Will’s World: Silaging is top of the pops in farming

My eleven-year-old daughter is a climber. She started when she was a feral toddler with household and garden objects – sideboards, curtains, trees, the dog – and hasn’t really stopped since.

If it’s there to be climbed, then sure enough, sooner or later she’ll be at the top looking down.

Thankfully she’s progressed to climbing centres now, which is great (and generally involves fewer frantic trips to A&E), even though the nearest one to us involves an hour-and-a-half round journey once a week.

See also: 5 steps to covering silage pits for an airtight seal

But I don’t mind, as it gives me a chance to catch up with her properly without the noise and distractions of being at home. 

Actually, it’s one of the highlights of my week; we talk about everything and anything during our drive together, from my “embarrassing” taste in music, to what she’s currently doing at school.

Take five

Over the past several months we’ve developed a game where we ask each other to name “top five favourites”. Top five favourite meals, top five favourite films, top five favourite sports – you get the idea.

But a few weeks back, she asked me one that had me stumped: “What are your top five favourite jobs to do on the farm?”

I don’t know why I struggled to answer particularly, because there are many things about farming that I enjoy. I’ve just never really considered the work I do in that rather innocent way before.

I’ve thought about it since, and while I’m not going to run through the top five like a 1980s DJ counting down the charts (“At number four this week – and down two places due to an unfortunate incident with some flying excrement to the face – is sorting cattle for market!”), I will exclusively reveal my number one, and it’s something we’ve been doing lately: silaging.

I love everything to do with it. Take mowing for a start. Who wouldn’t enjoy making all those pleasingly straight lines of freshly cut grass? What a tremendously satisfying job it is.

There’s just something so evocative about the smell, too; it conjures up all sorts of memories of silage seasons past and friends and family members long gone.

© Ffion Evans, age 11

Foraging highlight

The foraging itself is the best bit, though. Sailing along the field firing grass into the trailer running beside you – that’s proper farming, that is.

Even an aching lower back from twisting to the right all day and a nagging headache from the drone of the engine can’t stop me smiling as another full load of grass pulls away.

There was a rare moment a few weeks ago when everything had run like clockwork all day, the sun was getting low in the sky and one of my favourite songs came on the radio, and it all just felt, well, right. This was exactly where I was meant to be in the world.

Even sheeting the pit is fun. Yes, you read that correctly. It is, though, because there’s usually a team of you involved – something that happens less often on farms these days.

If you can’t have fun trying to land a tyre in front of one of your colleagues (preferably your old man or your other half) just right so that it soaks them in rancid water, then I don’t know what to say to you. Pure and utter joy.

And then afterwards, bacon sandwiches washed down with strong tea, a bit of good-natured banter and that immense feeling of comfort that comes from knowing that the next winter’s forage is safe and under cover.

Silaging – it’s top of the pops.