A Mountain of Marshmallows!

This my huge effort to show you how silage is made. It has taken me, literally, hours to do this. I have been working on it for about 4 days now. Today we worked on silage until about 3:30...we have done it every day now for about a week. I think we have about two more days. Tomorrow we will work on it from about 9 am until late afternoon.

The sun is shining, and the grass is growing and we are making silage with some mighty farm machines! There are four people, 5 tractors,a mower/conditioner, a baler, a wrapper, two trailers and a pickup involved in this project!

Whoo--ey! That is alot of mighty machines!

First of all, the tall grass has to be cut...that is the job of a tractor and a mower/conditioner, and Pam. She has to cut at just the right time of day...usually late in the afternoon for the best nutrient value in the grass. The grass is almost to my shoulder. It is cut and put into windrows. It is left to lie on the ground overnight and dry a little.

Then it is Ron's turn and he drives a big tractor and a round baler. He drives over the windrows the next morning after the dew has dried off. The baler picks up the cut grass, and chops it up and rolls it like rolling a carpet up, then it wraps a net around the outside of it to keep the roll all together, and the door opens and the bale rolls out onto the ground behind it...

...then the door closes and Ron carries on to make another and another and...till all the cut grass is picked up, and made into neat big rolls.

Jamey is next on the scene. He uses a tractor with a two prong fork on the front of it, to pierce into the side of the bale, lift it up, and put it on the trailer. The trailer holds ten round bales, that weigh about 1800 pounds each. He then drives it to the wrapper which is set up close to where we stack the wrapped bales. Jamey hauls the trailer load of bales to the next step behind the barns. Pam unloads the bale with her tractor, and puts it on the wrapper.

THIS IS NANA'S JOB! The round bale is put on the wrapper platform by Pam...she operates a tractor that we call "T-REX". The wrapper is attached to another tractor. I push a button and it makes the bale go round and round. The wrap is plastic on a long roll! When it has 24 wraps on it the wrapper stops and I push another button that tips the platform and the bale rolls off onto the ground!

This is the finished product. Spring-in-a-bag....TV dinner for some cows...Pickled grass!

They love it and can't seem to get enough of it.

This is what the cattle will eat next winter. When we feed it with the tractor they will not get out of the way easily. Sometimes it looks almost like you are going to run over them. Jason says he likes the smell of silage...and I agree with him! You do get used to the smell of it. It is all packaged up in a neat wrapper. The grass "cooks" in the bag and kinda rots in a good way. It will have all the protein a cow could possibly want! There can be NO holes in the bags! It ruins the whole bale sometimes! If we see a hole we have to fix it right away.

A MOUNTAIN OF MARSHMALLOWS

Sooo, that is what I have been busy doing all week! I like it...I get to sit in a comfy chair...push a button, put a new roll of wrap on the wrapper, read a book, listen to the radio...push a button! We also like feeding silage, because we HAVE to use the tractor...there is no way you could lift this bale on your own....so...it saves our backs from getting strained! When we feed it to the cows, Pam uses her tractor to get one bale near the feeder...I cut the wrap and the netting off with a knife and she lifts it into the feeder.

THE END