Haut-Beyleron – FS22 Start from Scratch

Following on from our Swiss sojourn, it’s time to set up farm in France. Starting from Scratch means I have no land or equipment – just €500k in the bank. It also means that the money paid for produce and for any work I do for other farmers is reduced. This is going to be a bit of a struggle to begin with 🙂

I didn’t want to start where the game would like me to – the prepared plot that I showed in my FS22 Intro post. I was looking for a cheap field that I could build a farmhouse next to. We all have different criteria for choosing that field – for example, one video gamer wanted a field where the crop was ready to harvest. I wasn’t too worried about a crop although, the presence of Cotton, Potatoes or Sugar Beet would put me off because of the need to hire specialist equipment at harvest time – there’s a part of me that wants to be owning my Harvester by the time the crop is ready. I’m not sure whether I can achieve that though!

Looking at the Haut-Beyleron map, I can see that there are a number of small fields to the north of the river…

…The cheapest of which is field 2. I paid a visit to that field and field 1 as well. At the time I was starting my game field 2 had Grass sown – potentially a good earner over a period of time – and field 1 had just been cultivated ready for the next crop. The issue was the surrounding land – steep hillsides. The in-game farmhouse costs €150k but then you get charged for additional landscaping and the cost could have risen to double that. Fields 7 and 8 didn’t really work either for the same reason and field 12 had a slope to make a mountain blush 😉 There was a similar issue with field 24 (behind the crops listing on the right). Field 23 was out of the question because there was no room for any buildings. In the end I chose field 17…

…Although the area at the north of the field has some trees, I was sure that I could fit in a Farmhouse. Other buildings would have to come later, probably when I’d bought another field. The crop was a good one too – Soya Beans. They won’t be ready to harvest until late September / October, so I have some time to earn enough to buy my harvester. The only issue was weeds. Having bought the field I built the Farmhouse in amongst the trees – the land was flat enough that I didn’t incur any additional landscaping costs 🙂

First job after ‘planting’ my Farmhouse was to choose a Tractor. In the FS22 Intro I mentioned the John Deere 7810 as looking to be a good buy. I gave that some serious thought along with some other tractors in the same size bracket…

…The Massey 3670 is another good choice. They’re both slightly older machines as reflected in the price. The Zetor was looked at but didn’t have the engine options I wanted. The Massey 7710S with a 185HP engine was fitting the bill very well, but I decided to go for its smaller sibling, the Massey 6700S…

…which in the 6718 version gives me 185HP in a smaller package for €5K less. That’s the landscaping cost savings spent 😉

I got lucky in the second hand equipment store – a Rudolph trailer for €9.6K. That’s less than the cheapest trailer in game and it can carry double the weight!..

My first job was to get rid of the weeds in my crop, so I hired a sprayer and took a contract to spray a neighbour’s field to cover the cost of the hire. Here we are amid their Sunflowers…

…and here’s my field of Soya after we cleaned out the weeds…

…You’ll note that it still shows weeds 75% – I think that may be a little bug-ette 😉 A little word to the wise at this point – If you hire vehicles or implements to do work on your own farm, you can use them to do contracts on other farms too. Conversely, if you choose to borrow vehicles/implements when taking a contract you can only use them on the fields where the contract requires you to work. It’s worth bearing this distinction in mind.

So here’s how my farmyard appeared after building the Farmhouse and doing some work…

…In the background you can see some large silos – they belong to the railway company, but I can store my produce there, so I won’t have to build my own stores just yet 🙂 The Massey has now got a plough attached…

…and is covered in mud – Yes, I’ve bought a plough and I’ve been working a neighbour’s field. Unfortunately, I now have to get the builders back because I can’t leave the grass and wild flowers growing in the yard – we have to tidy up 😦 Tarmac, cement and gravel applied and now I can clean up the tractor…