevy C70 tanker out here..

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(The one on the picture above is an '83 model, but from my internet searches it looks like it existed in 1977, likely launched in '77 as I find no older reference) We hoped to sneak in a fitting milk truck for free and roleplay that they fetched it for us, but sadly, the Chevy C70 mod I found https://fs22.com/farming-simulator-22-m ... 70-tanker/ didn't work with our milk fill point on the barn. I guess I coulda used a Mack truck and just used the build in MKS 32 trailer, but wanted to leave that as an upgrade for modern times.. And it doesn't really look that much of a milk truck either.. Grr.. And here I thought I struck gold finding a mod for a 1977 milk truck in 1977!! ;)

Took some time to convince the milk man that we could deliver milk in a used herbicide tank. But after telling how much we've washed it, and with the short ride to the salespoint, cooling it on the way isn't critical, so finally we agreed. All in all we got $4.087 for the milk.. Not bad.. Sadly we $1.000 can be deducted for the milk trailer, but at least we can reuse that.. Cold here this week.. Luckily we at least have one tractor with a cab.
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