Pallegney – a visit to the reality beyond the virtual

This week Dan asked me if I had real experience in Farming. I quickly – a bit too quickly – said no. I have spent a lifetime working as a ‘Telephone Engineer’ which these days means a far wider range of work than it did when I joined in the 1970’s. So that was true…

But, my Mother came from Norfolk and although she met my Father in London during the war, we sometimes visited family out there and I got to see farm life purely as a visiting child. Later on, when I took up flying as a hobby, several of my fellow pilots at Andrewsfield were local farmers so I got to hear some farming info from them over time.

When I married Epi I found myself involved indirectly with her Mother’s farm in Zimbabwe – A link that, continues to plague us in the UK to this day. But that’s another story. The key thing is that I have visited her farm on 3 occasions and during my stay there involved myself in the work at hand.

It’s important to understand the distance between Farming Simulator in its many versions and farming in Zimbabwe. Farming Sim started out as an excuse for players to enjoy big farming machinery. That is its roots and that still underpins the game to this day. The machines are very accurately portrayed and function much as they would in real life. Beyond that the game deals with many things such as field boundaries unrealistically. It handles commerce in a simplistic way. In those areas everything is a compromise. However, it does apply very realistic requirements to the sowing, planting and harvesting of fields. You have to do the many steps to getting a crop from seed to harvest in line with the standard practices of arable farming since ancient times.

But Farming Simulator has moved with the times – We now have precision farming where we do our best to minimise our effect on the land while still getting as good a harvest as possible and like in the real world, we will be compensated for any crop reduction resulting from applying good practices. So, Farming Simulator has moved with the times but it still allows the player to choose to farm the old way if that’s your preference.

In other ways the game still lags – I’m currently running a herd of Cows. The game doesn’t worry whether I feed them or how they get pregnant. If I don’t feed them all that happens is that they stop producing milk. The same is true of other livestock in the game – Pigs won’t die because you forgot to feed them. I think this tells you that animal husbandry is a bolt on to a game that was initially an excuse to play with big farm machines.

My real life experience of farming? There was a glimpse in my CFFC Things made of Metal post…

…Those irrigation pipes were on my todo list to deliver back from the supplier to Mum’s farm – a tricky load on a dodgy road!

The Farm had a group of resident labourers who worked the fields mainly with their bare hands and some basic tools. I got to know the Foreman quite well after we’d got past the initial embarrassment of him calling me Boss and me explaining that I wasn’t and he should call me Martin. The team used to gather in the evenings for a quiet drink of Chibuku…

…I would happily join them despite not speaking Shona or understanding it very well. The men worked the fields – For example cutting and bring in the harvest. This was the farm tractor and that’s a freshly harvested crop of Soya Beans…

…It was the job of the Women to thresh the beans…

…There was no Combine Harvester. There was a lot of waste but it wasn’t really wasted as the moment the women left, the Chickens moved in and hoovered up the lost beans. The Women also hand picked cotton and corn although the latter was always susceptible to some thievery (My Mother-in-Law let small amounts of that slide). There were Mombes (Cows) providing milk to be looked after too.

When we were there we’d help as necessary – Epi and I harvested a small field of Paprika on our own on one occasion. I got involved in unloading a new load of fertilizer sacks that arrived back at the farm late one evening, much to the surprise of the farmhands. We changed a wheel on the trailer after it punctured without a jack – lifting it manually and holding it there while the wheel was removed and a replacement put on the axle. It was hard work and nothing like I was used to in London. These guys were incredibly strong but still appreciated my getting involved.

I did a lot of driving the pick-up on the many chores it was needed for. Having someone else to do the driving was a welcome break for my Mother-in-Law especially given the state of the roads and the nature of the traffic – It was always dangerous and I spent most of my trips picking spots where I’d be aiming the truck in the event of a potential collision 🙄Sadly, those would be her undoing. She was killed on one such trip when I wasn’t there nearly 15 years ago.

As you can see, my IRL farming experience is very different from the sanitized, machinery orientated, world of Farming Simulator. That doesn’t make FS25 a bad game it’s just important the we understand its limitations. As I said in my response to Dan’s question, ‘There are lots of tutorials both in game and on YouTube so you can normally find a ‘how to’ for just about anything’. I should add that I often do some research into the real world situation and use of the equipment – There is so much to learn beyond the basics as shown in the game itself. Did you know you can specify whether your plough is set up for driving in the previous furrow or on the unploughed strip adjacent? I didn’t! 😅 There’s a lot to the game and a lot to IRL farming and they meet somewhere in the middle on many things 😎👍