Saxlingham – A Time to Sow

I nearly typed Sew there! In the hot weather this week I have been wearing shorts – My one surviving pair. Yesterday, the modern nylon zip failed. Because of the cut of these Technicals shorts I cannot get it to re-engage so it’s time for them to go to the recycling in aid of the firefighters charity down at the local station along with a couple of other items that are developing holes. At least someone will benefit👍This morning I went back to one of my favoured brands (Fat Face) and ordered three different pairs of shorts because I think this is only the beginning of a very hot summer and autumn. I pick them up at St Pancras on Saturday. Anyway, back to the farm!😅

In the 3rd week of March while seeking to boost my cash-in-hand I took on a Stone Picking job. These use quite specialised equipment to remove large stones from a field. Really big stones / rocks will damage farm equipment so it’s best they are removed. I know from first hand that the sort of rock found on my Mother-in-Law’s farm in Zimbabwe could shear off a plough blade if the tractor driver wasn’t paying attention – She wasn’t best pleased and I understood why she had a revolver in the farm office 😅 Here we go with a leased Deutz-Fahr tractor and the Elho Scorpion…

…You can see that these are some pretty large stones – much bigger than those I have unearthed on my fields. In game and to a certain extent IRL, the size of stone lifted during field preparation varies with the instrument used. A plough generally only turns the top soil where most large stones have already been removed over years of agriculture – that’s what I have done in my fields. After sowing it’s beneficial to roll the stones back in as part of the compaction process because they improve drainage. The size of stones brought up in this field probably mean the farmer has used a Subsoiler or a Spader (Not the Stargate type) – These dig deeper than a plough bringing up the layers below the topsoil and can be used when the topsoil has become too thin and the field needs revitalising. A suitable cover crop would probably then be sown to put some vegetable matter into the field to make it ready for cash crops again – That’s my understanding anyhow 🤣

Here I am dumping the stones into the supplied transport…

…It’s not very ‘accommodating’ is it! In fact it could barely have taken 1.5 loads of the picker! This is sometimes a problem when taking jobs with hired equipment in the game. But that’s not the end of the issues. Where do I take the stones? On the maps that are supplied with the base game there is always a stone crusher site. On many mod maps that is also true but on this map and a few others, there is no place to sell stones gathered from fields.

‘Ok – Just fly-tip ’em.’ is maybe what you’re thinking. Can’t do that because the game won’t let you unload anywhere that doesn’t accept the item and you can’t unload on land that your don’t own. I’m sure Joseph Heller would relish the situation! Fortunately, there’s an easy copout. Because vehicles can sometimes get stuck in the landscape (it happens occasionally due to minor map glitches and bad driving) the game allows you to reset a vehicle. If you got your loaded trailer of wheat stuck and have to do this, hard luck – that’s your load gone and any cash you were hoping to make with it! The vehicle respawns back at the dealership and you can pick it up again minus its load. That was the only possible solution for me in this predicament – fill the tipper and reset. In an effort to inject some realism I got a worker to bring the truck back out to me after resetting 👍

April was our sowing window for Soy Beans so the first task was to get supplies in…

…The Merlo Multifarmer doing a great job and after some practise with the bales in December I now seem to be able to load a trailer neatly with it! 🤣

To plant Soy Beans I needed a planter. There had been a second-hand Kuhn one on sale the previous month but that had gone. Ultimately though, I was happy to go and buy a known planter – the Horsch Maestro 9.75RX and the associated Partner 1600 box to hold fertilizer. I sent out a worker to plant field 7 while I got the roller ready…

…Rolling is well within the compass of the Arion whilst the 8S is ideal for sowing/planting.

The sowing and rolling didn’t take too long so I was able to go do some weeding for a neighbour…

…I’m sure that Elmer weeder is longer than my truck+trailer combo in American Truck Sim 🤣 More weeding would follow and I was glad to make my way home at the end of the week…

The second week was all about sowing Field 2 with Soya. Once more I set a worker loose with the 8S and the Horsch Maestro…

…You can see the small stones the planting activity is kicking up – We’ll roll those back in!

While the worker got on with sowing I picked up another weeding job in an adjacent field for one of the neighbours – It’s important to keep the cash flowing 😅 So I was nearby when the planter ran out of seeds – A quick trip back to the farm and then a run out in the Merlo to provide a refill…

We’d just about got everything back to the farm when the heavens opened – Springtime Hail…

…which washed out any intention to do any more work that week.

Back to Hoeing for a neighbour in the third week – At least this time I can see the weeds!..

…In fact, I’m surprised they haven’t asked from a sprayer! That old Mercedes MBTrac 1800 is a fun drive making some great intercooler whistles when you take the power off 😎

The month closed out with more weeding and some fertilizing…

…and, as I wound on down the road in the 8S with the spreader in tow I was left pondering ‘where too next?’ Nearly £200k in the bank is starting to open the doors for expansion…

…More arable fields or maybe grass? What about market gardening… The world is your oyster… See you all soon