Harvest Time

This weekend marks the harvest of our corn silage.  The silage becomes the winter feed for our cattle and hogs.  We are not a strictly grass fed program.  We are a pastured program that supplements with silage in the winter as our pastures are not able to keep up with our animals.  We have also gone to the fall calving season.  Our momma cows need the extra energy and nutrients in the silage to keep making milk.  We will put about 200 tons of silage into  our bunker silo.  It is nowhere near what a big dairy would be chopping, but it is critical to our animals health for the winter.  We are at the optimum time for harvesting.  The corn is perfect, and beautiful.  Our silage corn, again this year, turned out fantastic.  We buy Doeblers Corn (a PA-based company) and it has had great yields the last 3 years.  We will spend today, Saturday, and Sunday chopping into wagons, unloading and packing in the silo, and Monday packing-packing-packing-packing before we cover it with plastic until November when we open it up to feed.  The silage ferments and stores for winter.  If not packed well enough it will spoil.  It makes great winter feed and fits well into our program  here.