Traffic Calming

Theanne suggests I should have gone and pulled the two cars involved in the accident apart, I didn't think of that, to be honest if I had gone with the tractor I would have been tempted to drive over the lot of them, they do my head in. They are so erratic its unreal. I took the video today when taking a load of Wheat to the brewery.

I am continuing to harvest Wheat at the moment, I have four more fields to cut, the picture below is of the combine unloading in to the other trailer.

 Setting Sun at Chellington.

Car Accident

I intended harvesting the three fields on the topside of the main road today so I took a walk through them early this morning just to check the lay of the land and all was well until I dropped back down to the road at the junction of the main road and the Mill Lane where I discovered an accident between two cars. This doesn't surprise me one bit as they all seem to drive like idiots. I was approaching a junction last night and one under took me on the grass verge! Anyway I hung around long enough to take this video but as no one seemed to going anywhere I headed off back home across the fields.

New Holland Baler Video.

I did this video to go with the last post but I've been having trouble with my phone line so wasn't able to post until now. It will give an idea of how the baler works in the game, in the top centre of the screen is the bale counter, in the left corner is the control info panel for the baler and the tractor.

I know I said that I wasn't going to change my farm again and that I had settled for Kincraigie but last night I just happened to see another farm that I liked the look of and so I am giving it a go. It's called Chellington and is set in England so feels a bit more like home and has lots of unique features and nice scenery so I'm going to try and stay focused on this farm now, I will do some pictures and video's over the weekend.

New Holland Baler.

At the weekend I managed to get the Wheat and Barley all harvested, baled up and carted away. I didn't have a baler so I had to go and buy this New Holland which works fine. It has an animated tail gate and pick up reel plus a bale counter which records total bales for all time and total bales for each field. It also makes all the right noises which I think is important for the enjoyment of the game.

I had a slight problem with the elevator on the East Peak Farms, I only managed to get 1 bale in about 5 attempts to actually make it to the top without falling off. Is it meant to take the big square bales? Anyway thankfully there is what seems to be a power generating plant that takes the bales for cash so apart from the previously mentioned ONE bale all the rest went in there.

Another problem I had was when loading bales on to a trailer. I would get some loaded on after a bit of a struggle and then whilst I went to get some more the ones already loaded on would fall off which was quite annoying. In the end I gave up on that and bought a self loading trailer, I would like to get the hang of loading on to a flatbed trailer though.

Later today I hope to harvest some corn, I will see how that goes. I'm farming two farms at the moment, East Peak Farms and Kincraigie. I don't want to farm more than one but can't make my mind up which one I like the best. I had four on the go at one time but decided that come Easter I had to settle for just one and then get some proper work done. I made the choice of Kincraigie but then relented as I also really like East Peak Farm. I would go with East Peak Farm if it didn't seem a bit lacking in some details so I think that maybe in time it would bug me to think I was missing out on some aspects of the game so I'm sort of going with Kincraigie and dabbling on and off with East Peak Farm.

If you want to take a look for yourself at either of the above farms this is the link for Kincraigie http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/5/22969 and this is East Peak Farm http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/5/22819 

I will leave you with some pictures of the New Holland baler that I bought, if you want to download it also you will find it here http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/34/17161

New For Old.

There are some maps that you can download for Farming Simulator 2011 that come with a good compliment of machinery but there are others that don't. One of my favourite maps called East Peak Farms comes with very old machinery, all of which needs replacing if you want to get some serious work done. Another thing is that quite often this machinery is located in some obscure place like the top of a mountain! So what I did instead of transporting a load of old machinery back to the farm was to go to the farm shop and sell if off where it was and replace it with some of the cheap Mods that I've been posting about.

What you start with on East Peak Farms.

So the point of this post is to show you what you can acquire to get you started. You can swap everything in the video above for that in the video below plus the $6000 allowance you are provided with when you start a career.

One more thing about this sort of map is that if you're new to the game you might have trouble locating the machinery by eye simply because its way out in the wilderness somewhere so the easy way to find it is to press the TAB key and it will straight away take you to a piece of machinery with an engine. Keep pressing the TAB button and it will cycle through all the machinery with an engine and usually the implements are all close by.

New Holland Combine Pack.

This is going to be my last post in this series of cheap machinery, I will post more in time but I have other stuff that I want to post about. Below is the the New Holland combine pack which can be found here http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/53/16679

With the pack comes a New Holland combine, a grain header, corn header and header trailer. You can pick up the whole lot for an in game price of $13.

New Holland Combine with grain header fitted.

Corn header for the combine.

Header trailer.

I must warn you that something rather strange happened when I coupled the header trailer to the combine with the corn header loaded. I had already used the trailer to move the grain header with a tractor and it worked great but when coupled to the combine with the other header the trailer started spinning throwing the corn header up the farm shop yard. I don't know what cause it to do this.

Another thing that doesn't seem quite right is the length of time it takes for the tank to empty on the combine, it seems very slow. It's not a real problem with the way I play the game because I just leave it emptying in to a trailer while I take a full one filled previously to empty, by the time I return the tank has finished getting rid of the contents. Because of these faults I would probably only choose to use this combine because it's so affordable when you're first getting started in the game.

Claas Mower.

Today's cheap offer at the farming shop is this Claas mower which goes for $0, which you can download here http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/31/15412 The thing I like about this mower is that it leaves the swath in a row and not all spread around like most of the mowers on Farming Simulator seem to do. I haven't tried them all of course so no doubt there are some that leave the cut grass in a row.

I didn't get chance to make a video of this mower as I needed to get some straw baled last night but I did get some pictures for you to take a look at. These were taken on the way back from the farm shop.

OOPS! As I turned in to the farm drive I collected a car which tipped the mower on to it's side! I had to drag the darn thing half way down the drive before the darn thing got back on it's wheels LOL!

David Brown 1690

To continue the theme of free or nearly free machinery at the Farming Simulator farm shop I am going to show you a David Brown 1690. The Mod is actually a twin pack of David Browns, the second one costing I think $6000 so in the true tradition of being a so called tight farmer I haven't tried the other one yet however I can tell you that the 1690 featured today works fine although I haven't tried anything on the front linkage yet. I believe it's a work in progress still but I haven't found any faults with the way it works. So if you fancy taking a look for yourself you will find it here:
http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/29/12171

And for a look at it in action take a look at the video.

Claas Telehandler.

As promised last night I am going to share a few Mods that are free or cost next to nothing to acquire. All the Mods I have seen are free to download so when I mean free to buy I am talking about within the game itself from the farming shop.

Today I am showing the Claas Telehandler, I've been playing around with it a for a while and everything I have tried works okay except I can't get it to pick up a trailer so I don't think it will do that, if I find one that it will pick up I will let you know. As you will see from the video you can choose between front axle steer, rear axle steer or both axle steering by cycling with the letter 'U'. The boom extends as you would expect and it has front and rear working lights and that's about it really - simple but effective.

If you want to download it you will find it here http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/88/16883

Below is a short demo video taken in the farming shop yard on East Peak Farms map.

Wellbrook Field Plan.

Over the weekend I've spent quite a bit of time getting a feel for things on the Farming Simulator. Most of my time was spent on the Wellbrook farm where I did various jobs to do with harvesting work. I also tried out a few 'Mods' and I managed to find a field plan which covers all three Wellbrook farms, this proved very useful as I find it quite a maze when traveling around the place so I put the field plan up on my PC while I played the game on my laptop so I was able to keep on referring back to the plan.

Wellbrook Field Plan

I also spent some time back at East Peak Farms, again I was working on harvesting although I didn't really finish anything off.

I've also located some 'Mods' that are free or as close to free as you're going to get and I will be sharing them through the rest of this week. I'm not saying that they are top quality or anything just that they are cheap to buy at the farming shop and from my experience with them they work okay.

I've also started a new game at Orchard farm, I must stop looking at Maps or I will be forever changing. Orchard Farm is set on the fertile Fens of England so is flat land with medium to large fields. I'm not sure how long it will hold my interest but unlike Wellbrook this farm is easy to move around on provided you can negotiate the narrow lanes with your equipment. I find I can spend more time farming on this map than trying to find how to get from one location to another. The more I play any of these games though the more I realise how much I have to learn.

Richard Western Trailer.

Last night the first job was to go over to the farm store and buy myself a new trailer. I decided to go for a 'Richard Western' Trailer, http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/56/18129. I chose this one because basically I liked the look of it. It works okay in the game except for when tipping the contents which appear to be missing the hole but the load is registering as having gone in the right place and there is no heap left behind when you move off so that's not to bad. I posed a question yesterday about attaching the green trailer to my Ford and would the same thing happen with all the trailers but it appears to be the green trailer that it doesn't like as this new one hooks up okay whereas the green one leaps about ten feet off the ground for some reason which looks a bit strange but as I said yesterday, once it's landed back on it's wheels it functions as intended.

Below is a video of the Richard Western trailer.

Also last night I loaded a new map and I think this is the one I'm mostly going to call home. This is the link to the map which is called Wellbrook Farms. http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/5/17281  The surprising thing about this map is that of all the maps I've tried this is the first one where you start off with some decent machinery. I haven't explored it to any great extent but it seems a big map with three farms and more fields than you can hope for, probably way to many for one person to work but if I understand it right you can just work what you want to and forget the rest. The map is very authentic of the UK countryside with various shapes to the fields and undulating landscape. The farms have a good range of buildings arranged in a way to make using the game great fun. I've been using the East Peak Farms map most of the time and I will keep that game going as it's a nice map to use but I think I will forget about any of the others and make Wellbrook my main game from now on. On most of the maps that I have tried the satnav thingy on the PDA that shows you where you are doesn't work in that respect but on the Wellbrook map it works fine. I wish there was a plan of the whole farm so as to get a better understanding of where everything is in relation to each other. I guess in time you figure out which is the quickest way to the mill from where you are. You can drive round and round until you don't have a clue as to which way is back to the farm

I had a go at harvesting some Barley on the East Peak Farms map last night (See the above video) which is where I bought the new trailer for, it's proving to be quite a slow job with the old combine harvester that I have so I'm looking in to buying a new one when I have saved up some cash. I want something with a bigger cut mainly as I'm going round and round and hardly getting anywhere.

I also mentioned yesterday that I couldn't work out what the PgUp/PgDn button was for, well it appears to turn off the notifications on the screen so that's put another one to rest.

New Ford TW25.

Ford TW25

Yesterday as stated in my last post I took delivery of my new tractor. In real terms it's not actually a modern day tractor but I don't think that matters to much when it comes to playing the game, you need a tractor that's up to the job but a lot is down to person preference. I chose this particular model because I used to drive one on occasion. The tractors you start your career with are old and not very powerful and not really the sort of tractor you want to be seen driving around on. I wanted something bigger than the start up models so I can add better and bigger machinery. That doesn't mean to say you want the biggest tractor going because sometimes it isn't possible to fit in to some places with them if they're to big. Anyway this tractor has turned out to be a good choice because not only does it fit the bill it's also pretty cheap to buy at 20,000 dollars. When you first start your career you only have a limited amount of cash to spend. I don't remember exactly and I can't check now but I think this tractor is something like a third of a price of something equivalent on sale at the farming shop, so I'm pleased with it. I think it looks okay and sounds good and work very well although there is some kind of issue when coupling up the trailer. I don't know if this happens with anything other than the trailer provided but it doesn't affect the game at all so I can live with that. It also comes with a set of dual wheels, the front set and rear set can be added and removed separately, press 9 on the keyboard to add/remove the rear set of wheels and 8 to add/remove the front set. Pressing 7 adds or removes the front weights, 6 operates the rear working lights and 5 starts the tractor which had me baffled for a while because the normal key for starting the machines is the letter E. As it turns out I was being dumb though because if you look at the display on the corner pillar of the cab there is a key symbol with a 5 by the side of it. Anyway we got that figured out okay in the end. When you start your career you have a certain amount of cash in the bank and there are some 'Fruits' as they are called, i.e. Wheat, Barley etc. that can be carted off the farm to be sold in various places so you can use these funds to buy your new toys, I chose to sell the old yellow combine as there was already a green one so I figured I didn't need two so I sold that to pay for the new tractor and also have some cast left over. Today I am going to look in to buying at least one new trailer as the one provided isn't really enough but more about that another time.

There is another function on the display in the cab of the tractor and this is operated by pressing the 'PgUp and PgDn' keys on the keyboard but as yet I can't see what they do so if you know can you let me know please.

This tractor is what is known as a 'Mod'. You won't find it at the farming shop without you first download it from here http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads It's easy enough to install if you follow the instructions, it should go to your 'Downloads' from where you either extract it to a folder in 'Documents' called 'My Games' in which there should be your 'Farming Simulator' folder. Once you have it in that folder the game just finds it when you play. On some of the 'Mods' you can just double click on the downloaded folder and everything is done for you without unzipping anything, it depends on which file you download. But as I say it's all explained and really simple.

I will leave you with a video of the picking up of the new tractor and the drive back to the farm. By the way I apologise if you were the driver of the car that passed me as I was on the way to the barn, I'm not used to you all driving on the wrong side of the road!!

In The beginning.

First of all thank you for taking a look at my blog. This is a bit of a departure from my usual blog topics but I'm a great believer that a change is as good as a rest so I thought why not give it a go.

As with a lot of things in life this all came about by accident when one night last week I was at a lose end so decided to look up some tractor video's on Youtube. I've always liked tractors since I first became of the world around me but unfortunately these days I have no opportunity to play with them so I usually just look and remember bygone times. After viewing several video's and as one does on Youtube I got sidetracked and eventually came upon some video's posted of fun people were having with this game from Giants Software called Farming Simulator 2011. It doesn't replace the real boys toys but it looked good enough to tempt me to the Giants Software website in search of more information. Once there I downloaded a trial version of the game, this was mainly to see if it would actually work on my PC, these things often have a way of disappointing you but on this occasion everything worked as it should which encouraged me to place an order with Amazon for the fully functioning version, this arrived by post on the 24th March.

Since I started playing the game I've mostly worked my way through some of the missions. These are a bit tedious but worth doing as they help you to get used to how things work and where different things are and what they do. The highest award I managed was bronze but that's okay I'm doing it for fun rather than high scores. Also when I was doing the missions I was still getting to grips with the controls so no doubt if I go back to them in the future I should do better.

Since the missions I have been checking out different maps, the one that comes with the game is okay but I've seen a few other maps that look a bit less flat with fields that aren't all square. One I quite like is http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/5/22819 and the other is http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/5/22502
not that I have really settled for either of them yet but I do like the look of them. If anyone can recommend any good ones let me know. I want to try and find one that I'm happy with before I embark on my career proper.

I think that will do for today, I will leave you with a video of a walk round at East Peak Farms.

When you first start a career you get some run down old equipment for free, included among this are a couple of old combine harvesters so tonight I am selling on of these so I can buy a half decent tractor as the ones that come with the game aren't very good ones.