We store harvested corn and alfalfa in 200' by 100' horizontal bunkers behind the dairy barn; it's safer, easier to access, and more economical than putting it up in vertical silos. You won't see these in pastoral paintings by Famous Vermont Artists; they don't look for sh*t with all the plastic and old black tires covering them, but we farmers gotta do what we gotta do, and five times a year we gotta do it all over again.
It's not often we completely empty one of these bigger-than-a-hockey-rink constructs, but this week we cleaned out the last bit of feed and right to the bottom of the biggest bunker, and discovered a surprise in the pavement underneath.
You may recall that last year we invested $30k to put asphalt down upon the advisement of the company that did the work and (indirectly) the Miner Institute of Chazy, NY - you might know them for their Morgan Horse program or that they are a respectable "cow college" with a farming-based curriculum. They had tested this particular form of bunker-containment "for years" and someone, somewhere along the line, put their stamp of approval on it for durability and 'stand-up-to-regular-usage-ality.'
Well, it doesn't work here on the farm. My brother-in-law Denis spent three days washing the bunker down with spray from the 700-gallon "water buffalo" (I don't know why, but that's what the tank is called) and revealed a surface riddled with holes in sizes from quarters to donuts in about a third of the seams as well as places in-between. If you look in the spaces there's nothing down there to see but black, like an Acme Instant Hole. We have no idea where all the underlayment went; it must have dissolved from the acidity of the silage.
The company has said they will make good and repair it in time for corn storage this year (harvest is planned for this week, by the way). Still, it seems to be just another thing that we did, thinking it was going to be the cat's meow, but it isn't. It's fared similarly to the cement pads we had previously. Are those holes really wee money pits? We'll find out for sure next season.
On another note, my husband Dan and I have five more weekends of traveling to farmer's market. There is still pork to pick up at the processor, pre-ordered beef shares to deliver, and chickens and turkeys to sell. Sausages have sold out, steak is scarce in the freezer and nearly all the veal is gone. Cheeses are over-sold at the wholesale level. We can't keep up with demand.
Dan likes that things are starting to slow down at our stand so he can enjoy the market, too. The level of tourist saturation has subsided a bit. Cooler weather coincides with the appearance of the cider donut and apples crew. Samosaman and Tamale Girl are trying new products - or maybe they are changing with the seasons, too.
