Haut-Beyleron – FS22 Start from Scratch

There’s been a bit of a hiatus on the farming front – Some other activities, including the annual Truck Simulator Christmas event and my efforts to get out and about more impacted on my gaming time. When we last visited FS22, I was running 2 farms on the in-game maps. Let me start by talking about the other one – Erlengrat. I have decided not to continue with that particular farm. The main reason is that I find the roads on that map too unrealistic. I mentioned the ‘drive-thru’ fences when I wrote about the map back in December – without that you’d struggle to get anything done on a lot of the fields. The other issue I had was the cows and the lack of proper winter protection for them on the farm. I said that I had a solution to that issue and it’s only right that I tell what that solution was. I planned to sell the cows and put the money into buying a small field or upgraded equipment. Later, when I had cash in hand I would then buy a proper cowshed and get back into the animal husbandry. That was the plan – but it’s irrelevant now. Ok – back to Haut-Beyleron…

If you recall, when I last posted about the farm, I’d bought a field and built my farmhouse. I also had a tractor and a plough. Returning to the game last week, I was back to ploughing neighbours fields to earn more cash. Ploughing takes time and time means you can think and plan ahead. While working on field 14…

…I was thinking – this could be a good second field for my farm. It’s just the other side of the railway, it has space for a small shed to keep equipment and it’s not too expensive at €205k. That isn’t going to happen soon though – making money is hard and I’ll need to do a lot more work for the neighbours.

As an aside from talking about where my farm is going, I want to mention one of the visual improvements in the game. In FS19, things got dirty and there was some visible paint damage, but not much. In FS22, the paint really does show wear and tear. Take a look at the red and green plough in the picture above, then compare it after completing a second job on another field…

…By the time I was halfway through a third job on a far larger field, the Share’s were shiny bare metal…

…and the front of the Mouldboard’s were devoid of paint too. This is so much better than before. If you want to repaint your farm equipment, you can – but it’ll cost an arm and a leg, so I’m just sticking to repairs for now!

Ploughing makes ok money and is reliable work throughout the year. But for quick bucks, fertilizing is a good option. With enough money in the bank I decided to buy a Bredal spreader…

…This will delay buying a harvester for my crop but allows me to take fertilizing and liming jobs. These can be done much faster than ploughing and pay well although you have to factor in the cost of buying the materials to fulfil the contract. I worked through all the available fertilizer contracts…

…in the game equivalent of 6 days (6am-2:30pm) – the spreader almost paying for itself in that time and leaving me with enough fertilizer to do a couple more contracts when they show up! It also means I’m ready to lime my own field after I’ve harvested the Soya Beans. Here’s how they look in late September…