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The Year Round: Extra work making silage reaps the rewards
We had an excellent week's silage making at Mill Farm in early June. The sun shone throughout, and we worked until 11pm on two occasions. That followed a 6am start bottling milk.
After the two late nights I awoke to the sound of steady rain. It is a grand feeling knowing that your extra efforts had paid off.
We finished 600 big silage bales, against a total of 1,000 needed to winter the cattle and the sheep.
As 180 bales were left over from last year, we feel fairly well placed. The silage is dry and of good quality. We haven't had it analysed yet. The cows will do that well enough when they start to eat it.
Cutting so much silage has one other big advantage. This high Pennines dairy farm has a number of small fields so steep that parts cannot be mown.
The dry cows can now deal with these unmown areas, leaving grass for the milkers. What with this and a newly calved cow entering the herd regularly, milk output remains steady.
A large proportion is bottled here and sold retail. Customers may be away on holiday from now until October, so there is a slackened demand more pronounced than in the days when so many worked in factories.
I was so busy procuring silage for next winter that I hardly had time to listen to the political news. In my view the idea of wages is to keep up with the bills, but I seem out of date.
We have been carting stock to market for other people. A group of 16 yearling heifers was turned into fresh grass, but were not content. One broke through the fence onto a busy road so that was a necessary repair job.
Our local Young Farmers Club attended a regional event and had the usual enjoyable time making new friends.
The girls' team won their tug of war class, which pleased them greatly.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 1 C to 6 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 4 C to 8 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: West
