Saxlingham – March Madness

After the quiet of February, March exploded on the scene with a plethora of contracts. I also had fields to sow of my own. Earning money remains a priority to finance expansion and to broaden my range of crops. With this in mind I set out to do as much this month as possible…

The first week of the month I sent a worker off to field 48 with the Massey Ferguson 8S and the Bednar seeder to sow Wheat. I deployed another worker with leased equipment to do a ploughing contract in Field 17 – This contract would stretch into the following week. Yet another worker was sent with the Valtra and the Kuhn Prolander to cultivate field 9. And I… I took on some bale wrapping contracts😅…

Moving between one bale contract and another I dropped in to see how the cultivating was progressing…

…This is the same crop of Sugar Beet that I was admiring back in January, now withered and being returned to the soil. It was a pattern throughout the month and I was left wondering if the farmer who planted the crop fell on hard times and couldn’t afford the machinery or the labour to harvest it? As you know, I find such things a tragic waste and I’d rather have been harvesting the crop in January or February than turning it in.

By midweek the sowing of field 48 was complete and I brought the 8S and seeder back to the farm for refilling. At this point I took a key decision that I had mulled over in the previous post. Field 2 will be sown with Corn next month which means that I will need to put together the money for a Corn Header before harvest time.

I took another decision at the same time – The farm needed a general transport vehicle. Using the bale trailer to collect small quantities of supplies was not ideal and delivering them to fields when needed using the telehandler along the A140 would (in IRL for sure) soon attract the attention of the Police – unsecured load etc… So I decided to invest in one of those ubiquitous small Japanese trucks…

…and to replenish supplies at the same time. (In game the brand ‘Lizard’ is used on vehicles for which there isn’t a license agreement – This could be an Isuzu or a Mitsubishi – It’s generic enough to leave that open to doubt).

Back at the farm with the seed and fertilizer replenished, I sent the worker back out into field 7 to sow more Wheat…

…Those weeds won’t know what hit ’em😅 Then it was back to the bale-wrapping for me and the 6s…

…with mist starting to settle on the river near the end of the day. With job completed, I passed by field 17 and told the worker there to knock off – the rest can be done next week. I rounded up the Valtra from its completed cultivating job and finally retrieved the 8S from field 7 where the sowing was complete…

The second week of March was ‘Never long wet – Never long dry’ and we had to work between the showers. I sent the worker off to complete the ploughing of field 17 while I set about rolling the freshly sown field 48 with the 6S and my Vaderstad roller…

…and repeated the process for field 7…

Then I busied myself with some more bale-wrapping contracts to complete the week’s work.

3rd week and I’ve sent the Valtra off to cultivate in another failed Beet crop in field 52…

…while I picked up a stone removal contract in field 33…

The shape of the field makes working it as two triangles a good option and leaves some interesting patterns in the mud…

…Were they to be preserved I wonder what future archaeologists would make of them – Religious ritual or crop circles of alien origin?

I concluded my week by sowing grass for a neighbour in field 20 using the tramlines to guide me…

…Of which more in the final week of the month.

As mentioned above, I made an in-game equipment purchase this month. But between weeks 3 & 4 I also made an IRL purchase. My old mouse was showing indications that it might be going faulty so I decided to replace the Roccat Kone mouse and Sova keyboard / lapboard setup. Here’s the replacement…

…New separate lapboard with a Corsair K70 RGB TKL keyboard and Logitech G502 Hero mouse. Proper clicky keys with optical detection makes it very sensitive so there’s going to be a bit of a typo period both in-game and out 🤣

Back to the last week of March. The contracts have thinned out – actually, I’ve caned them! I decided to take another cultivating job in field 51. On the way I dropped by field 30 to check on the state of my grass…

…It’s looking good so I’ll be harvesting next month. Then I got on with once more turning in a failed beet crop…

…I promise you, if I do get to plant my own beet crops, I won’t be leaving them to rot!

My last contract job for the month was hoeing some weeds in field 45 with the tramlines on…

…Note that this time the centre line is green. That’s because I’m using the full GPS capability to steer the tractor around the field and also along each row to ensure complete coverage with minimal intervention by me! It’s a godsend when you can’t see where the weeds are 😎👍 Well done to Giants for implementing this in FS25 – It’s taken a while for dinosaur me to pluck up the courage to use it!

Spring is now underway and bright green leaves are adorning many of the trees and hedgerows…

…Lets see what April brings to Saxlingham 😎👍