Silage Time

And we're off! The silage harvest has started here at home. Yesterday afternoon the Sons cut 120 acres of grass and today with three wagons they are bringing it all in. The Farmer is on the pit pushing the grass in and at present is keeping up with it as the loads are coming from a couple of miles away so give him time between each drop to keep on top of it though it may get more diffucult once the trailers are hauling from the home fields. Last evening I took a picnic supper out to the field during mowing and they had a welcome break from sitting in a tractor cab. Today will be a day of sandwiches snatched at intervals between loads. Twice this morning I have been out to ask the drivers of the milk tanker and a cattle-cake delivery lorry to park their vehicles in a certain way to allow the tractors and trailers to get by as they are coming through the yard...it could cause great difficulties if the tractors and lorries are blocking each other's way! It is a good time with all this activity and as long as the weather holds everyone will be happy, though we are having a very fine drizzle passing over at present but things are brightening up as I write.

When I take food out to the fields the dogs love to come too and need no encouragement to leap into the back of the car. They adore rushing throught the cut grass catching smells and chasing but never catching, the swallows across the rows. Above the swathes of grass tens of red kites fill the air, so many nowadays after the years of scarcity; they and the buzzards are after carrion in the form of unfortunate small mammals that have been caught by the mowing machines, it is feast-time for them.