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Life is too short to eat bad food! Sharing great recipes, farm life, stories and photography from our Northern California dairy farm.

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May 19, 2011

The Rumbling of Spring

I was awakened to the sound of a rumbling the other morning, that to me signifies spring is most definitely here.  Rumbling that is only heard on a dairy farm, as far as I know. 
The conveyor belt {the green platform} had started up, which means the first silage truck had arrived to begin delivering a total of about 1600 tons of silage.  Silage is a mixture of fermented oats, rye grass and some other grasses and it is mixed in with grain, by the tractor load, to feed 250 cows and 200 heifers. 

This process should take no longer than three days.  From sun up to sun down, 10 trucks drive to and from the silage fields, 10 miles away until the job is complete.
















Right after the silage delivery was complete, our nice sunny weather turned wet once again.  And once again, I had to resort to indoor activities with the kids to keep them occupied.  We ended up making butter, the easy way which I will share with you all on Friday.  But before making butter, we talked about the food we feed our dairy cows and how it helps them produce milk. 

Is it raining or sunny where you are right now?

I love to hear from you! Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to leave a comment. Have a fantastic day!


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6 comments:

TexWisGirl said...

i like those huge 'white worm' bags they're stored in now. in wisconsin when i was a kid, stave silos (and if you were lucky, a blue harvestor one) were the norm. but about 10 or 12 yrs ago, i noticed they had started to use these silage bags too. it's got to be safer (and hopefully toxic gases are not as dangerous in them).

Mary said...

Our neighbor does that too. It's like Indy 500 on our road. They raise the replacement heifers for their monster dairy that is to the north of us. They have a couple thousand heifers at the neighbors farm.

Robyn said...

It started to rain mid-late afternoon today. At 7:00 pm we had 65 hundreth. A beautiful spring rain in South Dakota.

Heather @ 3 kids and lots of pigs said...

Today was the first sunny day we have had since last Saturday. I hope it is here to stay for many reasons.

Anonymous said...

Hmm. . .our silage is just corn, the entire stalk all chopped up. We also use haylage, same principle as silage. While we have to order the haylage, we make our own silage and pack it in a concrete pit to ferment. We've had several raccoons come out of there drunk as a skunk! Haha.

Sarah said...

"Chopping", as we call it, is my favorite time of year. We just chop corn and not hay. We usually bale our hay. But chopping time for us signifies the beginning of harvest. Enjoy those sights and smells!

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