Fall, and the Harvest Begin– 9/19/21

There is just something about fall weather that makes me want to cook (and eat) everything in sight, which is a good thing because there are many things ripening to enjoy.

This last week my mother-in-law gifted me about 30# of beautiful plums. I made plum butter over the weekend, will be freezing some for future use, and will also make a plum cobbler she shared the recipe for. Stay tuned, I’ll be sharing some of those recipes in the next few days.

She also gave me some beautiful garden tomatoes, so tonight, when I took a break from riding in the chopper with Andy to go milk my cows, I threw together some BLTs. There’s NOTHING better than a BLT made with our Hereford smoked bacon, and fresh garden tomatoes! Heaven….

While I’m over here cooking and preserving ‘people’ food, the guys over at our sister farm are doing the same for the livestock- ours and theirs.

Andy headed out right after our morning milking to get started chopping corn. I stayed back, enjoyed my morning coffee on the deck, and finished up six pints of plum butter in a 10 minute water bath before heading out to ride along and bring him some breakfast. During these busy times of the year, if I don’t go out for a ride in the tractor, I hardly see Andy. I do enjoy ‘harvest dates,’ though, and because the little ones are with grandma and papa this weekend, I was able to spend most of the day with Andy.

It was a perfect early fall day- the sun was shining, no humidity and it quickly warmed up to the low 70s. I just love fall…

All throughout the summer hay is harvested, about every four weeks depending on how much rain and sunshine we get, but the big, final harvests start in the fall. This corn is being chopped and will be unloaded and compacted into a bunker silo back at the farm.

I asked Andy why the bunker style silos are preferred for some types of feed, over the traditional style silos we are used to seeing. While we still use traditional silos, the bunker style results in less feed waste and saves time and electricity (silo unloaders burn a bunch of electricity and are slow) during daily feedings. It’s also much quicker during harvest time for the wagons to unload this way, rather than into the blower that fills a tall silo, and often gets plugged.

As the full chopper wagons are pulled by the tractors up and over the pile in the bunker, they dump their loads. After each load is dumped, and in between loads, a very large articulating tractor with a plow-like blade spreads each layer evenly and drives over it repeatedly until it’s pressed flat.

This layering and compacting works just like when you make sauerkraut at home, and allows the feed to ferment and be preserved for months to come. After the feed ferments for several weeks, its ready to be fed to the cattle.

I have a picture of this process, I promise. It’s 11 pm right now, and I just cannot seem to find it, but when I do, I’ll add it here to the post!

We chopped into the evening hours, and stopped just after dark. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow afternoon so the guys are planning on starting early to get as much done as possible before it starts.

Tomorrow is my Marquette & Rumely milk delivery day, but it looks like I’ll be on my own to milk, bottle and deliver! I better get to bed….

Good Night!