Harvesting

After practically running out of hay and silage over the winter things are finally starting to look up around here on the farm.  It really got cold early last year and we had to start feeding more of both to the cows to keep them healthy.  The colder the weather the more they needed to eat and boy did they eat a lot.

Last week we finished chopping all of our spring crop.  We had wheat and rye mixed in a few fields and ryegrass and marshall ryegrass in a few others.  We try to raise a few different types so that in spite of weather stresses on one type the other might grow well.

This is a video of the silo unloader, which is raised to the top of the silo during filling, is being lowered down on a cable to the silage.  One of the worst parts about getting silos ready to feed off of is making sure the silage is level all the way across, in this case that is twenty feet.  This time we got lucky and there was very little forking to do in the silo to level it up.

We've also got our first field of hay mowed and hauled in.  What a great feeling to know that we have hay and silage ready for our cows to eat to make tasty fresh milk.