Pallegney – September (Year 1)

I had a bit of a shock this month of which more in a while 😅

The first week of the month was spent getting one of my grass fields mowed, dried and baled to make Hay. It was a glorious day but the field had to be worked with care due to the proximity of the river and one of its tributaries…

…During the course of the work I took a brief break to cool my feet…

…When all was mowed I dried it with the newly purchased Tedder…

…Then using the new Windrower I dragged the dried grass into rows…

…Allowing me to complete the baling. It was a long job due to the difficulty of the location and it was getting late. I decided that things would be best served if I sold the flat trailer that came with the farm and purchased one of the Anderson auto loaders. An expensive purchase but one that experience tells me will serve well…

Rain was forecast for the second week of September but it started dry which was just as well because I wanted to get the Sorghum in my newly purchased field 32 harvested…

…I just completed it in time!

A wet period gives pause and allows for other things to be done. The farm subsidy came through so I erected the sign at the side entrance. I also got some solar panels installed to assist with income. I discovered that the cheese making processes were going on in the background and costing me money – Doh! – so I turned them off until we have a supply of Milk. I sent a worker to plough field 19 down by the stream. Then I went off to the dealer to buy a forage wagon, silage additive and mineral feed (more preparations for feeding a herd of Cows. Having run out of my own chores to do I started looking for contract work that can be done in the rain – cultivating for example…

It was while doing this that I noticed a green number on the map – what’s that I thought? Green denotes fields I own but I didn’t recall owning field 9. I looked a little closer and realised that I also owned the nearby field 25 as well! Field 25 was full of straw bales waiting to be collected while field 9 had a crop of Barley which somehow had not withered (it should have been harvested in July before I even started playing!). I’m not sure how I overlooked these fields when I began the playthrough – possibly because of changes in how field ownership is displayed on the new maps. So, instead of owning 4 crop fields, I now own 7 crop fields including the one I just bought. I’m Rich… I’m Rich… 🤣

The third week saw me panic harvesting field 9 before the Barley did actually wither…

… and I then baled the straw from that field and collected the bales including those in field 25. Ok – Embarrassed panic over!

Where does this leave my plans for the Cows? Should I have bought that other field?

To get the best from Cows we should feed them Total Mix Ration (TMR). TMR consists of a mix of roughly 1 part Straw, 2 parts Hay and 2 parts Silage with some mineral feed added. It’s not an exact process but the game does help you to get the balance about right when you use an appropriate mixer. At the back of my mind I was thinking that I would need at least another grass field to meet the Hay and Silage requirements. Finding my undiscovered fields and buying the other crop field behind the farm has inadvertently provided me with an alternative solution – I can now release fields 19 and 21 from crop production and sow them with grass which will then provide me with a source of silage next spring. The new fields will almost double the amount of crop production anyhow so it’s a win-win situation. The only thing I could have done differently was to hold off on buying the forage wagon as I will now make Hay with the grass in my existing field 90 and it won’t be needed until around May next year. I may also turn field 103 over to grass production.

With all this in mind I set workers the tasks of ploughing and liming as needed while I bought a mulcher and took out the standing stalks in field 32…

Then I set about mowing the grass in field 90. Time was getting tight by this point. What to do to get it all done?

Previously I have only used the ai workers for ploughing – Past experience said I’d have to tidy up after them on every field but this new ‘breed’ of labourers is actually doing an excellent job in that department needing minimal if any follow-up action from me. So I tried them at liming and found they can do that pretty well too. After completing the mowing I let one loose with the tedder and while the worker worked, I went and got the other tractor with the windrower…

…Exchanged that with the worker and once again, while they worked I went to get the baler. The amount of time saved is amazing – the work being done more efficiently than I could do it alone. The baler proved to be beyond their purview, so I had to do that myself as well as collecting the bales afterwards. But credit where credit’s due – the Devs have done a wonderful job on the workers in this edition of Farming Simulator.

Of course, there is a downside to using workers – you have to pay them. Fortunately, with the farming subsidy and the income from the solar panels, I’m just about covering that additional cost. I also have a serious amount of stored grain from this season’s harvest so we should have a good cash injection over Christmas and the New Year. I can even sell some of the Straw bales as I won’t need all the ones I currently have when I first start the Cow herd. There are still some tools required but much ground has been covered this month.

October will see me working to sow the new grass fields along with Barley and Wheat in fields 31 & 32. I’ll be back to report on progress at the end of the month. See you then 😎👍