Oak Glen Farm

With the Euro Truck Community Event looking like it will start on Thursday (coding permitting) I can put a bit more time into our Farm. I left the last post with a list of decisions that were hanging over my farm at that point and I didn’t even mention Pigs! A couple of mugs of farmer-strength tea and two of the listed options have been taken. I bought a Tedder so I can take on hay making and I bought the other small grass field – no 32 halfway up the valley. I decided that it’s not yet time for Chickens – checking Wheat and Barley prices shows them at a low so I won’t be sowing those as crops in this cycle which in turn means I’d have to buy chicken feed.

I got talking to one of the other farmers at the roadside cafe (translation – watching play-through videos on YouTube) and he suggested that I might find a different seeder better for my situation than the Stara Ceres. After all, I’m harrowing the field and fertilizing it with other equipment anyway so I’m not really using the Ceres’ 3-in-1 capability. A different option would be one of the Horsch, Kuhn or Vaderstad range. I’d get a wider sowing track and an easier vehicle to line up for each pass. I took that idea on-board and that’s yet another decision to be made before choosing our next crop.

After fertilizing my cultivated field with the Amazone spreader, I emptied out some residual seed from the Ceres seeder and took it to the shop to trade in – £33k back as it’s almost brand new (a loss of £6k). I decided to get the Horsch Pronto 6AS and its associated seed tank – total cost £36k. For that I’m getting a 6m sowing width over a 3.6m one and I only need a 60HP tractor to pull it so if I decide to get a second tractor to ease the workload on the Fendt, I can get another small one in the 80-100HP range and those can be relatively cheap. There is a hidden saving too – When I went to sow my field with this new seeder, I didn’t hire a worker so there were no wages to pay 🙂

I’ve decided that Oats will be our next crop and that’s what I’m sowing here with the new Horsch…
…It folds up nicely for transport between fields……and it fits inside our small sheds, which the Ceres didn’t, so I can park it out of the way between jobs 🙂

After sowing my oats – you can read that how you want 😉 I took the mowers up to field 32 and harvested the grass, then baled it for silage. There was one bale less than when I harvested it for a contract – I suspect Mason hadn’t bothered to fertilize after the previous crop. Silage prices have taken a hit because of the amount of contract grass harvest jobs I have been doing so I’ve decided to keep the silage bales until things improve – with no pigs, the bunker silo for manure is a good place to store them…

Then it was time to take the spreader up to our new grass field and fertilize. Back down to the farm after completing that job and I found that my Oats are already showing through so into the main field to fertilize that crop too……Then a trip to the shop to replenish our fertilizer supply. We’re into evening and it’s time to take a break. There’s a big harvest contract available in field 36 so I might take that tomorrow. It should pay very well but it will take a very large chunk out of my day. We’ll see how my crop is looking in the morning…