Pallegney – November (Year 1)

In this month’s report I will have to talk about gameplay, strategy and a mod that can help with unexpected issues…

The first week started with me harvesting a neighbours field of Soybeans. This was quite a large field but it had the advantage of being long and narrow so I was able to do the cut with minimal time spent turning which speeds up the work…

I also wrapped bales to make silage for another neighbour. While I was doing those jobs, I got a worker to carry out the second round of fertilizing in my recently sown fields…

…Everything is now done in those fields and we can wait out the winter.

The second week started with something unusual…

…A tractor floating in mid-air! There is a problem on this map and probably on any other map where some of the fields are fenced and accessed via a gate. If you don’t own the field, you can’t open the gate and thus, if you take a contract to do some work in that fenced field, you can’t complete it without resorting to some subterfuge. I got caught by this issue last month and had to abandon the contract – it cost me the hire fee! This time I had a cunning plan. But I tried a legitimate option first – I tried telling an ai worker to take the tractor to the field. The response was – field not accessible. So even the ai workers can’t get through the closed gate! The solution, and I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, is to use the ‘Super Strength’ mod. When you activate this mod you suddenly can pick up anything that isn’t rooted to the floor. A tractor? No Problem! So I drove the tractor and bale wrapper to the field, uncoupled them and then carefully lifted each of them over the fence 🤣 That’s definitely a ‘Don’t try this at home’ type of thing😅 Then I was able to reunite the tractor and wrapper and get the work done…

…ps – This was hired equipment but I tested the idea first with the long-suffering Claas Arion on a fenced field close to the farm.

After wrapping those bales I took a harvesting job for the maybe largest field on the map – Field 29 and it was full of Corn. Look what they gave me to transport the harvested crop…

…😍 The John Deere X9 harvester was pretty cool too with a massive corn-header…

…Here we are in the evening with the job just about complete…

…And you may be wondering why I’ve also brought my own tractor and trailer to the party. There is an in-game mechanic that is both a blessing and a curse. If you’re cultivating a large field (for example) on a contract you will complete the requirements of the contract before you actually complete the work, saving you a few minutes of IRL time. The area you didn’t cultivate will magically be done when you close the contract and get paid. When harvesting a crop the same happens – which can leave a portion of the crop unharvested and thus some of your potential earnings from over-production lost. The moment the contract is complete you can no longer work the field! Using the above harvest as an extreme example, if I had taken the fully loaded hire-trailer back to the sell point when the contract was showing 90% I would have found myself stopped from harvesting long before all the corn was mown! So I have boxed clever and brought up my own trailer as reinforcements to make sure all the crop is harvested before the contract completes. The result? – over 14000l of corn are now sitting in my silo awaiting a better price👍 It is important to understand these gameplay mechanics! I got paid €20k for this work as well as a small bonus from the corn I actually delivered – but that corn in the silo is going to make this a helluva deferred payday😎

The third week was spent cultivating some big fields while I got a worker to plough field 25…

…You can just see my Claas Axion at work in the distance as I drive this hired John Deere 8RT and Horsch cultivator combo around another large field.

The final week of the month and I decided to splash the cash. I bought two trailers for general work – feeding the chickens and collecting seeds from the dealer. I also decided to buy a corn-header as we’re into sunflower season and I’m hoping to get into those types of crops next year anyhow. I bought the Capello Diamant 8 – It was put to work immediately harvesting sunflowers…

…The harvester and header would earn close on €11k working 2 crops during the week. I closed out the month by making my first crop sale of the year…

…Canola was on a high and above the predicted December price. My 13000l earned me close to €10k. All in all a very productive month and there will be a lot more grain to cash conversion to be done next month and in January. Things look very positive for Cows next summer.

I’ll be back with another report soon… 👍