I feel like we looked like a bunch of rats scurrying over a pile of plastic.
How does that statement connect to farming?
A few weeks ago, we covered our silage pile at our satellite farm. We lease a farm and the farmer who owns it sells us feed from the acreage on the farm. The pile is corn silage – the whole corn plant, stalk, ears and all gets chopped up as one of the main ingredients in our cows’ diet.
Harvesting corn is the last hurrah of spring corn planting. We spend a lot of time and money on preparing the soil, the seed, planting, spraying, fertilizing all for the harvesting. Normally chopping begins six to seven weeks after the plant tassels.
This feed has to last us the whole year so we need to preserve it. Making a large pile and covering it with thick plastic to keep the air out is the way we do it on this farm. The feed will ferment and that will keep it from spoiling.
Over the days of harvesting the chopped corn – sileage get dumped into a pile. As the pile grows it is compacted by a tractor with a blade that pushed it into a pile and packs it together by the weight of the tractor. Over and over. Each wagon/truck load gets added to the pile and as the pile grows it is pressed down.
This year our pile is 72 feet by 300 feet by 16 feel tall. Although the highest point of the pile is about 23 feet.
This pile is made up of approximately 565 12.8 ton loads of corn that totals 7232 tons of silage. About 365 acres of corn was harvested to create this pile.
The corn is chopped to .75” and when packed properly it equals 42 pounds per square foot.
Since the silage is green when first harvested we wait a bit for the corn to ferment – that is the type of silage the cows are used to eating and to change it wouldn’t be good for the cows. Therefore, this pile will feed 560 cows for about 10 months. We house around 500 cows there give or take a few so we should be in good shape for the year.
The corn silage provides carbohydrates and fiber for the cows’ diet. All part of our “recipe” created by our farm nutritionist.
When the pile is complete or at least enough of it to start covering that’s where we rats come into play. A huge roll of plastic is rolled over top from the width side to the width side – make sense? It’s sort of like a huge plastic tablecloth that is folded several times. We have to unfold it and it takes many hands and a gentle breeze provided from the Good Lord is always appreciated. It’s like a huge slip and slide and a few of us experienced the thrill of the slide without even trying.
Then the tractor brings piles and piles of tires – sliced tires for us not the whole tire. Even though they are sliced they weigh around 25 pounds.
Our job is to move the tires around into rows vertically and horizontally about a foot or so apart. Kind of like moving chess pieces. Really, really heavy chess pieces. And dirty.
Once we get some of the tires laid out we start tying them together. Simple enough. Until you have to keep adjusting the 25 pound, dirty tires over and over again. And making four ties per tire gets the best hands sore.
The first night they covered the pile I was busy (I’m sure it had to be some other important farm stuff) so I didn’t help. I did purchase 10 pizzas and brought them to the rats and they devoured them quickly. And deservedly so.
The next night I joined the crew. We were in a race against a storm heading in our direction. And even as we scrambled, tugged, pulled, tied and constantly sniffed our runny noses it was a fun time – sort of. You know one of those fun times that is fun as long as it doesn’t last too long.
Now, as you drive past a pile of tire covered feed piles you will have an idea of how it happens. And, you’ll see that there are rats all over the country scrambling around on piles of plastic.
Tire marks on my watchband.
