Chopping corn

I am writing from hotter than Ukraine Manitoba today. I arrived Monday evening after a couple of nice flights and a delay of over an hour because the Toronto airport was shut down because of a thunderstorm shortly after I arrived there. I got bumped up to a business seat over the ocean, next to an older lady who did not speak English.
 All in all everything went well and Jess, James and Abby met me at the airport. Tuesday morning I helped get ready for Abby's second birthday party.





Afterwards I went to Steinbach and watched a double header in softball and have been hanging out at the farm... except for a thrift shop run to buy two dollar jeans to take back for the students.

Garry has been busy back in the village chopping corn since Tuesday morning. That's right, he's already making that bunker full of corn silage (last year he chopped about a hundred more acres to make less corn silage). He told me that they were still chopping around the headlands on the big field Thursday, getting about four wagon-fulls each time around the bigger corn field. He said it takes ten minutes to fill the wagon, but fifteen for the wagon to come back empty from the barn, so sometimes they have to wait.





 Victor sent me some photos. As you can see, the new New Holland tractor is pulling the old New Holland chopper. So far it has worked beautifully, with no problems.

They decided to chop the bigger field because they will pay by the acre for combining grain and there will be more grain per acre on the smaller field since they got the water on it faster. Garry does not think they will need to cut the whole field to fill the bunk, so they would combine the rest of the field when its ready in the fall. This is the field where you go out the end of the village and cross the narrow dam by the pond to get to it, so it does take longer to get there with the wagons than it would the irrigated field from last year, which is why it was the original choice for making silage, until the corn was a little better there.

Irrigation is a wonderful thing, other farmers are making corn silage out of corn that is only about six feet tall. Ours is at least ten, with two cobs on many stalks.