Last evening, Husband chopped a couple rounds to make sure the machinery was working right. The tractor is pulling the chopper which chews up the rye and spews it into the wagon behind. (Husband does actually have a head on top of his body.......the evening sun is causing odd shadows inside the tractor cab!)
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Here's how the wagon looks when it is full of the chopped rye (If you were a cow, you'd be thinking "Yum, yum!" at the sight of this! [Do cows think, I wonder??]):
The chopper and the wagon contain various sharp, rotating parts. Beware!! Stay away!!.JPG)
Whoops.......the camera slipped and ended up snapping a picture of some waving grass. There's a certain beauty there, I guess, even though its common, ordinary grass. Yesterday was blessed with a stiff breeze, all day long out of the northwest. Jackets and head coverings were required..JPG)
This final photo shows the wagon parked next to the bagger. The chopped rye is flowing out of the wagon and into the bagger which pushes the rye into the white plastic tube bag. It will end up looking like a big, long, white sausage sitting in the field..JPG)
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Today, my step-dad will be here to drive the tractor pulling wagons back and forth from the field to the bagger. Husband will run the chopper. I'm going to put lunch in the oven for the guys, and then Mom and I are planning to visit cemeteries where her relatives are buried, to put flowers on graves. It will be nice to spend some time alone with my mom, so we can have a heart-to-heart visit.
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Best wishes for a pleasant day for you, too!!
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7 comments:
I meant to ask this yesterday, you plant rye? I've never known anyone who did? Is there a lot of rye in that area?
What do you do with it? Hay? Rye bread? Rye whiskey?
Oh, Mary, LOL, good ideas for the rye if only I were more creative and ambitious!!
I suppose there are others that plant rye around here, but I don't know of any right off hand. Yes, we seed the rye in the fall and it grows right away in the spring and gets chopped now. Than the field will be plowed and planted in corn, I think, or maybe soybeans.
One time, several years ago, when we first started planting rye, Husband turned the cows out to pasture on it. It made the milk taste different! I didn't like it, and pleaded with Husband to not do that again.
Informative post and neat photos, Jeannelle. I doubt I'll ever come that close to a rye chopper, so I'm glad you took that one. Since you're going to use the rye for silage, may I assume that the resulting stuff will not give milk the same taste as when the cows eat rye grass straight from the fields?
I love your accidental snap of the waving grass!
Great photos! It's fun to watch the cropping from a distance...a great distance.
Hubby spent a lot of time checking out all your farming posts last night...he had to see how it's done in Iowa!
I love the waving grass photo.
Catcher in the Rye is a classic book about teenage angst. It's sort of sad and funny at the same time.
Pat,
You're correct, the silage rye doesn't seem to affect the taste of the milk like the fresh rye. I'm glad you like the grass photo....I like it, too!
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Judy,
I'm wondering if dairy farmers in your area use rye?
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Ruth,
Thank you for the info. There's so many books I should have read.
Jeanelle I love reading about the farming. It is so interesting. It reminds me a little of my grandfather who would grow a wheat crop each year and we would spend weekends helping (in my case watching) my dad and grandfather reap the harvest.
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