Osada: Still Doing Contracts?
Because every penny counts
Once I was done with readying my harvested barley fields for the next crop my day mostly involved this. The PDA. Looking for contracts.
Contracts have taken me very far. From having very little to having an entire working farm, all with that push I needed from The Old Farmer.
It’s been years of contracts, working up from only having a Land Rover and roof over my head, to getting my first trailer, first tractor, and my first bit of self-owned contracting equipment, which I’ll tell you about in a bit.
The thing is there’s something very mercurial about contracting. For me it was necessary. I needed to work for others, often borrowing their equipment, to get to the point where I had my own equipment. Then I could buy my first field, rent what I needed to get barley in the ground, rent the harvester to get it out, and put in place my first chicken coop with 120 chickens. 120 being all I could feed until the next harvest rolled around. That was all thanks to contracting, and that shouldn’t be underestimated.
There are problems with contracting, however. Like I said, it’s mercurial, and that plays out in two ways. First off, there’s a desire to do everything and anything that comes your way. You don’t want to leave a single penny on the ground. This means long days, often slow days, and months where every hour feels the same as the next. There’s no end in sight.
Tying into that is there’s no real progress for yourself. You don’t see the fruits of your own labour. This is obvious to anyone who does contracting. You phone the farmer to say his field has been ploughed. You deliver the harvest where it needs to be delivered. In the distance in this photo, beneath the power lines, you can see the silos where I spent a lot of time driving to and from. The grain mill and another facility. (Remind me to get a better picture for you another time.) I became very familiar with them, although not familiar enough to stop making the mistake of delivering grain to the wrong silo sometimes. A costly mistake. And it was never selling my own bounty.
I think the real problem with contracting is that you have no place in the world. There’s no way to situate yourself. I’m sure I could spend a few weeks pricing up everything on my farm. I could talk to land agents about how much fields and yields are worth. I could see what the hay and silage I have in storage would sell for. That’s all fine, if a lot of effort, but when you’re working your own farm, and almost entirely your own farm, you get a feeling of the flows of your money. You know when things will be harvested and when they’ll be sold. You have an appreciation for what’s yours.
With contracting all I know is I want to do as much as I can, as efficiently as I can, to earn the maximum amount I can. There’s no real perception of worth. My farm is making X amount of money and my contracting is making Y amount of money. I could delve deep into the spreadsheets and separate it all out but when I look at my bank balance the final number is the only number that matters. And I don’t know if that’s from the land I worked for me, or if it was from me working the land of others.
Contracting blurs a lot of lines and it’s not something I want to do with my next farm. It’s not an experience I want to go through again.
Maybe I won’t have to? I have land worth something. Some machinery, even if it’s getting old. I have some savings in the bank. I could start a small farm right now, in a new area, and just live year by year. Would I escape the desire to earn as much as I can, though? Would I escape the instinct to take on a contract to help me afford that bigger seeder?
Even now I’m doing the contracts that are still coming my way. I’m moving onto a new part of my life; I need every penny I can get. This big boy seeder came up for nearly 50% off on the second hand market. Imagine that on a vast field! But I had to tell myself, “No!” Keep calm, keep your money in your pocket and slowly build towards what you want next.
But it’s tough to ignore that discount, even if they’re really false savings.
Things are sort of in a holding position for the moment… Right until the moment my plan to move on solidified in my head I was thinking of getting a little runabout for handling the animals, saving wear on my higher horsepower tractors. This pink Valtra would be a dream. First off, Valtra’s are zoomy little things. I’ve used them in some of my contracts. Secondly, this has the automatic gearbox. No shifting up and down through the wrong gears in tight spaces. Thirdly, and most importantly, it’s neon pink. I bet the cattle would love a bit of colour in their day.
I’d have gotten this trailer to go with it, with just enough space for my pig food while also being able to be converted into a bale trailer for hauling straw.
Both of those would be nice to have, but can I justify them? I’ve already decided against a rock picker unless I really need one. And even then I’ll probably rent it. It’s just very easy to buy into the idea that new equipment means progress. In the absence of being able to establish the true worth of your farm simply adding to it gives some feeling like you’re a success. The thing is I already know I’m a success. If I just continued doing what I’m already doing I’d live a comfortable, if routinely tired life.
But there’s always more. Always bigger. Always extra numbers to have in your bank balance.
At one point I felt I needed an income stream for when contracts weren’t coming my way, so my mind turned to forestry. I splashed out and bought a piece of land with a lot of trees growing on it for the lumber rights. It was even near the sawmill so I wouldn’t have to transport the logs far.
What do I know now that I didn’t know then? That I hate forestry. I despise it. I was tempted to cut my own leg off with the chainsaw I was holding as I felled trees as an excuse not to do bloody forestry.
But, then, my mind turns back to equipment. There’s big wheel-loaders on the market. Fancy trailers. Semi-trucks. Cutting machines. Log handlers. Automatic stripping machines. Even portable chipping machines (I haven’t a clue how those work.)
I wrote about establishing a farm somewhere in a dense forest before, but is that just the equipment calling to me?
This is my trailer. It’s the first one I bought and I still use it. I used it while I did that annoying bout of forestry to carry logs to the sawmill.
As you can see it’s fairly basic. There’s far fancier trailers, specialised trailers, being advertised by every equipment seller across the continent. Maybe that’s what I need to enjoy logging? Maybe if I get to play with bigger and better toys I’ll have more fun? And I’ll feel like I’m making more progress because a big lump of a machine is parked in my yard.
When I wrote about maybe going to a dense wilderness to start a new farm I didn’t think that if I did I’d have to do logging. It’d be needed to clear the land and it’d make financial sense to do it during the non-farming season. But would I enjoy it?
I enjoy progress. I enjoy new toys as much as anyone else. But would I really want fancier forestry equipment if I didn’t have to clear land? Or is it just a new toy I’m using to convince myself I enjoy an activity I don’t?
But not every piece of equipment is a “new toy” despite what its paint scheme might make you think. This is the PB3-081 Lizard Harrow. It was one of the first bits of contracting equipment I bought. It was affordable, it ran well*, it did the job. It did the job very well, I must say. Sure, the weeds pop out bigger than I’d like after I sow my crop when using it, but at 8m wide? For that price? It’s a no brainer!
It made the contracting jobs I was doing at the start of my career a lot easier. Almost every field needs to be cultivated, and unlike ploughs they don’t need high horsepower to pull them. This thing was a dream. I was whizzing around fields like nobody’s business, getting the jobs done faster, and, so, doing more contracts.
So no, not everything is about progress, or at least feeling like you’re going somewhere. Some pieces of equipment are very practical. I’d wager you get the same, if not more joy from buying something you enjoy using if you also have a very practical need for it.
And that’s where I’m at now. Think of practical need. Think of what will be of immediate and repeated use to me before I commit to buying it. Who knows what expenses I’ll have when I move? There’s no need to go after false economies simply by buying big discounts.
Take a deep breath, steady myself. Stay calm and rational. It might take a year or so but that big change is lurking just over the horizon. Maybe I will need the big forestry machine? Maybe I’ll enjoy it, and it won’t just be because it’s fancy and new. There’s a world of possibilities out there if I just wait and have a little patience.
*Author note – The PB3-081 cultivator is a little taxing on Farm Sim 22’s frame rate. I used to get heavy dips with it on a previous version of the mod, but then it was updated and it’s much improved. That’s something to note if you used it before the update. It’s still not perfect, I do still get some dips, especially in particular lighting, but it runs better than before, if not perfectly.