Under the Wire

I was riding my horse checking cows a few days ago in a pasture bordered by a corn field. The cows looked great, every so often old “Freckles” was grabbing a mouthful of grass high enough he didn’t even have to put his head down to get it and the sun was beginning to take the fall chill out of the air. In this idyllic setting, guess what I was thinking about? Cutting corn silage. How weird is that? Stranger yet, it wasn’t my corn field. In fact, I have never owned a cornfield. If life keeps me on my present path, never will own one. So, where did those thoughts come from?

Many years ago and I do mean many. My parents owned ranch land much like where I was riding that day, interspersed with corn fields. Every fall, before school started, I would beg a job from a local farmer helping to“fill silo.” To a kid raised on a ranch where there was limited tractor use, then off by myself in a quiet hay meadow, the hustle and bustle of silage cutting was intoxicating. The huge silage cutting operations of modern times have sterilized what was once a noisy, sweet smelling, fast paced for the times, organized chaos.

Machinery consisted of a “big” tractor, maybe 70 or 80 horsepower pulling a two row corn cutter emitting a wonderful roar as it blew a sweet smelling mixture of the corn stalk, leaves and cob mixed with sticky, still juicy corn grain, into a truck.

Trucks then were mostly Chevy for some reason, ton and a half, side dumps with a grain box extended upward with additional boards so it could attempt to haul about twice the weight it was designed for. Driving one was a contact sport as the silage cutter spout accidentally shot silage into the truck cab instead of the bulging load behind the cab once in a while. The trucks were powerhouses up to the task. Six cylinder gas engine, four speed stick shift with an electric two speed button, always red, beside the big black shift knob. Working your way up and down through the maze of eight choices of gears was a challenge as you tried to keep pace with the cutter. Success was a manly, gratifying experience. Failure won you a lap full of freshly chopped corn blown in at 60 miles per hour. The windows had to be open. No air conditioning. Adding to the excitement were dozer equipped packing tractors in the pit, at least one out of gas or broke down, and an occasional newbie driver who forgot to release the side chains of the dump box before dumping his load as he drove through the silage pit. Watching the growling truck slowly lay over on it’s side as the load shifted in the fresh corn was exciting. Watching the pale faced driver climb out the passenger door, now horizontal and eight feet in the air, was priceless. Most only needed to do that once. Took me twice.

Yep, riding my horse across the prairie is wonderful. Being 16 and filling silo, well, that’s one of those things memories are made of.