Fresh Fields

November to February… One year ends – another begins in Osada.

The first week of November and there’s a cultivating job to do for a neighbour…

I see our Wheat crop has sprouted. that snuck up on me with all the other things going on in October and I never got to run the roller over the field, so there will be a slightly reduced yield. Unfortunately, the weeds have also sprouted so I had to deploy the weed killer…

…The Roe Deer were out nibbling crops, so the Zetor and John Deere sprayer doubled as a scarer😅

Then I had to continue the preparation of field 14. I needed to Lime the soil and, recalling the wasteful nature of a spreader like the Rausch when performing this sort of task along with its limited capacity, I decided to purchase a drop spreader. I tracked down an old John Deere LF-12 for the task…

…Look at that! Lime nice and evenly applied and very little waste👍 I could also use this for fertilizer so I will consider that over the next couple of months. Then I finished the week by cultivating the field ready for sowing.

The second week of November – I sowed Oilseed Radish to pre-fertilize field 14. I took a moment afterwards to look across the valley…

…You can see all my fields and the farmyard from here and it looks beautiful in the Autumn. By now, all the contracts on other farms have dried up and I have run out of work to do on my on land.

First week of December and there’s a brief flurry of activity – I sell most of my Wheat at a good price. The Oilseed Radish has sprouted, so I cultivate that into field 14. The soil is heavy after a lot of rain at the end of November, so I deployed the John Deere to do the work…

I spent the rest of that week doing a stock-take…

…Looks like we’re going to need some seed and fertilizer in the new year! That was that for December with nothing else I could do on my farm or anyone else’s. The only thing of note was the snow which fell in the run-up to Christmas…

From a game perspective – At the end of the year, it’s worth taking an overview of all the fields in Osada…

…Many are prepared for the next crop. Some are ploughed and probably being left to lie fallow and some have winter crops growing.

The beginning of January and I have Sorghum to sell…

…Then it’s back to the tedium of waiting out the winter some more. In the 4th week of January, with an improvement in the weather, I ventured out to the dealer and bought some seed and fertilizer…

…Now we’re ready for Spring👍 I’ll just have to wait out February first🙄

If I was a YouTuber doing video diary style coverage of the game, I might not have seasons activated – you don’t want to bore the audience with lots of sleep-trigger activations! But here, I can adjust the coverage to the time of year and still keep the farming activity to the fore. The end of winter has seen me preparing for spring but outside of the story element, I’m also thinking about the future of the farm. Another field is clearly the next priority along with a planter so that I can add Corn and Sunflowers to my range of crop types. But I am also looking at updating some equipment. The farm will slowly get dragged into a more modern era. One of the first things to change will be that old trailer – it’s way too heavy for its capacity (I think they made it out of bits of WWII tank 🤣). I’d also like to upgrade the plough to a more modern style. But for now, we have the equipment we need to operate the farm very well. March is just around the corner and we will be busy once more😎👍

Birdshot

After a long break during which the developers have fixed a number of bugs, I have returned to Way of the Hunter. Initially, I did a couple of side missions on the Nez Perce (US) map. They were both small game hunts – American Badger and Fox – so I was mainly using the Steyr Scout .223 rifle. I also carried the Steyr Monobloc, with .308 ammo and added a couple of deer to my hunt tally. It seems that my rifle shooting skills are still intact after the long break. Then I tried hunting Pheasant with a shotgun. That skill has deserted me, so I will need get some practise in😟

After getting my muscle and key-bindings memory sorted, I had to decide where I wanted to hunt. I think the story quest on the Nez Perce map is getting in the way of my hunting so I’m going to put that on hold. Instead, I decided to take a look at the Transylvania map. Both of the maps supplied with the base game have great scenery and the initial view from the balcony of the main hunting lodge doesn’t disappoint…

…The river in the view is the mighty Danube. There are several marshy areas where tributaries join like the one in the view and that speaks of plenty of wildfowl opportunities – Indeed my first animal bagged on this map was a Greylag Goose. I did miss several others🙄

I have only started finding my way around the map, so most of it is currently unknown but here’s what it looks like currently…

…With the Danube forming the southern boundary. The hunting lodge is by the Adanc Expanse label. When you are leaving the lodge, you’ll find garlic and a cross hanging by the door…

…I can’t imagine why…

Initially, the hunting opportunities seem few and far between – probably because of the background spawning of the animals. I started out looking for animal need points – feeding and drinking locations mainly. Drinking locations are easiest to find – just wander up a watercourse. On one of my early forays, I followed a stream up into the Lempes Hills to the north of the Lodge…

…Close to the border of the Aurora Wood private hunting area, I found evidence of Fallow Deer drinking. I secreted myself on a bank overlooking the site and waited patiently. Eventually, a small herd showed up…

…You can see that one of the herd was a young male and most of the others were also young. The game emphasises correct herd management – you are encouraged to only shoot low value adult or mature animals to enhance the gene pool. That’s how you will ultimately get high trophy value animals to spawn – it’s a gaming way of rewarding the player for acting like a responsible gamekeeper. So those youngsters will not be shot. If the whole herd is made up of young animals then I will just leave them be and put the gun away. However, on this occasion, there is a mature 1-star buck at the back. I waited until I had a clear shot from a good angle and then fired with the Steyr Pro Hunter .243. He made some distance downstream with the help of gravity before finally going down…

…The others fled back into the woods.

You can see that I’m carrying a shotgun alongside the rifle. I quickly learnt that there are several smaller species in the area – Golden Jackal, Fox, European Badger and Roe Deer – so I now normally carry the Steyr Scout .223 for those alongside the Pro Hunter .243 for the larger deer. But once I find myself in Red Deer territory, I’ll need to carry something more powerful like the Remington 673 ‘Guide Rifle’. I currently switch out the .243 for the Monobloc .308 if it’s Wild Boar that I’m after.

Here’s a sequence from another hunt – this time Roe Deer beside the river going diagonally up the centre of the map…

…You can’t make out the animals in the scenic view above, but looking with the binoculars I could see them and after moving closer, get a clear view…

…Yes, the guy at the back will be my target…

…Taken down with the Scout .223.

That concludes this brief reintroduction to Simulated hunting in Way of the Hunter on PC😎👍

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😅👍