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

[humbe]

That new plow sure has been useful.. We managed to plow up the field while still in April, and are working hard with 3 tractors on the field to try and complete seeding within April..



Brenda is rolling stones, I'm seeding, and Bud is grabbing the stones that Brenda is missing. Laurie has been to the shop to get more seeds and are helping me refill the seeder without having to drive far. Sadly we've missed at least one stone which I seeded over, and thus can't be grabbed with a front loader. And we've seen a few medium stones.. Not sure why they came up.. But all in all looks good.

It takes forever to seed this new large field with a 2.1 meter working width seeder though. About time to upgrade that on..

[humbe]

Seeding takes forever in the huge field. Doesn't look like we'll be able to complete in April. We can't work too late. The 1206 doesn't have lights, and it's pretty hopeless to see where we have already seeded and not.. To cut down on the time, we've started liming the areas that we have seeded, though liming we can complete later with no fuss..



The JD's windshield vipers are working hard.. Lovely detail in the mod. Also like how the window ends up looking as the tractor gets dirty. Looks pretty authentic.

Looking to see if we can find a seeder we could use to up the speed, we've found that it might be possible to get a hold of a JD B 12ft Grain Drill. It's an old machine, but compared to our old European seeder with 2.1m working, it has a 3.6m working width, a bit more seed storage, and can also fertilize while seeding, which could be an interesting option. We haven't found one for sale yet though. We have however found a shop that still sells the machine as it was new, but at ten thousand bucks we can't currently afford it. But it sounds like a very nice upgrade for us, so I think we will try and get that before sowing next crops after we harvest Sorghum.

Have no idea how I've missed this mod up till now? It's even on modhub.. Maybe it's a new mod. Sadly not a no-till drill, but still a nice upgrade for use. Thought the IH 5100 drill was available 80ish, but the mod tags years on equipment says 1983, so I guess I will keep to that. Will show pictures and details when I can afford it



The lime wagon we have is also out of date with this large field. With the 3m working width it takes forever to complete, and with the limited lime storage, the wagon went only one and a half time around the headland before it was empty, so we need to refill a lot. Have yet to find a good replacement for it though. We need something with bigger lime storage, and hopefully a bit higher working width. Something that can throw the lime around a bit wider than the actual machine.

Have yet to find one of American brand. I do believe bigger spreaders existed at the time, though I have no good details of that either. Considering buying something Lizard or European with unknown manufacturer year, that is a decent upgrade but still far from the new and updated ones. But would be nice to find something actually US branded known to be from the period. I can understand US players wanting to use US equipment have an issue finding all they want The Lizard N-035 RNW-3 looks like something that should exist at the time, though I think it's a copy of a polish one, though I'd prefer one with slightly higher working width. Maybe like 9m or something. Still way less than the modern ones, but enough to not need a ton of time to lime.

Liming is currently a ~2 hour task on the new field, and seeding even longer. And that is if I'm ready to fill up the tanks immediately every time they go empty. Would be nice to get field work to less than 1 hour real time at least, for playability. Though I guess the equipment size would be fine for a real farm..

[humbe]

It's getting late. April is soon done, and we're working late nights.. We really want to get field ready.



We can't lime after a growth stage happens, and while seasons in FS19 grew at times depending on when you seeded, in FS22 everything grows at midnight, even if sowed 5 minutes earlier. Rolling parts after other parts have already grown doesn't sound great either, and if we want to sow another crop on this field this year, we need some time to harvest and sow again too, so would be nice to complete.



Late evening work. With the 1206 not having headlights, everyone is helping out to light up the field. And not only is it raining, there's thunder.. But after a lot of effort, we finally complete and manage to finish plowing, seeding, rolling and liming within April.. Phew.. We have to do something about this for next time.. We need to hopefully do less and faster passes on the fields.. What are we doing now?

• Cultivating field. Plowing every 3rd year I reckon. 3m working width plow which should be able to work at 15 kph, but which we struggle to do at speed. Though using helpers, they drive a lot faster than I can do myself. 3m working width cultivator, able to work at 14kph.
• Removing stones, mostly by rolling, but occasionally with front loader.
• Liming every third year. With ~3m ww spreader going at 14 kph, but that can only store 1400 liters of lime.
• Sowing oilseed radish. To get a cheap fertilization layer. Using seeder with 2.1m ww going at 10 kph, with room for 250 liters of seed.
• Cultivating again to get oilseed radish into the ground.
• Removing stones again.
• Seeding the actual crop.
• Rolling again.
• Fertilizing the second stage. Solid fertilizer using a spreader with 6m ww, going at 12 kph, with space for 300 liters of solid fertilizer.
• Weeding, unless plowing same year, using a 4.6 m ww weeder going at 18 kph.
• Harvesting, with 4.5m header and space for 6540 liters of grain. A bit unsure of working speed here.

That's 10-11 step depending on whether we need to lime or not. And several of these steps gets lengthy with our small equipment.

Bud's not happy with all the extra burdens of the extra field, and the whole family pretty much agree, now is the time to start prioritizing getting better equipment, rather than extend fields. We're at the family limit with current equipment. First goals is to get a new seeder, and we've also heard that a disc harrow could help us to prepare the field for sowing without digging up stones. If we could do that we could skip two passes to roll stones. And with the seeder we have in mind, we can also do the second fertilization step while seeding, though that may get a bit tedious as the fertilization store in the seeder is limited.

For next time we need to lime, it would also be able to get a lime wagon that could hold more lime, and preferably have a bit higher working width. Have yet to find anything of US brand that looks time correct though. I think the tech was there at this time, but haven't found a mod. I might introduce something that could hopefully look the part..

May 1978

May has finally hit, but no rest for the weary farmers..



All our equipment is dirty after the overtime in April. We at least need to clean the windows before going out weeding.

I like this mod. Looks so much more time correct than the high pressure washer in base game.



Four fields to remove weeds from. Thankfully we have a great JD rotary hoe that works great for weeding. High speed with good working width.

Our JD is the only tractor we have narrows for. We could probably drive in the field with any tire at this stage, but narrows work fine, and does less damage if we manage to touch into barley fields.

[humbe]

Harvesting barley from fields 1, 2 and 5 went quickly. The fields are small. We devided to leave the fields as is for now. In a month or two, we'll sell our soybeans from last year, and that should give us a decent income, to see if we can buy a disc harrow or see if we can get some tool to simplify preparing field for sowing again.

For now, let's run a bit of cost analysis. We've been tracking expenses for field work, so lets summarize. This is the cost of field work we've tracked. It isn't averaged through a lot of runs and could vary a bit. For instance, the cost taken from smaller fields is likely higher than for bigger fields as the overhead compared to the actual field driving is larger.

This are all costs based on our very cheap used vehicles and equipment. As maintenance costs are based on initial purchase price, which is small for used gear, maintenance cost is really low on our current gear. We do have low working width, so we have driven quite a while with the tractors, but then I don't think they use that much fuel either.

Code: Select all

      Cultivating    $   22.707 per hectares (2 of 3 years this will be the cost.)
      Plowing               ??               (1 in 3 years this will be the cost. Normalize after tracking plow cost)
      Rolling stones $   11.793 per hectares
      Liming         $   18.866 per hectares (this is one third of the price to normalize per year)
      Lime used      $  248.598 per hectares (this is one third of the price to normalize per year)
      Sowing oilseed $   39.391 per hectares
      100 l seed     $   80.000 per hectares
      Cultivating    $   22.707 per hectares
      Rolling stones $   11.793 per hectares
      Sowing         $   48.685 per hectares
      500 l seed     $  400.000 per hectares
      Rolling        $   11.793 per hectares
      Fertilizing    $   10.417 per hectares
      Solid Fert.    $  340.542 per hectares (187.111 liter per hectares for $1.820 per liter
      Weeding        $   22.823 per hectares
      Harvesting     $  127.769 per hectares
      -------------------------------------
      Sum cost:      $ 1417.884 per hectares

Barley base yield: 9600 barley and 36800 straw.
Got 18958.024 liters per hectares => 1.9748 => +97.48% yield on average.
Got 72218.053 liters of straw per hectares => 1.962447 => +96.24% yield on average.
(Some of the straw got dropped outside our land, so we couldn't pick it up, thus the yield looks a bit lower for the straw. It was probably the same, but doesn't look it as we missed a bit of it.)

Assuming $60 per 1000 liter straw and $428 per 1000 liters of barley, incoming is

Code: Select all

      Barley   $  8114.034 per hectares
      Straw    $  4333.083 per hectares
      ---------------------------------
      Total    $ 12447.117 per hectares

With the train station giving +50% prices, we can get more than the above. Also, if we convert barley to flour, 18958 liters of barley becomes 14534 liters of flour, and flour prices are $835 at a good price. That's $12136, which is almost a 50% gain on the pure barley price. (There is also a production cost to deduct, but it's pretty low I think..

But assuming we just sell the barley and straw directly at the prices above (which is very conservative given the train station can give us way more), without any yield gain we'd get ~$6318 per hectares, and 2.5% of that is $157, which is considerably more than our current cost for rolling. 15% of that is $947 which is way more than our current cost for applying lime, and plow. 20% is way more than cost of weeding, and 23% is $1453 which is way more than fertilization costs.. So all the various yield improvements on the field is very much worth it..

[humbe]

June and July 1978

We got a good price for our soybeans in June and decided to sell all. Around 27 thousand liters gave us a massive $53723 in income, and we decided to spend some of it on some equipment upgrades:



The JD 110 disc harrow cost us $15000. Our old cultivator has a 3 meter working width, and a working speed of 14 kph, requiring 20 hp. The disc harrow has a 3.7m working width and a working speed of 18 kph, and should not dig up stones. All in all this should improve operations quite a bit.. However, it requires 80 hp, which may get a bit rough.

It turns out both the JD and the Massey have issues pulling it, and while the 1206 can do it, the working speed is more like 6 kph, which surprised me a bit, as the IH has 120 horses and should pull it along well as far as we could figure. Well.. When we finally get ourself a bigger tractor, it should help a lot.

The John Deere B 12' grain drill looks like a great seeder. We got it for $10000. Dunno why we haven't noticed it before. It isn't a new seeder. It has been around since the sixties I think, so dunno why we haven't seen it when scanning the used market. 3.6m working width and 15 kph working speed, compared to our old one with 2.1 meter working at 10 kph. But again, while the old seeder requires 20 hp, the new one requires 60. Turns out it is sadly slow going with all our tractors. The seeder can also fertilize and thus has chambers for both seed and fertilizer, and with the saddle tanks we bought extra, we can bring quite a bit onto the field.

All in all, the equipment looks great, but a bigger and stronger tractor would be really useful to leverage it. For some reason, all the tractors work great with the gear when helpers are driving, but slow going when I'm manually driving. Which is fine if the real reason is the tractors aren't big enough, but the same thing seems to happen also with our 10 hp mower and 34 hp tedder, so it smells like something is wrong to me.



We also found a Massey Ferguson 6 wheel hay rake, which was just launched this year (1978). Looks great. Only 30 hp required, and can windrow grass and hay, covering 4 meters per pass. At $2000 it wasn't that expensive either.

In July we did the first grass harvest on the new grass field. We still have around 90 thousand liters of hay, so we decided to test out the silage bunker and see if we could earn some money that way.



I think there's around 48 thousand liters of grass in the bunker, but it doesn't look like much. I guess the bunker is dimensioned for a bigger grass field. Still quite a bit of work with the grass harvest though. Used loading wagon to get the grass into the bunker, and hopefully we can use loading wagon to get silage into the silo too.

Oilseed was planted in fields 1,2 & 5 in June, and in July we prepared the field for sowing again. It was also time to apply lime again, as it's three years since we started this farm.

In August, the Sorghum should hopefully be ready for harvest, which will keep us busy a while.

[humbe]

August 1978

The Sorghum harvest has begun



Better start early. There's a lot of Sorghum to harvest. The new truck sure is useful for the harvester to be able to stay in the field and harvest as efficient as possible.

Looking around the fields here, I don't really notice that the quality of graphics is reduced beyond the inner circle. The color of sorghum and wheat painted much simpler still match the good quality graphics in front



That's no longer the case here. The part that I have already harvested always seems to show as brown regardless of what has been harvested, so the transition between good and bad quality graphcis is really noticeable. One would think the field back there had already been cultivated. Would be nice if they used a texture color more fitting to harvested Sorghum shown in front.

We got around 73 thousand liters of Sorghum from field 6, 9 & 10, and the new big field. Field 11 I reckon, has not been harvested yet. That one has not been fully fertilized. I guess we forgot about the second fertilization step. Well.. Well.. Too late for that now. But still there should be quite a bit of Sorghum there.

[humbe]

Harvesting our new, big, field, we got almost 71 thousand liters of sorghum on what measured to 5 hectares. We calculated that the harvest cost us $63.3 per hectares. Cheap compared to all the grains we harvested of course. But the harvester is naturally a lot more expensive vehicle than our use tractors, so it costs more to maintain and use considerable more fuel.

In total we now have 144159 liters of sorghum, and we have 9110 liters of barley left for the chickens. If we grow barley we can hopefully harvest in June, how much sorghum do I need to keep for chicken food?

The chickens seems to eat a bit less than 3000 liters a month. The pen is full with 500 chickens and all should be adults or close to now, so I'm guessing the food consumption doesn't go up a lot from here. For 10 months that's around 30000 liters. If I hang on to ~30.000 liters of sorghum I think I should have enough food.

Our mill can turn 15 liters of sorghum to 16 liters of flour, 960 times per month, thus it will consume 14400 liters per month. Flour prices are high in December, which is 4 months from now. By then we hopefully have turned 57600 liters of Sorghum into 61440 liters of flour to sell.

Hopefully, in December we'll be able to get a new tractor. We've been looking into the closest JD dealer around here, and we found the new 40 series.



It costs a lot of money, but it would be awesome. Hopefully it can pull our new and bigger equipment at full working speed as it's strong and we can get it as 4WD. It's also got a front PTO which may become useful. Hopefully also a better gear box. And of course, it's got a cab, decent lights for when it gets dark, a nice radio and a comfy seat.

Assuming we will need ~36.000 liters of chicken food per year, we can calculate how much grains we need to produce. Barley has the highest yield, thus sounds like the most efficient chicken food. Assuming the chickens don't eat different amounts of different types of food, but I don't think that is the case.

Barley has a yield of 9600 liters/hectares. With a 95% yield bonus, that is 18720 liters/hectares. We should thus have enough chicken food from 2 hectares of barley. Field 6 & 8 is a bit more than 2 hectares in total. For the other fields, we have the option of producing something else, like for instance wheat or canola. We can make flour of wheat or oil of canola. We should try to run a little income analysis before deciding.

• If we go for wheat, we are likely to get 1.95 * 8900 = 17355 liters per hectares, which can become 13884 liters of flour. A good flour price of $835 is then $11593.
• For barley, we can get 18720 liters which will become 14352 liters of flour, to a price of 11984.
• Canola, we can get 11310 liters, which can become 5655 liters of canola oil, which can be sold for $2408 per 1000 liters if we get a good price. That is $13617. More than wheat and barley, but we don't get straw. 71760 liters of straw is worth around $4305 if we get a good price.

Thus, canola is simpler to harvest as we get less yield, and we don't have to handle a lot of straw. But the straw is actually worth enough that barley is likely more total return, and wheat slightly less.

Another thing to consider is that the mill can process 7200 liters of canola/month, or 14400 liters of barley or 12000 liters of wheat. Even with the lower canola yield, the mill will still use longer going through a hectares of canola, than a hectares of barley.

Thus, it sounds like we can just as well go barley all the way here to maximize profits.

[humbe]

Still in August.. A busy month..

After harvesting the last field with oats, we realize, straw handling is a lot of effort. With a 7000 liters capacity on our loading wagon we were driving back and forth quite a bit to get the straw stored away. We might want to go for Canola for the additional fields anyhow. We won't earn maximum amount of bucks per acre we have here, but we'll have a more manageable workload I hope.

After harvesting it's time to prepare the fields for oilseed radish.




The disc harrow was harder to pull than we had imagined. But the 1206 seems to be up to the task. With the 1206 at least I can slowly pull it to handle what helpers don't want to help me with, but using helpers to speed it up. I feel like I'm hit by some sad bug meaning that many of my equipment that I've got plenty of power to pull is still not working well :/..

After the harrow has done its job, Bud can sow the field using the new seeder.




The new seeder doesn't look brand new like in the catalogue though. Buying it "new" we thought it would look new. I guess it was refurbished or something but didn't bother with the paint job.

Laurie is running the lime wagon, and Brenda ensures more lime is easily available when we need it.

With the new equipment, we should be able to finish work in reasonable time, and have some spare time, rather than having to work in the dark.

[humbe]

September 1978

September has come. We've got some oilseed to dig into the dirt, and new crops to sow. The small fields have already grown canola a bit, and needs weeding.



Weeding, however, didn't go as expected.. Our weeder has previously managed to get all the weeds, but that no longer works. I guess weed grow faster when using the disc harrow instead of the cultivator, so we can't get them all early enough. Don't remember the details, but guessing some weeds skip the first growth stage, so even though it's the first stage I see them, I can't weed them yet.

So.. What do we do then? Do we allow the seed to grow? It's not that many at least.. How will this be on our bigger fields? Is it possible to use our weeder before we notice the weed? Though if we do, it would be tedious as we won't be able to see what area we have covered or not.

Taking a trip to the pub to talk to some neighbor farmers and get some ideas, we find this magazine..



This looks like it might be able to do the job of getting rid of the remaining weeds. Sadly, it's a specialized IH piece of equipment needing a custom IH connection, so we will only be able to use this on our 1206. But the IH shop actually has one stowed away, so we decided to buy one. $1500 to get the connection mounted on our tractor, and $4250 for the equipment itself.



Yay.. It works at least.

Though it has its issues. This came with the International 06 Series mod where my 1206 is from. I guess due to the specialized connection and custom parts, neither built in helper nor courseplay understand that it's there and why, so I'll have to manually drive all the time to use it, unless I manage to put another implement on the back to trick the game to thinking we're doing something else maybe.

But it does the job, and is time correct (magazine is buyers guide from late 60's and early 70's), and there's a very limited amount of hoes available, so figured I'd have to try it out .. When I grow too tired, I guess I will opt for spraying. Unless I manage to get away using the regular weeder.

Another issue manually weeding like this, is that there's weeds covering 100% of the field, but only a few shows. So driving from visual clues, you can leave out many strips where weed technically grows so you get less yield. Would be nice if you had taken care of 100% of the weed if you had removed everything visible. As when harvesting, would be great if you had harvested 100% of the field if no plants were left standing.

[humbe]

A new issue with the new equipment...



It's just too darn big to get into the workshop. I guess we may need to move the tools outside until we get a bigger shed to setup our workshop. This goes for the hoe, the weeder we had, the harrow, the seeder and the extra seed and fert tanks. Would be nice if the bigger gear was foldable like our roller. As long as I can tip the tip of the tractor inside, it works, but would be nice to get it into another space.



We need more fertilizer to use in our new seeder. For some reason, the shopowner had a lot of small fertilizer bags that he seems to want to get rid of. They're only $50 for 50 liters of fertilizer. With big bags we're paying $1820 for 1000 liters. So we figured to save some money buying the small bags, but it was quite a job to get them all loaded into the truck..



With our implements no longer fitting inside the barn door, we decided to stack our stuff on the outside for easy access. Should hopefully have enough for a while now..

Brenda and Laurie are currently busy running the harrow and the seeder through our fields. Afterwards I think it's just rolling and we're pretty much done for September at least..

[humbe]

Ouch.. All that back-breaking stacking of 50 kg fertilizer bags, and all are gone before we're done seeding. Got some big bags to make transport and storage a bit easier.



While seeding the big field, we decided to empty out the silage bunker too. 48793 liters of silage. Should net us a bit more than ten thousand bucks at least. Looks like misuse of our loading wagon to use it for silage, but it's so much easier than grabbing everything with a bucket. Hope we don't damage the wagon..

Had some technical difficulty with the bunker. As I have had before too. Trying to see if I could open it without a frontloader and a bucket, I saw I could open ends of bunker pressing R, but after doing so, the middle part was not opened, and I found no way at all to open it.

Ended up editing savegame to make placeables.xml state false in openedAtFront and openedAtBack, and then I got back into a state where I could open the rest with a bucket. Annoying. But seem to remember I've hit this bug before. Haven't used silage bunkers much.

[humbe]

Finally, we're done with September work... Cultivating, seeding and rolling.. And emptying the silage bunker.. Horses ridden and animals fed.



I get really annoyed with any spots not being covered, but I should try to not worry about missing something, and rather prioritizing getting the majority covered easy.

A bit annoying with the rolling required in the old field which I painted over. And meadow grass I've cut earlier, has applied a fertilize layer outside of the field. There's some route from autodrive or courseplay there too, which I can't seem to get rid of from the map for some reason.

This exact screen has bugged a bit for me lately. Many times, the Filters menu and the left menu has disappeared.. I can switch menus using q and e keys, and all the other menus show, but when I get to this one, I seem to lose the overlays. If I manage to guess where the arrows are though, I can press the screen and shift between showing crop types and field states and so on. A bit annoying


October 1978

October is here, and the air seems cooler and fresher.. But weeds have gotten into all our new fields.. *sigh*.

And neither courseplay nor default helper wants to understand how to use the hoe, and even if I put another implement behind, they raise the hoe before starting to drive.

We did however find sort of a work around.



With follow me, I can get the following tractor to drive on and follow the vehicle in front without messing with the tools. The weeder on the first tractor isn't really necessary though, as the hoe removes everything.

Removing all the weeds I'm back to +98% yield. Doing nothing I'd be at +83% it seems, and only using the weeder and not the hoe would leave me at +90% or whereabouts it seems. I tired doing fields manually, so i was wondering about just using the weeder for the rest, but I'll test the follow me trick to see if that works out ok.

[humbe]

After completing the weeding, we did a grass harvest. Now, with two fert layers, we got like 55 thousand liters of grass. We hope that the 65 thousand liters of hay we've got stored is enough until spring, so we put all of it in the bunker. Takes some time to compact it, as we have no big vehicles, but eventually completed.

After rolling the grass field, October work should be complete. It's winter time, and that means vacation time on the farm. Not much needing to be done apart from tending to animals.

November 1978

November is here, and egg price is good. Selling all the eggs we have stored away. $2.102 per liter and we've got 22850 liters of egg. $48041 for the lot. That helps .. About time with some income. Using up all our money for seed and fertilizer earlier in autumn we were slightly in the red after property maintenance and water costs.



After emptying the silage from the bunker and storing it in the silo and tending the animals, we can rest the rest of November..

December 1978

Winter has come.. It is snowing..



Brenda keeps up with the riding, even though it's snowing and the temperatures are low..



We manage to find a price for flour just above a dollar per liter, so we sell a truckload of flour. That's $72165. A lot of our sorghum harvest, though we still have around 60 thousand liters of Sorghum to make more flour of.

January 1979

And it's a new year.. What will it bring ..

We hoped to sell some silage now in January.. The train station said they'd pay $285 per 1000 liters, but we failed to find anyone willing to take our silage. I think they might only accept bales. The animal dealer buys lose silage luckily, but for only $192 and going downwards. But lets try to sell what we have regardless.

[humbe]

About time to sell our milk too. We've managed to get enough to fill the 13000 liter container here, and still have a bit more than 2000 liters to sell. The truck is very useful. Woulda taken forever in our old tractor trailers. $755 per thousand liters is a good price I guess.



Finally, the tomatoes are also a good time to sell. The train yard is willing to buy them for $825 per 1000 liters. I guess that just leaves us with some wool to sell later in spring, and some more flour the mill is still working on creating. Otherwise, we've sold last years crops and produce. All in all that leaves us with 161 thousand dollars to invest.

Time to look for some investments to ease work at the farm..

[humbe]

First things first.. We need a new tractor.



The JD 4440 was the strongest in the 4000 series coming out last year. It looks like a dream compared to our current tractors. While we can't get a good used deal on this one, I can't resist buying this amazing new piece of machinery now. Our disc harrow is even in the commercials here, so it should pull it easily



Driving home from the shop, we are impressed with the gearbox. What an improvement from our older tractors. Power shifting will be good. The view out of the cab is good. Though a bit sad the mirrors doesn't fit in the image on my wide-screen, as they are useful when driving from within cab. Not a big deal though, as with VCA, I look through the back window when reversing.



We just had to do a tractor lineup. Weighing in at 8.4 tons, the 1206 is actually almost as heavy with its 7.1 tons. But the 4440 is four wheel drive, 146 hp and we went for a 3-point hitch in front and wide tires with extra weights on the back wheels. It can also get narrows and a front loader, though we didn't get those at this time. An optional weight for the front also sounded useful.

When we had money in our pockets and went by the shop, we also found some other equipment we think will be useful.



The JD 6000 Hi-Cycle sprayer I think will be useful. With our bigger fields, getting rid of weeds have taken quite a bit of time. With this sprayer we can use herbicide and spray 14 meter wide area while driving. We can also use it to apply liquid fertilizer. I think we'll test out not taking the time to plant oilseed, and rather fertilize once with the sprayer. It will be a bit more expensive, but should save us some work, and hopefully not cut into our margins too much..

Was actually hoping to use the JD 250 spray cart, but it isn't invented yet. It came in 1984 as far as I can see, and 5 years is quite a bit of time

And then we found a new awesome looking machine in the shop. The HX20 rotary cutter. With this, we can mow grass in a 6.2 meter wide strip at a time, and I think we may even use it to mulch after harvest. We'll test it out next harvest.