Not quite like making hay

Assuming you have a nice well established grass pasture, these are some of the steps you will go through before your average blade of grass gets to be made in to silage and gets to see the inside of your cow’s stomach sometime in the middle of winter:
1) Harrow - to level out mole hills and scratch out moss
2) Roll
3) Slurry
4) Fertilise
5) Mow
6) Tedder - Spread out to partly dry
7) Rake in to windrows
8) Collect and transport to silo
9) Chop and squash and cover in plastic
10) Cut out a block of finished silage
11) Spread out for feed
 
Another day we will do the “How to go about getting milk to drink” – this starts with AI (Artificial Insemination) and ends in WXYZ (Waitrose, eXchange Rd, Yeovil, Zumerset)


In days gone by you, as an average peasant, once finished with the morning milking, would hitch up one of the cows and head off in to the fields. If you were well to do you had an ox.  If you were rich you had a horse i.e. 1 hp. OK I musn’t forget you had a wife and four children you had produced just to work on the farm. Back then you had something called “Spring” which gave you a few weeks of warmish dry weather to prepare the grass and then a good 6 weeks of continual sunshine in June/July to make hay and build your haystack.
 
Nowadays if you start up your tractor and have less than 200 hp vibrating between your loins, you are a part timer. Just need 3 hours of sunshine and the whole mowing to finished silage bit is done. The agricultural implements manufacturers build bigger and better and faster gadgets and the tractor manufacturers, faster more powerful machines to keep pace. In days gone by you would be happy with a main hay harvest and possibly a second Indian summer one. Nowadays here you want to aim for 7 to 8 cuts!

 
Today I saw two versions of this. One the contractors who turned up with a Krone Big X V8, 600 hp forage harvester escorted by two Case 230 CVX, 230 hp (max 270) tractors each pulling a Krone TX560 forage transporter capable of loading 56m³ and supported by a big John Deere pulling a smaller transporter. And off they sped, sucking and chopping and spewing out grass at enormous speed. There is a bad video on Flickr - focus wouldn't work but I didn't see this in the bright sunshine.



Then dropped off at Farmer Franz’s place. Son Markus was driving up and down on the silo, chopping up and pressing down the grass Franz delivered in their self loading transporter. Time was an issue for them too but enough left over for both to get out of their cabins and come over for a chat. Even more surprising as Markus is off to Vienna tomorrow for a long weekend with the boys. They were there in December but no real action so they hope with Spring underway the Vienna girls will be easier to make contact with.
 
Any UK country girls looking for a good looking, 30ish, single, slim, good looking, humorous, responsible, BMW driving German farmer, please feel free to contact me. I should add you will be expected to muck in, help with milking mornings and evenings and that includes at grass mowing times, getting on one of the old tractors (no air con, radio/CD but at least a cabriolet) and turning the grass and very importantly, in the corners you will be expected to dismount and rake by hand, using a good quality heavy wooden hay rake, the few small amounts of cut grass back in to the rows where the men on the air con/radio/CD equipped monsters can reach it with their machines.


PS the above "ad" was neither requested or approved by father and especially not by son but I do know that it is generay quite difficult to attract partners to the life of being a farmers wife. Not quite sure why, I think if Angie was 20 years younger, she would have long abandoned me for Markus and the life of a real farmer!

 
Happy Tractor Tuesday one & all.