You do not need a fresh farm to add a chapter.
Every mod in the suite starts from its own defaults when it finds no data for itself, so dropping one into a save you are forty hours into is a supported thing to do. Load in and it begins.
What you do not get is backdated history. Add Tax Mod in year three and the bill starts building from that moment. It does not invent three years of unpaid tax. Add Soil Fertilizer late and your fields start at the mod’s own reading of the ground, not a reconstruction of everything you grew before it arrived. The year starts where you started it.
Removing is the part to think about.
Most of the suite keeps its state in one shared file next to your savegame, RealisticFarming_MasterState.xml, written by State Ledger. Each mod gets a block in it. On every save, State Ledger writes the blocks for the mods that are loaded right now.
So a mod that is not there does not get written. Pull Dairy Core out, load the save once, and the herd’s history is gone from that file. Putting the zip back later gives you Dairy Core starting from defaults again, not the herd you left.
Removing a mod is not a pause. Treat it as a decision.
If you only want a chapter to stop biting for a while, turn it down or off in Settings Hub instead of deleting the zip. The mod stays loaded, so it keeps its place in the shared file and its history survives.
If you are experimenting, copy your savegame folder somewhere else first. It is the whole safety net and it takes a few seconds.
Two smaller things worth knowing:
- Bedrock has dependencies. Network Sync, Master HUD and Settings Hub each name State Ledger, and Settings Hub also names Network Sync. Remove State Ledger and those will not load at all. See What to install first.
- Your personal preferences are kept separately, in
modSettingsin your user profile rather than in the savegame. Things like HUD placement survive a reinstall, and they are yours rather than the farm’s.
Updating a mod is not the same as removing one. Replace the old zip with the new one and the history stays.