Fresh Fields

October – the second harvest rush brings major changes…

The first week of October and it’s Sunflower and Corn harvest time. I face a dilemma – do I spend €17k on a Corn header so that I can take part in the harvesting – effectively spending a lot of money to make some money. This has the potential to put back my larger tractor purchase but it will take me a step down the road of adding Corn and Sunflowers to the crops that I can grow. The alternative is to get on with harvesting my Soya crop in field 14 and doing some other work on my own farm. I bowed to the pressure and bought a header. There wasn’t a Claas one, so the dealer found one by Fortschritt that was compatible. Then I immediately got stuck in to doing the Sunflower harvests for some of my neighbours…

…I knocked out two fields in the first half of the week, then it was time to change back to the normal header and harvest my Soya Beans…

…All the while I was thinking, ‘Where am I going to keep this new header?’ and ‘How do I make up the shortfall in the new tractor fund?’ I realised that it was time to rationalise the tractors – The Bolinder-Munktell and its small trailer would be sold as the Zetor 6245 could do the work that the Terrier was doing anyway. With the Soya Beans safely back in the silo, I took the Bolinder’ on its last trip up to the dealer and sold it along with the small trailer…

…The combination of the sale and a late evening harvesting job I did for a neighbour…

…meant that I ended the week approximately €1k better off financially and back on track for the new tractor👍

The second week produced 2 more Sunflower harvests. These jobs pay very well and also have good crop bonuses…

…especially when the field is a large as the one above!

The 3rd week of October and I cultivated field 3, turning in the Oilseed Radish…

…As well as cultivating field 7 for my neighbour across the street…

At this point I realised that I had crossed the financial threshold where I could buy the new higher powered tractor as long as I traded in the Massey-Ferguson 178. It was time to upgrade. I bought the John Deere 4240…

…and subsequently I also upgraded the 3 blade plough to a 4 blade – another trade in. The 4240 was immediately put to work ploughing for my neighbours to earn some funds and improve the bank balance – money is a bit tight!

The last week of the month saw sowing of Winter Wheat for a neighbour…

…and then continuing to sow the same crop in my field 3. The new 4240 got on with some more work for a neighbour…

…sadly, ploughing in a failed crop of Sunflowers. Then I ploughed my field 14, beginning the preparation cycle. Starting next month, I’ll have to lime it and cultivate it ready for a crop in the spring – probably Oats.

What a hectic month! 😵‍💫 I was lucky that the gamble paid off – if there hadn’t been more Sunflower harvests in the second week of the month, I’d still be waiting for the money to buy the John Deere😅👍

Share Your Desktop – March 2023

Middle of the month and it’s time to join in with Clare’s Share Your Desktop Challenge once more😊

As usual, we have two desktops. Let’s start with the Gaming PC…

…This is a screenshot from Farming Simulator 22 taken during some activity for a series that I’m currently running on my blog called Fresh Fields. This shows my fictional character in my farmyard driving the elderly Bolinder-Munktell Terrier tractor surrounded by early-Autumn flowers. I’ve just finished some haymaking and it’s time to put the tractor away. Those readers who follow the series will find out in the next update that I have now sold this tractor and the small trailer behind. It may be gone from my game-save, but it will live on as my desktop for a few weeks more. Who knows… When my farm is making lots of money, I may buy one of these again to keep for annual farm shows and give kids a ride in the trailer! – The joys of the fantasy world of Osada, Poland😂👌

On the Photo PC…

…A photo taken on Feb 27th of a Lumo train exiting the cleaning facility to run through Alexandra Palace. It will reverse at Bowes Park, to the north, before running back south into Kings Cross where it will form the 10:45 service to Edinburgh. It is formed of a Hitachi AT-300 5-car set – UK class 803 number 803004. Behind, a pair of LNER Class 801/1 units await their turn to move out. Alexandra Palace is one of the closest mainline stations to me and I visit or pass through quite often on my trips out on the rail network.

Fresh Fields

September – Autumn harvests and field preparation for winter crops…

The Canola has come through on fields 1 and 2 – so have the weeds. The Soya Beans in field 3 are ready to harvest too. The first week of September began with harvesting the Soya and applying weedkiller. Then I applied fertilizer to fields 1 & 2 – that completed the fertilizing for field 2 but field 1 will need another load in October to complete the fertilizing process. This is how the fields look after all that work…

My fields are small so that didn’t take too long. I was then able to pick up some work for my neighbours starting with harvesting in field 5…

…You can see why this field isn’t on my radar as one I’d like to own – some boggy patches in the centre reduce the crop yield. I moved on to do my first ploughing job of the Autumn in field 23…

…and with half the week still to go, I took a very large harvesting job over next to the grain store…

…That was a lot of work and, as the week drew to a close we were in a race against the rain. I was glad when I headed back to my farm in the late evening…

…The rains finally coming when I was halfway home. It was worthwhile – €7k earnt!😎👍

The second week saw me doing cultivation work for a neighbour before moving on to cultivate field 3. I sat there thinking for a while before I got started…

…I was thinking – ‘What if I cut down those trees’ – That would make the field a lot easier to work and increase its size. I shall have to go to church on Sunday and confess to such immoral ideas😅 Don’t worry, the trees are staying. I’m sure there’s a good historical reason why the previous farmers haven’t removed them. Anyway, I got on with the cultivating.

The third week and I started by sowing Oilseed Radish as a catch crop to pre-fertilise field 3. There were no jobs for other farmers that I could do except for a very large haymaking job that looked like 2 weeks work to me and I didn’t want to get tied up with that. Instead, I decided to mow my own grass and take the bales of hay to the biomass plant – that earnt me €1300. I’ll need to fertilise the grass in October.

With some free time I took a trip to a different tractor dealer over in Polowa. I wanted to see some possible replacements for our Massey Ferguson 178 and find out how they perform and what they’ll cost me. The dealer, a larger than life character with a handlebar moustache…

…was more than happy to demo them for me. Here’s the line-up…

We carried out the trial on a small field which needed ploughing and we tried each with a 3-blade and a 4-blade plough. The John Deere was immediately fine with both sizes of plough but both Massey Ferguson’s initially suffered from wheel slip with the 4-blade so we changed over to wide tyres and then they also performed fine. The John Deere 4240 would cost me €62k and the Massey Ferguson 3630 €68k. The 3630 is a more modern machine bristling with electronics and also has a front power out which the 4240 lacks. Time to go away and think while I try to earn enough money to buy one of these.

The final week of September and there is very little I can do. I took a large ploughing job which earnt me €2k…

…but now it’s time to put our feet up and drink tea while we wait for October to dawn🥱

Game Notes: – As you can imagine, a lot of testing was done before initially setting up the Osada map farm for this series. With the series in full flow, I can’t really carry out testing on the map where I’m playing, so to check out new vehicles I needed to create a different profile. I could have done that with the Osada map but there is a newer mod-map that I wanted to take a look at – Polowa. This is also a Polish map but unlike Osada, it is a representation of the real-world Polowa. It looks to be a very good map with lots of detail, so I may be setting up farm there for a future series. As for my tractor selection for the tests – Only the John Deere 4240 and the Massey Ferguson 3630 meet my age criteria being from the mid 1970’s and the late 1980’s respectively. The MF 3125 is a 1990’s machine. I also tried out the Massey Ferguson 253 as a possible replacement for both the Bolinder-Munktell Terrier and the Zetor 6245 but it can’t handle the cultivator so the Zetor’s job is safe 😅 But I will be thinking about one of the 200 series family as a replacement for the Terrier in the future.