Betrayed - Turning a Volvo into a farm - Yet another tiresome farm blog :)

[humbe]

I met my wife while we were both working for NATO in the Netherlands, but once our contract was up, I agreed to move up to Devon, UK with her and find a nice place to raise the kids there. It didn't take more than half a year though, before I was booted out the door. She kept the house, the kids and all I got from the settlement was my Volvo V60. Not knowing what to do, I've driven a bit around the countryside, and now my money has run all dry. I've payed for a few nights at this camping site, but that's it. What's a guy to do.. Time to look for another job.



With £17 left in the bank, I guess there's no hope left to hang on to my car, so I guess I'll have to sell it. Thankfully it's still only a couple years old, so it should be worth something. Lets get on the phone and make a for sale notice on some used vehicles site online.


And the scenario is as follows:

• Starting of from scratch on Sandy Bay map. Have bough the Volvo, made it a couple of years older to reduce the value of it, and afterwards lowered cash to £17. Sounds impossible, but on Sandy Bay map there's some territory that cost nothing.
• There will be no logging and no contracts in this game.
• The maximum loan I can have in the bank is half the value of my assets. For this matter I calculate assets as how many pounds I'd be left with if I went into the garage and sold everything.
• To ensure all loans actually cost some, I will only allow repayment of loans in January.
• Hard economy, default fuel usage, crop destruction, periodic plowing, lime and weeds on.
• Nine day season - Crop moisture, snow tracks and snow mode on.
• Will add some mods to have some cheap gear available, but the price need to sound halfway realistic.
• And of course no mods with income cheats like solar panels and government subsidies and the like. Greenhouses looked too good to be true too.

The sign when we got out of the tunnel said Sandy Bay.. I guess it's as good a place as any to try and find some work. It's not that far from the children so I can visit if I get back on my feet, and fate would have me being here when I got bankrupt, so lets see what we can find to do here. Lets walk up on the hill behind the camping wagon here and see if we can take a look of the bay..


It sure looks nice around here at least.

We took a ride into town too, and bought the local newspaper, the Sandy Bay Herald. There was some guy there with a helicopter pushing to get tourists to pay to take a ride with him, but as he had no business and I couldn't afford it, he offered me to come take a ride anyhow.. We sure got a nice view of the bay.


The camping wagon we rented is up to the left in this photo, left of the tunnel there, where we came from. There's a small buzzling town here, and quite a bit of farmland behind it.


There's even a circus in town.


The lighthouse is still operational. And there seems to be an industrial area beneath it..

[humbe]

Reading through the newspaper, we find no interesting job. At the very least we hoped that some of the farmers might need a farmhand or something but nada. I was starting to think I'd have to drive on to the next town but then I came upon a strange ad.

Seems the farmers around here is upset about the working conditions, and some have left. There's a farm up here, Foxbury Farm, where noone has lived for several months. The municipality has grabbed it, and is now offering to rent it out for no fee, for new farmers wanting to establish a farm here. It's a two year contract, with the possibility of renewal if still not established or possibly buying the place afterwards.

That sounds great, but do we have credits to be able to get gear to actually work a farm? Looking online at a link given there we find a photo of the farm.



There doesn't seem to be any old equipment at all on the farm. Though there is a silage bunker up there which might prove useful.

What can we possibly start of with that has the least entry cost? Looking into more details there seems to be a horse pen included in the property. If we could manage getting them grass or hay and some water, we might earn some dollars there. Sounds like a decent alternative as we don't need that much equipment for that, and there is a meadow around the new farm up towards the lighthouse.

We find an ad for someone wanting to sell his old Zetor tractor, which is a cheap Czech brand, which he is selling for £31.500. We'll give it a go. See what we can sell our Volvo for, and hopefully be able to afford getting enough gear to handle some horses.



We found some people living on the outskirts of town that could use a car. We managed to get £37.943 for it, which I guess we should be happy with. We will need all the money we can get though, so we went buy the bank and asked for a loan to establish the farm, and they were willing to l end us £15.000. Not a lot, but everything helps. That puts our total investment capital to £52.960.



The old farmer selling the Zetor 7745 Turbo also had a loading wagon and a mower we could buy which suited us just well. £8.000 for the Kuhn GMD 2811 was a bit higher than we had hoped for, but we haven't seen any cheaper for sale. The old SIP Pionir 20 loading wagon I got for only £3.400 though which sounded like a bargain.

That's £42.900 total, leaving us £10.060 to get a water trailer and I guess a trailer to haul horses in.



We were in luck, and found another farmer that was moving out. This one had a cow farm, and had an animal trailer he had been using for cows, but it should work for horses to he says. He also has a water trailer he has no more use for.

That's £4.400 for the animal trailer and £3.480 for the water trailer. Together with the first downpayment to the bank of £126 we now only have £84 pounds left. Yikes.. We'd better have enough to earn some money out of this..

I guess we should have gone for the even smaller water trailer we found in the paper, but it could only carry two thousand liters and looked hard to drive with, so we upped the ante and bought this Agrimat TE4100 trailer instead. The animal trailer is a Lizard 500 series trailer.

[humbe]

The grass in the horse paddock hadn't really started growing in March, and there was nothing to mow up in our meadow yet either, so we had to await April before we could mow some grass and get some horse food..



There seems to be a fairly sizable meadow up here.. You have to mind where you're driving though. If you go of the cliff you're a gonner.



Haven't grabbed much as of yet, but I want to get the horses as early as possible so we can start earning some cash, so let's go and fill up the pen with some grass and water and get some horses..



With a negative bank balance, we're late on two downpayments to the bank, so we better get some income soon. We found 8 horses to take care of in the paddock. It's quite a big and nice area, where the horses should be able to find plenty of fresh grass in summer.. I guess I have the work cut out for me now, taking care of all these horses.

It's spring, so one think one should be sowing grains or something, but without money for plow, seeder, especially not harvester, and no proper field that's out of the question this year.. But once the grass grows up, maybe I can make some silage and try to sell that to the biogas plant we saw down here. To be able to do that though, we need some more gear. At the very least a trailer able to haul it, and a front loader or something else able to load up the trailer.

[humbe]

It's a beautiful April morning, and we're collecting hay. After driving a small load of grass to the horse paddock to get going with the horses, the remaining strip of grass I mowed around the meadow have dried to hay.



The strip seems to be a bit more than one full load of 20.000 liters of hay. But where should we put it? There's some sort of silo on the farm, but it seems broken, and likely wouldn't store hay regardless. I guess the only option is to store it in the wagon, or to dump it on the ground somewhere. But I guess the hay shouldn't get wet, so we need to dump it under a roof. Maybe we can use the shed with the round roof, which has no walls, so we hopefully can use the loading wagon to load the hay back up when we need it.. Anyhow. This first load is going to the hungry horses.

[humbe]

For those interested, here's a list of the mods we're currently using.

	3rd person - To be able to view our character Added Realism For Vehicles - Haven't used this one before. Thought we'd test it out. I've been sliding around on the grass which I believe might be from this mod, and I've had some issues getting up the steep hill to the farm. We need every bit of the 80 hp of the tractor when using this mod together with the Vehicle Control Addon. Agrimat TE 4100 - The water trailer. Half the price of the Joskin one in game, but less than a third of the capacity. Amazone D9-30 - Smaller and cheaper seeder alternative than what's in game. Only 50 hp requirement so possible to use with old tractor. Only 600 liter storage, but still 3m working width and around 2/3rds of the price of the cheapest in base game. Display for tool position - Haven't got a front loader yet, but I'm hoping to use this mod to be able to operate front loader from the cab camera more. Flatbed trailer - Smaller and cheaper bale trailer than what's available in game. Only £1.200 for it, but really simple one at 6m length. Forward Speed Limiter - Driving the Volvo was a whole lot simpler when I could set a max speed. Hard to control speed with throttle when needing to drive carefully. Guidance Steering - To be able to mount GPS in tractors. Hauer Snow Pack - Test out in case there's snow here. Kuhn GMD 2811 - Cheap mower alternative. Half the price of the cheapest in game, and only require 37 hp, but only 2.7m working width. Lemken D27 55K - Cheap plow alternative. 1m working width for £3.600 requiring only 30 hp. Lizard 500 Series - The animal trailer we're using. Cheaper than in game model, but not really functioning worse, but looks much simpler and older tech. Doesn't feel totally right that it has no disadvantages compared to base game one to use though. MazePlus - Have no idea what to do with this yet, but we'll see if we get there during this game. MaizePlus Forage Extension - Same as above. Manure System - Same as above Metaltech PBC 8 / PB 16 - Bale trailer alternative. Bigger and more expensive than the flatbed trailer, but not autoloading as base game ones. Polish Vehicle And Equipment Pack - The Zetor was in this one. Randomes Grain Trailer - Cheap trailer alternative. Only £3.000 but only 6.000 liter capacity and not adjustable like the Strautmann SEK 801 in base game which can be configured to carry twice the amount. Sip Pionir 20 - Cheap loading wagon alternative. Much cheaper than base game ones, and still decent capacity and only require 40 hp so usable with small tractor. Took it in mostly because it looks the part and works with small tractor. Sandy Bay 10 1.1.0.0 - The map ;D Seasons - But of course Seasons Geo: Devon - Sounded fitting. Sipma Z230 - Cheap baler alternative. Timescale - To be able to forward time. As this one is in official modhub I started using this instead of Farm Forward. Ursus T127 - Round bale autoload trailer. Ursus Z586 - Cheap bale wrapper alternative. Vehicle Control Addon - Add realism, and adaptive steering. My Zetor now has 5 gears in low range and 5 gears in high range as it should have. Manually shifting. Should only have 2 reverse gears, but found no way to set that. Volvo V60 Inscription - For the initial Volvo pictures. Water/Milk Trailer - Really cheap water/milk trailer, but horrible to reverse with, so when I had money for the Agrimat one the choice was easy. Workshop Tabber - Must have Are all those from official modhub? I think maybe so. Tried to prioritize that now. I think most of these should be available on console too. No Courseplay or Follow Me or anything yet at least. Hoping I'll be able to stay away in this savegame..

[FSarndrone]

Just want to say you can pick up silage out of the silage pit with the loading wagon

[humbe]

Just want to say you can pick up silage out of the silage pit with the loading wagon

Ah.. Didn't check if the loading wagon could hold silage. But sounds a bit tricky in a silage bunker with 3 walls as I won't get too close to the back wall with a tractor in front, but I'll definately give it a go and see if I can dump the content close to the exit..

[humbe]

The closest non-private water source I've found is all the way down towards the city centre.. Too bad we don't get the water tank up on the farm to work. Anyhow, that one is also far away from the horse paddock, so i guess we should invest in drilling for a water source up there when we have the money.

[humbe]

We drilled up a small well up at the horses farm. It only came to £5.000 which will be money well invested saving us tons of trips down to the shore.
The horses are a tremendous income. Eight horses, and the owners are paying me around £8.550 a month, and as the horses gets in even better shape the income keeps improving a bit. They don't seem to require all that much to eat either. From what they've eaten so far we've estimated 24.000 liters of hay/grass in a year. Quite a lot of water though. Possibly 140.000 liters in a year, but with a water source close that should be ok. It doesn't cost us anything. Expenses will thus be low, making it quite a decent income for me to live of by itself. Well.. I've only got a two year contract on this farm though, so I guess I'll have to try and save up to buy it if I want to stay on. Or get money to buy another plot of land in the area.

The land cost is £130.000 for the Foxbury farm and the meadow out to the lighthouse, and £60.000 for the horse paddock. I likely need a bit more income if I'm to be able to buy both after just two years.



Summer is here and the grass is fully grown I believe. It doesn't really look it though. Maybe the grass here doesn't grow as tall as I'm used to. In any case, plenty of grass to mow, which we hope to be able to make silage out of and earn some extra dough. The air is fresh in the morning..

	The land didn't cost a dime, but it sounds a bit like cheating, so lets give us a goal to either actually buy it for a price that sounds fair, or move on elsewhere within two years.

[humbe]

No issues with speed cameras in a tractor that can't drive faster than 17 mph.. In any case, we're learning where the cameras are before we get anything faster



We eventually finished mowing the grass up on the meadow and transporting it into the bunker. We might have overfilled it a bit. We were a bit worried about getting the tractor stuck in the grass, but we managed to avoid it.



That's quite a lot of grass.. Took a long time to compact it. We ended up giving up using only the tractor, and buying a Holaras Stego 485 leveller to help us do it. We finally completed and put blankets on the silo. It took one and a half month to fully ferment, but now I seem to be having an issue..

I'm unable to get the blanket of the middle part of the silo. Thus we're unable to unload the silo. Strange..

	I opened the front and back of the silo.. I get no trigger to open the middle.. When I look in savegame in items.xml it says: Code: Select all <item className="BunkerSiloPlaceable" id="27" modName="FS19_Sandybay_19" filename="$moddir$FS19_Sandybay_19/Sellpoints/bunkerSiloSmall.xml" position="0.0000 0.0000 0.0000" rotation="0.0000 0.0000 0.0000" age="0" price="15000.000000" farmId="0" mapBoundId="BunkerSilo" seasonsYears="0.000000"> <bunkerSilo index="1" state="0" fillLevel="0.000000" compactedFillLevel="0.000000" fermentingTime="0.000000" openedAtFront="false" openedAtBack="false" inputFillType="CHAFF" outputFillType="SILAGE"/> <bunkerSilo index="2" state="0" fillLevel="0.000000" compactedFillLevel="0.000000" fermentingTime="0.000000" openedAtFront="false" openedAtBack="false" inputFillType="CHAFF" outputFillType="SILAGE"/> <bunkerSilo index="3" state="0" fillLevel="0.000000" compactedFillLevel="0.000000" fermentingTime="0.000000" openedAtFront="false" openedAtBack="false" inputFillType="CHAFF" outputFillType="SILAGE"/> <bunkerSilo index="4" state="0" fillLevel="0.000000" compactedFillLevel="0.000000" fermentingTime="0.000000" openedAtFront="false" openedAtBack="false" inputFillType="CHAFF" outputFillType="SILAGE"/> <bunkerSilo index="5" state="3" fillLevel="295777.781250" compactedFillLevel="279706.968750" fermentingTime="259200000.000000" openedAtFront="true" openedAtBack="true" inputFillType="SILOGRASS" outputFillType="GRASS_FERMENTED"/> <bunkerSilo index="6" state="0" fillLevel="0.000000" compactedFillLevel="0.000000" fermentingTime="0.000000" openedAtFront="false" openedAtBack="false" inputFillType="CHAFF" outputFillType="SILAGE"/> </item> so it doesn't appear to have a middle state. Just front and back that is stated as opened.. Anyone know what issue this is or how I can get around it? Anything to avoid not to trigger it?

[FSarndrone]

If you start picking up the silage the cover will automatically come off

[humbe]

If you start picking up the silage the cover will automatically come off

I was hoping that too.. Guess it might have been wrong decision to drive loading wagon into it.. It dug up big holes and filled the wagon and I almost got stuck in there..

As it seems like a bug, I made a loan, and bought some gear to test out if I could fix it and sell it back (seasons) for same amount of money.. I tried the MES 400 leveller, and managed to move around some of the silage with that, but not the silage on the sides in front of the middle blanket. I've tried conveyor belts and they managed to get quite a bit of silage out, but haven't managed to get all out. I've tried front loader, but doesn't manage to pick up what remains in that either. I guess I'll retry from other angles and see if I can figure something out.

Tried to edit items.xml to clear content out of the silage bunker, but that didn't work either. The content in there is stored somewhere else.

I'll post a screenshot next time I attempt picking it up if I don't manage..

[humbe]

Failed to get content out of silo. Prayed to God to get back into a working state, and now it all seems good again..

	Nothing seemed to work getting the content out of the bunker silo. I'm guessing it was due to content spilling on the top of the bunker walls. Ended up getting away from it by repainting ground in bunker silo to get rid of the content and editing savegame to try and correct it to what it should have been.

After delivering all the silage to the BGA, we ended up with a total of £57.754 from the silage operation. That's quite a bit of money. If we manage to get some similar from the second grass harvest this year, we will have made quite a decent income this first year.

[humbe]

So.. To summarize the grass operation.. What would simplify it? A mower with higher working width would be great. A decent windrower would be good too. The loading wagon worked well to collect the grass, but not so great to fill or empty the bunker. We should likely get a shovel to push the grass around to level it, so we can drop all the grass in the middle of the bunker. A milling machine to pick up the grass would also be great, but that would also require us to get a trailer to dump it into, as the loading wagon requires the input to come from the ground.

Something like this would be a good upgrade:

Code: Select all

Kuhn SR 314 windrower (8.5m ww)                   - £23.000
Holaras MES 400 (move chaff)                      - £ 6.800
Lizard Milling Machine                            - £ 5.000
Joskin Trans-Space 8000 trailer (31000l capacity) - £35.000

A windrower to use less time with loading wagon, a shovel to move chaff around in bunker to more easily load it even, and a milling machine and a trailer that makes it simpler to unload the bunker.

A better mower cost quite a bit, but worse, also requires a stronger tractor, so I have to save up for a better tractor first.

[Mwal]

There is an old ih swather that would fit your operation beautifully if you like when I get home I can open the xml and figure out where I found it