The old saying “the weather is half the work” is so true. It has been an absolute pleasure farming for the past couple of weeks.

Ground conditions are ideal, grass is growing well and when you go out in the morning, stock are lying stretched out in the sun. A wonderful sight.

Pity we only get to experience it for a couple of weeks in the year. In the words of Pat Shortt: “It would be a great little country if we could only roof it.”

It does make me realise how insignificant we all are in the grand scheme of things. We as farmers can try our hardest to make grass or crops grow, but no amount of fertiliser or good management can compare to a little bit of heat from the sun – long may it continue.

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly a silage crop can bulk up after a few days of strong sun and good heat. It seems to be doing next to nothing for a month and then, bang, it feels like it doubles in height overnight.

Mine should be ready for harvesting this week, weather permitting. For once in my life, I’m well organised: the silage pit is cleaned out and the walls are lined with plastic. All I have to do is run a bit of land drain around the inside of the walls for the effluent and I’m ready to go.

Buzz and excitement

I suppose it’s just a sign of the fast-paced, high-pressure times we live in, but when I was a child there was a great buzz and excitement around getting the silage in. We used to look forward to it from one end of the year to the other. The chance of maybe getting to do a bit of driving.

We started off rolling the pit in low gear, being very strongly warned not to go near the edge. As we got slightly older, we would get doing a bit of buckraking when one of the adults was missing for one reason or another. Then we’d be eventually promoted to, as we called it, “carting in”.

The Health and Safety Authority would have a fit!

Back in the day, my father and two other relatives worked together, putting in silage with a double chop. We could have been cutting silage for well over two weeks. The whole thing had a sort of social aspect attached to it. One thing for sure, there was always plenty of help to cover the pit.

Nowadays the whole thing is just a bit of a torture. It’s a matter of trying to get it in as quickly as possible and hoping it doesn’t rain in the middle of it. Maybe I’m just looking back with rose-tinted glasses. Maybe my father and his cohorts felt under as much pressure then as I do now. Who knows?

One thing I do know, though – it’s getting harder and harder to get someone to give you a hand to cover a silage pit.

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