You better try to find the cutoff fork tines in the silo”
Dad said as he frowned at me and looking both irritated and worried. “If a cow swallows those pointed metal tips
eating silage, it could puncture the stomach and kill her.”
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| A farm silo near Atlas WI tells a story. When a farmer had a stave silo built, the silo company offered the choice of a checker board white stave finish at the top for decoration. This farmer chose it, and then later had the silo extended higher. It would have cost much more to undo the first decoration and move it up than to just add a new one. Dad didn't decorate his silo as he expected with 4 boys that it would have to be extended much taller as the boys all joined the farm operation. It never happened -- farming wasn't in our blood I guess (except for Byron who did try it for a few years). |
Dad had an even, calm
demeanor and when I saw him worried, I worried too, not about me, but about the
cows, our livelihood on the dairy farm and my role trying to be a man in the
harvest crew.
I was 13 years old and helping out on the farm during silo filling
time. In the days before field choppers and self unloading wagons, silo filling
was one of those neighborhood events where neighbors went from farm to farm
filling each farmer’s silo. A farm boy looked forward to threshing, shredding
and silo filling as the end of summer events and longed to be a useful part of
each. I had even taken a few days off from rural school to help out.
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| Marv and Russ with the small Rumely before hooking up to the silo. The barnyard was always muddy in the fall and it was messy to get things lined up -- filler and belt to tractor. |
Before Grandpa drove into the yard with his big Rumely Oil
Pull tractor pulling the silo filler, all on steel wheels, clanking their way
to line up at the silo, raising the pipes to the top of the silo and hooking up
the belt from tractor to filler, each farmer had already used a corn binder to
cut the corn, bind it into bundles left in rows in the corn field.
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| This Rochester (MN) brand silo has a distinctive white-green pattern at the top. |
Each farmer’s silo was filled in rotation based somewhat on
the field conditions with our clay hills needing a few dry days to be
navigable. When our turn came, the silo
filling ring members showed up with their tractors and hay racks ready to spend
a few days filling our two silos.
Mom and Grandma prided themselves on the meals they served
the crew with meat and potatoes and pies with fall vegetables – all home raised
food. To eat at the men’s table, you had
to work just like the men, and this year was my first chance to do it. I was big enough to toss the bundles and
responsible enough to do it right, at least I thought so.
My job was to help pitch the heavy green corn bundles neatly
on the hayrack, piling them as high as I could throw them. It was hard work and
I tried to match the rhythm and ease of Uncle Maurice as he seemed to
effortlessly toss them into a neat load.
Four or five wagons loaded up and each in turn
unloaded at the filler where Uncle Chan fed it, brother Marv leveled in the
silo between loads and Grandpa tended the Rumely, a temperamental beast, and
oiled and greased the filler deciding each night whether to unbolt the blades
and take them home to sharpen.
I was proud to be
considered big enough to hold my own on pitching bundles with the men and
looked forward to their stories at the dinner table.
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| The silage pipes are in place permanently on these two silos. The tripod at the top held the motorized silo unloader that lowered down the silo as it chewed and dumped silage down the chute to the barn where sometimes a conveyer moved it to the cows, but more likely a farmer with a silage cart spread it out. |
After loading the wagon for the first time, a somewhat
straggly load, I tossed the three-time
fork onto the top of the load and brother Ev, my driver, hauled it to the filler,
pulling the Farmall F-14 tractor and wagon to the unloading spot. Uncle Chan
pitched the bundles one at a time into the filler. Normally, I as the loader,
would unloaded too, but worrying I might not keep an even load on the filler
the first time, and throw the belt or kill the Rumely, Uncle Chan stepped in to
do it as I watched to learn the process.
I already knew this, but watched carefully hoping to unload next
time.
The filler was a metal slatted conveyor belt running to a
large enclosed whirling set of sharp steel blades on a big wheel that chopped
the corn stalks into half-inch long pieces of stalk and little disks of corn
ears and then blew it all up the pipes and showered down into the silo.
The green corn fermented into a brown savory aromatic silage
preserving it for the whole winter. Cows
loved silage, and as it made use of the whole corn stalk and ear in a form that
was easily digestible, was a mainstay of winter cow feed.
Uncle Chan didn’t see my load-top fork as he pitched in the
bundles and only when the blade made a kerchunk and had cut off a half-inch of
the tines did yank back the conveyor shutoff
before it made a second cut and whirl them into the silo too. He held up the shortened fork for inspection.
Dad had the next wagon behind and came over to see what was
wrong. I got sent inside the silo to try to find tines in the silage stack
while Grandpa shut down the belt pully and inspected the blades for
damage. After 10 minutes and several of
us hunting fruitlessly, and Grandpa deciding the blades were OK for the rest of
the day—just a few small dents in the sharp edge, Dad
decided we couldn’t hold up the crew anymore, and we went back to work, me with
the shortened dull pointed fork as a reminder.
All winter, I worried about cows with punctured stomachs,
and took the responsibility to pitch down the silage each day carefully
inspecting each forkful, especially as we got down to the level where the tines
should have been.
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| An empty farm. The barn will go first and the silo likely stand until someone decides to pull it down. |
One time showed up in the manger as the cow chose not to eat
it and the other two never appeared. No
cows got sick, and so the episode passed except for my own memory of a mistake
that caused much worry and some kidding at the dinner table that changed to
stories of snakes, stones, and other items being ground up for silage on older
days in farming and it appeared to me that others may have had some missteps on
their way to being farm men.
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| Where is the barn? |
