Fresh Fields

Winter in Osada – An exercise in whiling away 3 months!

December… At least there was a ploughing job for a neighbour in the first week…

…And the view in the early morning was worth getting up for😎 In the second week I took the Zetor and our new sprayer over to field 40 and applied the first dose of fertiliser to my Wheat crop…

…The new sprayer works well although it can be a little tricky to manoeuvre at the end of each pass.

The other activity in December was the selling of my stored grains – Wheat, Oats and Sorghum. I did get good prices although it was not the best. I think I need to have a target figure in mind and be prepared to sell when that price is reached. Hanging on can be counter productive. In the end, all that really matters is that the prices in December are better than those in August😅

At the end of all that selling I have enough money in the bank to buy a planter but I’m faced with a difficult choice. There’s a couple of older John Deere types that will cover 6m but don’t fold. There’s a more recent Agro-Masz one that will only cover 3m on each pass and a very modern Kubota one that will do 4.5m. Prices range from €11k – €29k. I’m leaning towards the Kubota but that will leave very little in the account. With monthly maintenance costs running close to €400, only having around €2k in the bank at the start of January would leave the farm in a poor fiscal position. So I’m going to wait it out and see what we can earn when Spring comes.

January… Cold…

…and Snowy…

…All I could do was check on the crops – there was nothing else going on.

February… More snow at the beginning of the month but at least I can start preparing for Spring by sowing Oilseed Radish in fields 3 and 14…

The last 2 weeks of February saw improved weather and I checked my crops once more…

…and marvelled at the hardy neighbours walking around in the chilly air…

…It takes all sorts 😂

We’re ready and I wonder if I can scrape together some more money before I have to make that planter decision. I have a month or so… 😅👍

Fresh Fields

It’s August in Osada… The height of the harvest season but also a time for preparing fields for the next crop – will I cope or will something sneak under the radar?

1st week of August and fields 1 & 2 are green with Oilseed Radish…

…I’ll need to find time to plough that crop in ready for sowing – I’m planning on Winter Barley for these two fields. Fields, 3, 12 and 14 all have crops ready to harvest. Those will be my priority before turning my attention to neighbours fields. I sorted out field 3 first…

…Then field 14, then finally field 12. I got a nice load of Sorghum from that field…

All of my harvested grain went to the silo for future sale when the prices have increased. Harvesting done, I attacked the cultivating in field 1 to finish off the week…

…Field 2 was going to have to wait for the second week.

Week 2 and now I was able to help out with contracts for other farmers – here’s a Sorghum crop I’m harvesting in field 32…

…that was one of three fields harvested that week which brought in some good money. But I still had some unfinished business in my own fields. With rain forecast for the weekend I was working late baling the straw…

…before taking it in darkness to the biomass plant…

…80 bales between fields 3 and 14 – that earned me over €4k 😎

The 3rd week was more of the same – harvesting for neighbours. But I also picked up a cultivating job…

…which I combined with cultivating field 12.

Harvesting continued in the 4th week of August and this time I was cutting Oats in field 41…

…and Wheat in field 71. I closed out the week with some improvement work on field 12 – it came with a lot of large stones, so I bought a stone-bucket and set to work clearing them…

…They weigh a lot, so I had to be careful when tipping them into the trailer…

That covers the August activities on the farm but as usual it doesn’t tell all the story. There’s all the pre-planning / musings that go on in the background: –

My target fields – ones I’d like to own – increased. Having worked field 41, I can see the benefit of owning that field as well as field 40 – they’re both easily accessed along the track behind my yard. I also have some fields that I don’t want – in some cases that’s because they will be hard to work but in a lot of cases it’s because they provide regular work for me and the additional income is very helpful.

The yard is now overflowing and I wonder how long it will be before my grain storage reaches capacity. There are a couple of options to expand the yard and the storage for crops and machinery. The first is to buy the land adjacent to my existing plot and knock down the sheds, replacing them with silos and a more open-plan shed for machinery. The second is to build on the grass field in my existing plot, possibly removing a couple of the trees from the boundary along with the fence to allow access. Then fencing the area with an access point to the lane at the back. This latter option has cost advantages although it would result in losing my income from Haymaking. It would also put Sheep farming on hold but I could possibly do Chickens instead. Lots of thinking going on…

Oh! and did I mention that I’ll be able to afford a planter come Spring for Corn and Sunflowers – I just need to prepare fields 12 and 14 for those crops. I think field 3 may get sunflowers too 😎👍

September will be a little quieter but I’ll still have a bit to do 😅👌

Fresh Fields

Early Crop Harvests – June and July

This is the time when the overwintering crops ripen – Winter Barley…

… Wheat and Canola. With only €8k in the bank, I’m going to need to do as many harvesting contracts as I can, especially in the first 2 weeks of each month. Barley first then👍 Job followed job – there was a large field to harvest over by the old mill…

The new trailer was proving to be a very good purchase, halving the number of trips to the delivery point for each harvest and thus making time to fit in more work each week…

I really like the animations on this mod – very smooth operation👍

The work continued in the same vein through the second week of June, though the jobs were starting to dry up. I sold my stored Soya Beans which brought in €13k. Come the 3rd week and I found myself at a loose end so I made hay…

…The Canola in field 1 is looking good – I’ll be harvesting that next month. I baled the hay and took it to the biomass energy plant in the last week of June…

July brings the Canola harvest, including my own – Fields 1&2 were duly harvested as if they were a single field…

…While I stored my Canola to sell later in the year, the contracts for neighbours were going straight to the grain transporter. The second week of July saw the turn of the over wintering Wheat. I had already completed two harvests by the middle of the week when one of the largest fields popped up as a contract. It was worth working late to get that field done…

…as it put me in touch of purchasing one of my target fields. I could now afford field 15 and I almost had enough money to buy field 12 – the question was, which one. The logical partner for field 14 is field 15. However, there is a problem…

…Field 15 has a crop of Sugar Beet. I don’t currently have the machinery to harvest Beet. I could hire the machinery but it’s very expensive. Alternatively, I could plough in the crop which would fertilize the land ready for my next crop. I don’t really like ploughing in crops, other than catch crops grown for the purpose. For this reason, I ruled out buying field 15 for the time being.

To kick off the second week of July I took a couple of cultivating jobs further up the hill above my farm…

…The first of these – field 27 on the right – took me over the threshold to afford field 12. The second – field 36 on the left – put a little spare cash in the bank. I purchased field 12 knowing that I’d have to scrape together some more contract work to keep afloat until the beginning of August. At least it comes with a Sorghum crop that will be ready to harvest soon.

There is a problem with choosing field 12. Although it is right next to field 14, it’s actually a much larger field and fully capable of producing a good sized crop on its own. So for the time being, field 14 will continue to be a small field that stands alone until I can pair it with field 15. I guess that’s my next field purchase planned for me!

To finish off the month of July, I prepared fields 1 & 2 for their next crop, cultivating them and then sowing Oilseed Radish to pre-fertilize…

…and I took a short trip up the lane to check out the crops in fields 12 and 14…

…They’ll be ready to harvest soon enough – August promises to be a busy month! 😎