Growing up on a family dairy farm has always meant that silage season, at least for me, has never just been about securing feed for next winter.
Every year we approach it with a mixture of excitement and just a little trepidation – because as every farmer knows often, there may only be a short period of time to get silage cut, picked up and covered before the weather can break.
Often during silage season tempers can fray and there can be heated words between family members and lifelong friends as days run into nights until the final load is in the yard.
But once the pit is covered all is forgotten.
The start of first cut silage would always mark the end of the secondary school year calendar for me, but even in primary school, I remember thinking ‘summer is very near when the silage wagon is out’.
I remember hopping off the bus and smelling the lovely, fresh smell of cut grass, followed by the groan of the tractor going up and down the pit.
Flask of tea
Silage season also meant there was a job handed to you whatever your age – it started with you being sent up the fields with a plate full of sandwiches and a flask of tea to keep the driver going.
One message that was drummed into us from an early age was always to be safe during silage season – regardless of what you were doing. But being the tea bearer gave you the chance to fly down the fields on your push bike, deliver the goods and lie down in the knocked grass listening to the hum of the mower.
Then as you got older, you graduated to sitting in the cab and keeping the driver company, where you got to pick up invaluable tips on how to operate the machines.
As all we know with harvesting silage, the ball gets rolling with the mower landing in the field. Once grass is getting knocked, the mower stays going until all the grass is down.
But when the silage is ready to get picked up, that is really when it is all hands on deck – and nobody escapes – my mam would always be preparing a lunch and a dinner for everyone working outside on top of her full-time job as a deputy principal of a secondary school.
On a real hot day, it was always the cold salad dinner with hard boiled eggs, coleslaw, ham, chicken, and potato salad, and this could not be beaten.
But sometimes not everything goes to plan and, when you are really under pressure, then you have to resort to a few burgers and chips from the chipper and throwing them down you while leaning against the hot bonnet of the tractor or lying across the warm silage pit.
Silage season
The year when you are finally appointed to be the driver of the tractor and mower, silage wagon, or have to buck rake up the grass is one to remember.
It is also the exact moment when you suddenly realised that silage season is not all fun and games – especially when you have your own machines.
There is also the fact that not only have you the silage to do but there are also the cows to get milked. However if you are lucky there are always enough hands – thanks to the cousins – around the yard for that to get done relatively quickly.
The joyful thing about machines, tractors, mowers, and wagons is when the pressure is on, things tend to break or give way.
Particularly when the general rule of thumb is, no matter what age you are, that if you drive it, you fix it.
Chains breaking off the cogs of the wagons, reels jittering as they pick up grass, knives getting caught and gears giving way on mowers quickly take the joy out of silage season.
It is a rite of passage for many of us that once you turn 16, you are trusted and should be capable to operate a silage wagon and tractor on the road and draw in.
That is when you can also see another side to family members.
With two silage wagons drawing in grass, the man on the pit – who in my case is usually my dad – will be directing traffic and instructing where he wants the load of silage placed across the pit face.
But as we have all experienced at one time, sometimes these instructions and hand signals from inside a dusty cab window can get lost in translation, which causes the hand signals to become a bit more frantic.
When you are a still a novice in charge of the silage wagon and tractor with little experience, these hand signals can understandably be a little confusing but, over the years, I have become an expert in interpreting them.
Every cut of silage will take you right through the highs and lows – you can have the tunes blaring in the tractor one minute with everything running smoothly then in the next you are suddenly stuck underneath the wagon or tractor trying to fix a burst pipe, a clogged reel, or a broken chain.
But the hardship mixed with the excitement and enjoyment of it all makes it all the better when, at the end of the day, you take a step back and see a covered pit of quality silage – that is what makes it all worthwhile.
