Fresh Fields

I needed a fresh start in life – so much so that I sold my home and moved to Poland. I had a vague notion of getting back to basics, becoming one with the land, refreshing myself…

Here’s my new home in the small village of Osada…

…It’s a farmhouse with an associated farmyard that was sold through auction. The brochure described a single-story bungalow with associated yard area with a large vehicle shed, a medium storage shed, two silos and on-site fuel. Included was a parcel of land beyond the fence and some old farming machinery – two tractors, a harvester and a baler were specified in the listing with ‘some other items’.

Lets take a look around. You can see the gated entrance to the yard on the left of the image above but there’s also an access road between my property and the neighbour’s…

…If we walk up that we get a view of the yard…

…It looks quite empty and a bit over grown. I wondered if there were once other farm buildings. The neighbour confirmed that, ‘yes, there was a cow barn but the farmer had sold all the cows and the equipment some years ago and the building was later demolished.’ The metal shed – itself second-hand – was a replacement for a wooden barn that had burned down.

Walking into the yard, backing onto the main road, there is the surviving wooden shed listed by the auctioneer…

…along with an unlisted outside toilet. What’s inside the shed? – You may well ask, but I’ll come to that in a while. In the steel shed we have some equipment…

…A small spreader and a trailer along with a very old FMZ Vistula harvester. There was also a conventional baler.

Next to the large shed are two silos as specified…

…The one on the right is quite old and is for grain storage – it’s empty. The one on the left is a surprisingly recent addition and is for lime – I’ve had that filled by the local quarry because, when I get some fields of my own, it’ll save time to fill up in my own yard.

The far end of the yard looks like an abandoned parking lot…

…And looking over the fence, the associated parcel of land…

…doesn’t look ready for crops. I’m not sure how I will use these areas – we’ll see how things go over the next couple of years.

Sitting in a corner of the extended yard there’s an old cultivator…

… and a simple plough, along with the on-site fuel tank.

So that’s a quick tour of my ‘new’ farm – I have €22k left in the bank and my new life promises to be an adventure. Of course, I forgot – what was in the wooden storage shed? – The tractors! Both are old and probably should be in the hands of a collector, but they’re going to have to work initially until I can afford to retire them. Here’s the Bolinder-Munktell ‘Terrrier’…

…Just 35HP but with a reputation for reliability. The other tractor is a Massey-Ferguson 178 which offers a more respectable 73HP – here it is parked with the Lely baler…

…And that completes the tour😎

I promised a new farm series and I also said that it wouldn’t be a set of story posts. However, I did need to set the scene, so this post was a bit of a tale. There won’t be any fictional characters in the future posts, though I might mention the in-game farmer involved when I do some work or buy a field. The premise that I bought a farm with some old equipment came about from watching a ‘Vintage Survival’ series on YouTube by Daggerwin along with Giants Software releasing a couple of older tractors as paid DLC’s – the Bolinder-Munktell is one of these and appears as the Volvo T425 Krabat in the store. I could also have used the Zetor 25K which was a free update as part of the 1st year season pass and would have gone well given that the local dealer is a Zetor franchise – perhaps that will make an appearance at some stage? Anyway, unlike Daggerwin, I don’t intend to stick with vintage equipment – things will be replaced as and when I can afford to.

Now to talk mechanicals – game settings… The map I’m using is the Osada map by RajotGPLAY – it’s available via the ModHub. To set up the game situation I started as Farm Manager and sold some of the buildings from the area of the Cow Farm on the map, then added in the new lime silo, fuel tank and steel shed. After that I purchased the selection of equipment you see above. Finally, I went into the background files for my game-save and reduced the amount of money in my bank account to a starting amount you see in the pictures. I’ve set the game speed to 5x as usual and each month is set to 4 days. I will be playing on normal level, so the mid range of difficulty – this is going to be a fun play rather than a bruising encounter😅