A second chance - Yet another farm blog - Where noone else dared to farm

[humbe]

At 19 years old, I'm the oldest of 4 siblings. Me, my 17 year old brother Kent and my dad have been working as hired hands on a big farm up until recently, but now that the economy have got sour and the farmers are trying to cut cost and automate their work, me and my brother is out of work, and from what my dad gets, it's hardly enough to feed us all. As we were wondering how to make ends meet, a letter arrived. My uncle Hank won a government land grant lottery almost 30 years ago and moved far away into a remote location to start of on his own. From what little communication we've had with him, he's been running his own farm being hos own boss. We were always a bit jealous about his success, but now it seems he has past away only 53 years old, and we've inherited the farm.

While we always believed Hank had a successful farm, no one we know of has actually visited him or been there, so my dad cautioned that he could have been exaggerating to avoid any concern on our part. Not knowing the state of the farm, I've been tasked to travel up there and get the farm going, and as soon as income can support it the rest of the family will follow.


So the challenge:

• For each family member moving after me, I'll add negative daily income to my farmhouse, to correspond to -$166 per month. For the whole family, including me, that's $1.000 upkeep per month, or $3.000 per season (3 months). How fast can I get the farm into business so I can support the family, while still being able to advance the farm? When all family members are cared for, we'll work toward increasing this x4 for a decent living standard. (I use negative daily income to avoid the price rising over time as property maintenance, and to not have the number confused with property maintenance)
• The farm will have gear enabling some farming to start with, but otherwise I'll be close to bankrupt.
• Noone will dare loan anything to our poor family so loans are not an option.
• Hard economy, fast dirt, default fuel usage, periodic plowing, liming and weeds enabled. Crop destruction on, though I may end up doing an exception if having to do low working width harvesting where I have to drive in front, as none of the old tractors I've seen seems to have narrow wheels options in game, but they should still be able to drive between rows of potatoes for instance.
• 6 day season (2 days per month). Crop moisture, snow tracks and snow mode enabled.

• As the map is empty, I'll be cheating in money to develop the map when fitting as I go. (Adding on to a settlement to mimic more activity in the area and landscape and add stuff to the map that isn't mine, but which possibly can add a selling point or something).

Arrival at Dead Mans Valley

It's a beautiful day, but I left tarmac 80 miles ago, gravel 60 miles ago, and have been driving on dirt roads ever since. I have to stop every mile to dry and get dirt of my windshield to see where I'm going. I was far from sure I was going the right way, but coming over this hilltop this has to be the valley. I can spot a farm down there. That's gotta be it.

I got to take the family's trusty Ford F-100 with me. I've got my life savings of $793 with me, and to make sure I have enough funds to cover some initial expenses, I got some money of my dad, so I've got $1.364 in my pocket. Never felt this rich. But I have a bad conscience taking any money at all from him, so I hope I can pay that back as soon as possible.

After another hour I finally arrived at the farm.


Far from the modern farm I thought Hank was running prior to getting the letter, but while the buildings look worn, it looks like it could be a functional farm. There's only a very small field here though. Doesn't his plot of land allows more of a field than this? How did he survive with only that little field? Oh wait.. He didn't :/..

Well.. Lets see what we have to work with here.


We seem to have some animal pens hurdled together here. A very small chicken coop. It'll give me eggs for breakfast, but I won't be making much of a dollar on the few chickens I can keep there. A small horse pen seems to be able to hold 2 horses (I'm hoping there's a tractor here and that he hasn't been keeping those horses to pull plows). There's also two cow sheds here, which I guess can hold at least 15 head. From the looks of it, it seems that have had to have been his main source of income, though I'm unsure whether that small field can even grow enough to feed those cows.

There's also an old bale shelter up there, where half of it has been used as a repair shop.


In the storage area here we have quite a good storage setup, though it looks like it will need a lot of maintenance. Reading my uncles contracts I see that as the first farmer setting up here, he got a lot of help from the authorities covering the cost of the silos on the condition that he'd be sharing them with the other farmers setting up around here. It seems a few more have tried to establish a farm here, but it looks like they have all vanished.

There's a watertower here. Grain silos that can hold 200.000 liters, and silos for seed, lime and fertilizer. There's also a hay barn, a storage building which looks to have stored some crates of potatoes and various other stuff. There's also a fuel tank, and is that small area within the tires a primitive bunker silo?


Yikes.. What is all this old stuff? At least they have 3 point hitches, so I guess he haven't been relying on horses for everything. We'll go into more details later, but it looks like it's tools for handling grass, and growing grains.


Hope this stuff still works.. Now I'm excited to look what's precious enough to be within the garage doors.


So what have we got here.. It looks like a manure spreader, a pullable harvester and some gear to gather grass. Not exactly top of the line models. But aren't there a tractor here. Help.. I don't have cash to buy a tractor.


Ugh.. Here it is.. Hope this is still running. Can that Fergie even pull that harvester trailer? Or was there a modern tractor that has been stolen or something? Well.. Lets hope it does because I have little other options.

Hmm.. No front loader? How have he been cleaning the pens? Or loading potatoes?

Ouch.. This looks like fun.. Not.. And I see we have a weeder there too.

So what's next.. I guess we'll have to try and figure out if those silos are empty or not and find a place to start. It's spring time, so there's no time to lose..

[Dairydeere]

I'll be watching this thread for sure .










PS Is that No Man's Land?

[Bryan83]

I'll be watching this thread for sure .










PS Is that No Man's Land?

Mmm, pass the popcorn, please.

[humbe]

Trying to evaluate how much content there could be in these tanks was harder than I thought. I'm pretty used to there being automatic gauges telling me that.. I've had to open the tanks and just evaluate visually here, so my calculations might be less than correct.

Basically, the containers look empty, but there's some bottom scrapings that probably was trickier to remove. As far as my calculations go, the content should be something like:

• 692 liters of wheat
• 794 liters of barley
• 2149 liters of oats
• 451 liters of potatoes
• 2324 liters of hay
• 2841 liters of straw
• 3159 liters of diesel
• 2314 liters of seeds
• 1720 liters of fertilizer
• 7585 liters of lime

Not a lot considering the size of the containers, but content that will be very useful to get going. If prices are like home, that would cost around 13 thousand (most of the cost being the diesel and the fertilizer) to buy. With seed, lime and fertilizers we should at least be able to start growing a small crop. I can probably not support animals for long with that storage though. Not that I know of a place to buy animals to begin with, nor anywhere to sell whatever I'll be making..

I guess it's about time to take a drive in the neighborhood and see what we can find.. Following the dirt road south from the farm we arrive at the border.



Due to this covid19 stuff, the border is shut close. There's a big road on the other side I see. If the border had been open, I bet I could have gotten here a lot easier driving around the bigger roads. There seems to be a huge modern shop here, but it looks dead and shut. No wonder as I haven't seen any activity in the area for them to sell to anyhow. I guess it was created when the government grants came and they hoped the valley would be buzzling with activity soon.

The bank terminal seems to be in order though. Maybe it's possible for me to wire money home if I manage to earn some.

That's the end of the road.. But I noticed a less used path cutting east just south of the farm.


I hope I have more luck finding something in that direction.

	Yes.. It's no man's land.. Building a small settlement of the east side of the map. Update coming when it's ready to be seen

[humbe]

After maybe 45 minutes of driving we finally spot what looks like a small settlement.



Thank God.. I'm not all alone out here. Lets hope there's someone here I can trade with. Entering the settlement it looks promising. I'm usually not the one to contact strangers, but in this case I need to find a way we can help each other here in the outback.. First I knocked on the door of an older guy called Bob.



Bob used to work as a logger for the local sawmill, but the local branch of it is gone and Bob is in early retirement. He's still in touch with the closest branch of the company running the sawmill though, and says that he can arrange to have wood sold if I want to. If I leave the wood at his pickup point in the valley, he can transport them away for me and sell them. He isn't logging that much anymore though, so he's guessing it could take a few months before the wood has been sold and I get money for it. As I understand it, the pickup point is close to the juncture southeast of the pond, pretty close to my farm, so that sounds perfect. Bob will take 5% of the profit he says, but that sounds fair, and after all, what are my options?



Then we have Stephen. He's the local mechanic and has converted an old barn to be his mechanic shop. He's also got a equipment to wash vehicles. I wonder if there's a chance I can get my car washed here. It sure could use it. Stephen's a likeable guy. As I have a lot of old equipment looking to be in a shabby state, I ask Stephen if he could take a trip to my farm and look over the state of it. It would be great to get an overview of how bad shape they are in, and what is critically important to repair. Not to mention getting tips on how I can actually repair them myself because I can't afford paying Stephen to repair everything, nor driving all the equipment back and forth on Fergie. That'll take months. He agrees to come by soon and evaluate the state of my equipment for $200. I feel bad about haggling on the price but my funds are limited, and we finally agree on $150 and free use of his washing machine to wash my car.

Before leaving though, Stephen tells me to climb up the ladder on his shop and go check out his backyard. Wooaaah..


Stephen's got quite a few parts of farming equipment down there. Though you shouldn't think he had a pressure washer. I guess he wasn't planning on trying to sell any of it today. It turns out that the farmers that came with a land grant after my uncle ended up giving up and leaving, and desperate to get some cash for their used equipment, Stephen got a good price on quite a lot of gear. The only farmers coming though, was poor people having issues, so they all dealed in used equipment. Suits me fine though, I can't afford buying new gear regardless, and here I might be able to get some affordable upgrades later. Stephen confirms the shop at the border has closed up after most of the farmers gave in, but if I really need some new gear, it's possible to order it delivered. It'll just take a month or two before I can expect the gear to show up.



Getting my car clean was a real eye opener. Sadly it reveals the sad state of my paint job. But repainting the car would cost $1050 Stephen says, so that is currently out of the question. Then we have Rays old farmyard. Ray was farming the countryside but have been scaling back his operation. However, he is in contact with some farming connections in the neighbouring county. If I want animals for my farm, he can arrange that, and if I want to sell bales, he can fix that too if I just dump them at his bale barn back here.

So what would I need to pay to buy a milk producing cow nowadays? Around $1300 per head for Ayrshire and $2000 per head for Holstein. Yikes. I can't even afford a single cow. He knows some horse people needing extra stable space though, so I can earn a few bucks taking care of a couple of horses for them. Would also be nice to have a few chickens to get some eggs to eat at the farm. I'm a bit unsure how long we'll be able to feed chickens and horses from what remains at the farm, but it's not that long until summer when we can mow more grass, so I order a handful of chickens and take on two horses. Ray says he'll drop by the farm later this week and deliver them.

Having promised Stephen $150 for the checkup, that's $1214 left of my funds. I ordered one rooster and four chickens and that cost me another $34. $1180 to go. Lets hope I can earn some money of those horses.

Apart from Ray, there's more people living here. Sandra is running a small supermarket up here, and there's Joanna in the garden center. There's also Beverly's bakery up here. All in all, I can sell grains, root crops and dairy products here, so that is awesome. They don't need a lot here, but if I end up producing too much, they are able to send my goods onwards. Sandra has a small post office at her shop, and I can get mail there she says.

	I don't know how to set up a separate shop or animal dealer, so in practise I'll be using the one provided by map on the border, but I'll pretend it's from the settlement. Bought placeables and equipment for the settlement, and edited xml files in savegame to set farmId="0" which I hope will mean I don't need to pay upkeep for that part. The vehicles up there has disappeared from the garage menu at least.. But when I look at vehicle overview in the menus they sadly appear there. To begin with I expect a lot of my expenses to be adjusting the map around me, so for now I'll just keep a shadow budget for what I should have and leave in game budget with the extra cash and expenses for altering the map elsewhere. At some point I guess I'll be fairly happy with the maps state, and I'll reset the money to what I should have left so I can start using in game functionality to track income and expenses.

[humbe]

I guess next order of business is to sell the tree trunks already lying ready in my farmyard and see what income that might bring. I forgot to mention that I found an old chainsaw in the storage shed, together with a wheel barrow that I also missed when taking inventory earlier.



It seems to me to function just as well as a modern saw. These logs need to be shorter should I have any hope of loading them onto the log trailer. To lift the heavy bastards, I found some rope and chain in the storage shed, pulled the logs with the tractor under the fertilizer silo, and used a rope and pulley system to be able to lift them up so I could then drive the log trailer underneath and lower them down. A heck of a lot of heavy work. It would be so awesome to get a front loader and a log fork or something. I think I saw both up at Stephens, but then I'd also need a tractor that can use it, and that won't be little Fergie here.



I didn't dare to load the trailer any fuller. Was already expecting Fergie to tilt back on its back wheels, as the log trailers tires are far back, putting a massive strain on the hitch to the tractor. Thankfully the hitch is pretty close to the center of Fergies backwheel, so some weight is needed to tilt. Driving this load to the pickup point was no issue at all it turned out. Easy to drive carefully with 23 horse powers though Well.. 23 when new i guess, so maybe 10 actual horse powers to use now :/


There we go.. Three loads in total. Wonder how much we'll make of that, and how long until Bob has time to haul it further. I'll text him to say that there's something to pick up here..

	There's no rope and pulley mod of course. I used a mod "Lift Heavy Loads v 1.0" (podnoszenie.zip) to give super strength, allowing me to fake bits where game lacks functionality for lower tech hands on labor. https://fs19.net/farming-simulator-2019 ... ads-v-1-0/ The logging trailer is "Prikolica za drva - Simple logging trailer". To begin with I've entered savegame xml files and added maximum dirt and paint damage so it looks worn compared to the one in the mod picture. https://gtmods.ru/farming-simulator-19- ... 9-12x.html Used the mod "Placeable Wood Sell Point v1.0 FS19" http://www.farmingsimulator19mods.com/p ... v1-0-fs19/ to be able to place a wood sell point at a random location without getting a huge sawmill next to it. Just cut down a tree close to it to add some logs and added some wood from "Placeable Details Pack v1.0.0.0 FS19" to give some small scenery fitting a pickup point. http://www.farmingsimulator19mods.com/p ... -0-0-fs19/

[humbe]

We need to get an overview of our property soon, but it's spring and we should at least get the field we do have in order, so lets start preparing it for sowing. It looks like last years crop withered and died, after uncle died last summer. It looks like there were potatoes here, so we should plow the field. But the soil looks to need lime too, so lets lime it first so we bury the lime when plowing.



The fertilize cart looked small on it's own but behind Fergie it's fairly big. When I dumped content into it I got up on my back wheel. Fortunately, it's got wheels, so when I lowered it onto it's wheels we can drive it fine forwards at least. Having those wheels down there though, means it's hard to turn. I guess the wheels back there aren't oiled as good as they should be. Backing up while the cart is fairly full is an issue though. Other than that, the working width is fairly good for my tiny field and it seems to be working.



The field isn't big. But the edge to the upper right seems to hit the border of our plot of land. We own a bit more land up to the left, but not much, and the height there is in the way of extending much. I think we'll look for extensions elsewhere. A big field would be tiresome with this plow though. I'm plowing a bit less than two rows of potato plants per run. Even if we find somewhere to create more fields, there's a limit to how much we're able to plow before spring is over.

	The fertilizer is the "Fertilizer Spreader D028 by frogmod" http://www.farmingsimulator19mods.com/f ... v4-0-fs19/ We of course used the worn version. It's terrible slow to drive using manual throttle, but for some strange reason, if I hire a worker, or put on the cruise control, then I can drive along fine at 11 kph. I was considering to edit the mod to lower power consumption so I could drive it on manual throttle but for now I'm just using the cruise control. There's an issue with emptying the fertilizer though. I can't dump the remaining content after I'm done, neither with regular "I" unload somewhere accepting lime, or with "ctrl-I" to force it on the ground. Thus I have to just use up the remaining to be able to use it to fertilize later. People were able to farm before tractors existed so I shouldn't need to have a close to modern tractor to enable basic farming. The issue is that the game has limited gear and functionality for older type of farming, so suddenly I get into issues where there's no options available without going for more modern bits. Thus I decided, that if I'm unable to find a lower tech or simpler utility in the game, I'll lower requirements of the worst one I can find so I can use it with the tractor that I have. The plow is from the Ferguson pack being the 3 furrow variant. The game just lists the working width of the 5 furrow variant at 3.5m, and the 2 furrow one has 1.5m, so I guess the 3 furrow one has around 2m working width. I figured the 4-5 furrow variants felt a bit too much like cheating, being able to plow that wide with 20 hp, and the 1m working width ones at the bottom looked a bit too boring to go back and forth so many times.

[humbe]

Stephen have been looking over our gear while we were plowing and here is his overview. A bit strange to estimate age in days and operating hours for gear that has been running for years, and the numbers look way too specific to be an estimate, but we'll take it for what it's worth.



As we expected, the gear is in a very poor state and needs maintenance. Apart from some minor bits, Hank has bought all this gear used we see, as they are way older than the farm. As can be seen, our gear is not worth much at all. He helped me to look at the tractor that we need in working order. It's almost broke, but thankfully the mechanics is simple so we somehow managed to repair it with spare parts costing me only $33. The plow just needed some overhauling and that only cost me $2.. So this old gear seems cheap to repair at least. We'll keep repairing gear as we start using it.

If anyone is wondering what the Russian name up there is, it's the machine for loading hay and straw into a trailer. It seems there's been Russian migrants up here that has brought along some gear from there.

	I've modified age to be fitting to be number in days in regular 365 day years since that gear was on the market. Updated season years to match. Have just had to guess on age of a lot of the equipment as it wasn't too easy to dig up production dates on everything. Also tried to fake operating hours to fit how many hours could ballpark fit for that age given that it has been in regular use up to now. I'm probably way off, but better than zero anyhow .. With so high ages, repair costs should be a bit more than they would otherwise be, but as the purchase price is so cheap for these mods, the repair cost is still minimal. At least it looks better to see that they're old, and they're not worth much at all if I sell anything

[LS09God]

Wow, Awesome. Hey moderators,.. a pin would be nice, makes this cool story easier to find.

[humbe]

Thanks .. I'll try to keep it active while I'm playing it anyhow so it'll stay fairly up there. Not that much activity in community bits.

I found a map in the cabin, and figured out the borders of the plot of land Hank owned. It includes some land north of the forest, so we decided to plow up the part north of the dirt road going through there. I can't see anything about anyone having the rights to use that road through here so I think I could have just plowed over it, but the rock formations are also in the way.. And while the field isn't that big, with Fergie and a 3 furrow plow it seems enormous. I think it's maybe like x3.5 the size of the field in the farmyard. It covers almost the whole north end of the plot, apart from a corner with some woods in it which I left. I cut down three trees to make space, but sadly the stumps of the trees are still on the field. I need a stump remover. I think I saw one at Stephen's, but I'm betting I can't afford it. We'll have to be careful when we get here with machinery not to damage it on the stumps. Maybe I should avoid sowing too close to them.

The plow glides quickly through the field and I've managed to keep 12 kph across it, and used up two fuel tanks doing so. It's hard to turn with the plow in the ground though. With all that drag there isn't much traction on Fergies front wheels. That 100 kg weight front ain't doing enough. With the 5 furrow plough being 3.5m, I'd guess there's 70 cm per furrow, and this one should be 2.10m wide, but I see I plow wheel to wheel behind Fergie so that looks like less. At least it was easy to drive correctly when plow aligns with the back wheels.

I need a radio in the tractor though. (Hoping I get radio signals out here) Going through the field with this old gear takes forever. Power steering would have been awesome too. I've used more than a week to plow up this field and we're more than half through March already. I guess we should lime the new field next. Wonder how many times we'll need to fill this old junk fertilizer with 600l capacity to lime the new field..

[humbe]

Hmm... But will we have enough lime? It's burning away quickly here.. I've always heard it pays to apply lime, but I've always assumed to apply lime going 20 kph. This cart is certified for 15 kph, but Fergie isn't able to drive faster than 11 kph with it. Am I using twice the amount of lime I'm used to? I've empty 4 loads, and I'm still far from half way done.. Think we'll be running out.

[j_maybury]

I like it............... A place where no one can hear you break your back!!!

[humbe]

And there we have depleted uncles stored up lime reserves.

Dang.. We forgot to repair the fertilizer before starting. According to Stephens report it was in almost totally broke, 5% in order, whatever that means. Did it now while we remember it and payed another $14 for that. Leaving us $1.131. And I know we're using almost $100 per month of ingredients to repair the buildings on the farm, though I haven't paid those bills yet. We need to try and get some income soon.



I wanted to go to bed tonight thinking job well done with the lime, but only being able to cover like 85% of the field is extremely unfulfilling. Is there somewhere I can acquire more lime? And if so can I afford it? I'd love to finish the job before seeding. I guess Ray will know.. I'll take a trip to the settlement soon. Would be good to get a few groceries from the shop there too.. All the grub I've got left now is egg and potatoes.

I'm guessing another 1100 liters or so should suffice to cover the rest of the field. With regular lime prices that should be around $200. Tempting to buy it if I find it. I should have enough seed to cover both fields easily. Not so sure if we manage to fully fertilize our fields with what we've got left there, but time will tell. Would be nice to save fertilizer by growing Oilseed Radishes, but as it's soon April, I've got doubts whether I'll be able to sow before spring is done then, and that'll be critical for survival here, so not daring to try it. We'll certainly do it after harvesting though.

I do have some money incoming for taking care of a couple of horses though. Ray wasn't specific, but he said he'd see and gave me a ballpark figure of $500 a month. I guess that should be enough income for us to dare buy the rest of the lime if we can find it. We also have some money incoming from the logs we sent of, but I've only been a farmhand, so have no idea what the logs will pay. Not expecting much.

Come to think of it, lets go feed those horses.

[humbe]

According to Stephen's report, the wheel barrow was broke, but I can't find anything to fix on it but the paint job, and I'm not paying $500 to repaint it.



It's been a while since last time I was driving a wheel barrow.



Somehow, I don't think these silos were intended to be used with wheel barrows. 120l of oats incoming fast here. At least a short walk to dump the spillage back in.

The clock is just past 10:00 today.. If I try to feed them same time tomorrow, maybe I can get a decent idea how much oats and hay I need to care for them a year.

	The wheel barrow is fun when you have tiny pens. https://www.farming-simulator.com/mod.p ... tle=fs2019 To implement it though, they have used vehicle mechanics. (Much better than carry mechanics at least) But it means I need to enter it and start the engine to drive it around (as I don't have autostart vehicles on). Would have been nice if game mechanics allowed for non-motorized vehicles that didn't have an engine nor a fuel tank As to the maintenance, the wheel barrow is so old and cheap that even though the state is at 0%, the maintenance cost is still not high enough to enable the repair button ;D.. It's still grayed out.. I might just edit the XML file to get it to report in ok order again so it isn't flashing red in the overview later.

[humbe]

I have to exercise these horses regardless, it's part of the deal of caring for them, so figgered I'd take Dakota for a ride up to Ray and ask him about where I can possibly acquire some lime. The landscape here is just perfect to ride around in though, so it didn't feel like work at all. Especially on a beautiful day like today.



Ray knows the old manager of the border shop. He expect they have leftover products from before they shut down. If I call the manager, I can probably find a time he's in the area, and he can come buy and let me buy some of that. He's not that often in the area anymore though. Ray's got 3 big bags of lime left over from his farming days too though. The big bags are a bit more expensive than buying bulk, but as we're short on cash and would rather have to wait until we can buy bulk, he'll sell them for bulk price $360 per bag. I'll have to come get them myself though.

That's awesome.. I can come back and buy a big bag later and can arrange to get fill up lime storage later when I hopefully can afford to do so.



A fast moving tractor with a front loader would make me self sufficient here. As it is, Stephen was nice enough to come by with a tractor and lift the bag up on my Ford. Will be interesting managing to get it off when I get back though.

Fetching groceries while I'm there, I'm down to $671 left.