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It’s the start of the second in-game day on the farm and our canola crop is now in full bloom……We have an early start planned. A trip to the shop to buy mowing and baling equipment for our new venture. Then it’s time to buy one of those small fields – I chose field 4 as it is conveniently close to my farm.

First into action is the mower. I’ve tried to keep the cost down and also to have a compact set-up for my small field. I bought the Pottinger Novacat 301ED for the front mounting. The Hire jobs have been pairing this with the New Holland Discbine for the rear mower but I find that a bit unwieldy so I went looking for the Pottinger equivalent as an alternative. The Novacat 302ED is no longer in the FS19 version of the game (it used to be in FS17) but fortunately it is available from the modhub. Total cost £26.5k……and now the advantage of having a tractor with front and rear power outputs is clear 🙂

After mowing it’s time to sweep the grass clippings into rows to make them easier for the Baling Machine to pick up. That’s the job of the Kuhn GA9531 Windrower……It’s quite a bulky item but fortunately it maneouvres quite well once you get the hang of it! That’s another £28k spent.

Then it’s time to do the baling. This is one area where I didn’t skimp. I could have purchased a New Holland baler and an Anderson wrapper for around £65k but I chose the all in one option of the Kuhn FBP3135. I already had experience of this machine from doing the hire jobs so I felt it was the right choice. It cost £76K. Here is a rear shot taken as it wraps a bale……You choose the colour of the wrap when you purchase the baler – I went with black because that seems to be one of the more popular colours here in the UK.

Finally it’s the turn of the Ursus autoload trailer. This is an essential for reliably collecting your bales – or there are two Anderson equivalents that cost a bit more but can carry more bales. My small field produced 5 bales which I took up the valley to the stables……where I sold them for £7599. It’s quite a big outlay for an initially small return but I then took a contract for a large field belonging to my neighbour paying £2869 and earned a further £5786 as my cut of the harvest. Doing contract work and buying myself another field should see this equipment paid for in a reasonably short time. Sometimes there’s even an unexpected bonus at the end of a contract job……I delivered 16 bales from the field at which point the contract was complete, so I get to keep the 17th bale 🙂

There are 3 levels of difficulty you can play this game at. New Farmer is the easiest giving you lots of money, some equipment and high prices for crops. Farm Manager which gives you a £1.25m starting budget with no land or equipment and middling price returns for your harvests – that’s the level I’m playing this save on. And then there’s the Start from Scratch level where you have only £500k and prices paid for crops are a pittance. It occurred to me that you could set yourself up with this equipment and two small fields in the hardest level and do reasonably well, at least on a map like this one where there are plenty of grass fields requiring mowing! I did a quick test of the theory in a different save and it is certainly possible.

Back on Oak Glen Farm it will soon be time to buy a Harvester for our crop – and then we’ll be able to take some harvesting jobs for other farmers too 🙂