Starting a new life, in La Coronella, Spain

[El_Nino_NL]

Prelude.

I'm Elmer, I'm from the Netherlands and for a couple years now I have no idea what I want to do with my life. While browsing the internet I found a farm for sale and I always liked the idea of farming. I decided to give it a good night’s sleep and get back to it in the morning. I didn't sleep very good that night as I could only think about farming in another country. In the morning, I gave the real estate agent a call and we talked for a couple of hours about the farm and possibilities. The farm comes with a pretty big yard, lots of storage spaces and 3 fields. The price however it also pretty steep at €320.000,-. It's something I have to think about and see if I can get the money with selling my house, furniture, car, etc. I took an option for the farm while I try the get the money.
After a couple of weeks, a lot of phone calls and meetings with all kinds of different people, I managed to sell everything, bought a plane ticket to Spain and was on my way to a new life.

Chapter 1 / Day 1

Arriving in Spain, I knew where I needed to go, a small town called La Coronella, but it's in the middle of Spain and only one bus, once every 24 hours goes there. Of course I had to take a hotel as I arrived in the afternoon and the bus leaves in the early morning. The next day I stood up early, bought something at the local bakery around the corner and went to the bus station. The bus was right on time.
After 5 hours of sitting in the bus I saw the street signs with a very welcome town name, La Coronella
After meeting with the real estate agent, we talked for a bit and went to the farm to have a look around. While walking around I notice that everything is there and ready to be used, including a garage to maintain my own vehicles. After going back to the office I bought the farm and wire transferred €320.000,- to the real estate agent.
After a nice walk from the office to the farm I checked the fields I have and if something maybe was growing. All 3 fields are sown, the closest field has sugar beets growing, the field next to it has something with large red plumes, but I have no idea what it is. The field the farthest away from the farm is something which is still growing, no idea what it is. Took some pictures with my phone and walked back to town to the vehicle store I saw when coming into town with the bus.


Sugar Beet


No idea


Sorghum

After about 15 minutes of walking I arrived at the store. Had a little chat with the manager and he told me the field with the plumes is a sorghum field and by the looks of it, ready to harvest. So, I needed a harvester with header and a tractor with trailer. He told me he had an older harvester for a nice cheap price with a fitting header and a nice, but even older tractor and trailer.
He store manager was very helpful, as I have never driven a harvester, nor harvested a field. He explained me how to use the harvester and I could give him a call whenever needed if I’m having questions in the field. I drove the harvester to my farm and he had a colleague of him to drive the tractor and trailer to my farm.
After a few hours of fighting with the harvester and tractor I managed to clear the whole field and have, by the looks of it, a lot of straw. I called the manager, Diego, as he is my only “friend” in town to happily tell him I harvested the field and had a little over 4 trailer loads of sorghum in my silo. No idea as of how much it is, as I do not have any clue how much the hopper of my harvester can have and how much the trailer can have. Diego told me he would bring an old truck over to my farm for a small lease price so I can carry more at once to sell the load. I sold about a truck and a half of the sorghum and made close to €22.000,- total.


First load


Harvest finished


My truck

The sorghum field is now full ow rows with straw. It’s already getting quite late and it was a really busy first day. Have learned a lot though. After a good night sleep I will drive to the store and see what Diego has for me.
A little list of things I need.
- baler
- bale trailer
- plow and cultivator
- something for fertilization
- something to seed my fields

[El_Nino_NL]

	Couple things about my story. I have set the economy to hard. I set the price per hectare a bit lower in the XML files to be able to buy a bit more then only the farm yard. I used 20.000 liter bales to create a small amount of bales instead of a huge amount and carting 50 bales on a first field (the field was fully fertilized, but was missing plowing and lime) All mods are public, either on the in game modhub or Facebook. Other behind the scene information will be posted in other Spoiler posts.

[El_Nino_NL]

Chapter 1 / Day 2

In the early morning I stood up, had a little breakfast and went to the store to see if Diego could help me with a baler and a bale trailer so I can sell the bales. I could rent a cheap baler and made about 15 bales from my field, not to bad I guess and made about €10.000,-.


Baling

Today my other 2 fields have grown and I took some pictures for Diego so he could tell me if they are ready to harvest or not. He asked me to come in to the store, he had some equipment for me to harvest the sugar beets, the only thing was, my current tractor was really under powered to use the harvester. He took it back for about 90% of the price and had another one for me with a lot more power, but still an older model. His brother tickled an older Fendt 500 series in his tuning garage and Diego wanted me to try it out and made me a really nice price.
So, with a new to me tractor and sugar beet harvesting equipment on lease I got back to my farm and started harvesting. The tractor struggles a bit on the sloped field and after only 100 meters of going around the field my harvester is already full. Is the hopper that small or is the yield of sugar beets that high? Turned of the tractor, walked to my truck on the other side of my farm yard and emptied the harvester. On to the next 100 meters.


Harvesting Sugar beets

After going around twice with a speed of 2 or 3 km/h I decided to give Diego a call about it. He advised to take of the harvester and only go trough the field with the leaf cutter, when that’s finished I can get the harvester connected again and harvest the field much more easier.


Topping off the leafs

After a lot of hours of harvesting, unloading to my truck and unloading my truck in the storage unit for sugar beets, I had about 4 truck loads of sugar beets. My truck, according to Diego, should be about 30.000 liters capacity. The field is quite big and I’m getting really tired and hungry so I decided to stop for today, have some dinner, a relaxing shower, maybe a movie or an episode of something and have another good night’s sleep.

[El_Nino_NL]

Chapter 1 / Day 3.

Had another early start today to finish the last bit of the sugar beet field. Diego called and told me he ordered a couple things for me. When ready, I can come and pick them up, he got it all delivered this early morning.
Before we will pickup our equipment, I have another field to harvest. Still have no clue what it is. I’m going to ask Diego if he knows. Diego sad it’s millet.

It took me most part of the day to harvest the field. Diego have send me some contacts where I might be able to sell my load. Will have a look at it and will make some calls. Difficult part is, I have no idea how much liters I have. After calling a couple company’s and spoken to them in my best Spanish, I have found a company who will buy my millet. I had one truckload of millet and it got me about €12.000,-.
After I got the truck back in the yard, I got in my tractor and went to the store to pickup my new plow and started plowing the sugar beet field. Took me a couple of hours although I think I have quite a large plow. After I finished the sugar beet field, no sugar beet now anymore, so I will call it field 1, I started in the sorghum field, now to be named field 2, after I did my first roundtrip around the field I looked at the time, almost 19:00h so I decided to stop and all it a day. Tomorrow I will finish field 2 and field 3 (the millet field) with plowing.


First field done.

[El_Nino_NL]

Chapter 2 / Day 4

Early morning today and continuing with plowing in field 2. Plowing is a really power consuming thing as I almost ran out of fuel already and I do not have this tractor for very long. Luckily, the tractor fuel is pretty cheap around here.


Refueling the tractor

While refueling the tractor: “I’m really getting fed up with plowing. If I ever need to plow my 3 field again, I will hire a helper to do it. I’m almost done with field 2 and I still need to do field 3. I also need to ask around town, with other farmers if I need to do anything else with my fields before I can reseed them with something. No idea what grows here, other them Millet and Sorghum. Might even do a job or 2 for them.

	Been away for some time, need to get started again. This is de last I have done. Will update again very soon.