Yesterday started out late and continued that way all day.  The elevator that handles the haylage out of the silo had worn a hole in it where the chain goes.  This was installed with the other elevators in 1998 and they have all served us well but everything wears out eventually.  Bruce has had a steel liner on hand to fix it for quite awhile but after the chain caught and slipped the belt on the motor 4 times it became pretty obvious that this elevator had moved up from the  "some day" list to the "today" list.  He spent the morning and part of the afternoon feeding everyone that he mixes for because that haylage comes out of a silo bag.  Once he had that done he disconnected the chain, removed the top section of the elevator, cut out the section that was bad and then installed the new liner.  This liner goes the length of the elevator so he had to drill and file (the holes are square) the holes and then it was ready to put back in place.  Of course the project took more time than expected so feeding and milking were late so it was a long day.

While Bruce was working on that I did some house stuff but I also harvested the squash.  Bruce thought there were about 20 but there were actually 35!  We also have an apple tree.  Bruce compares this time of year for us as the same as the squirrels, packing away food for future use.

Today we started the day with our first actual killing frost.  We have had a wonderfully long fall but we still have plenty to do.  After breakfast Bruce hauled the load of manure that had been sitting in the spreader and then cleaned the barn and hauled that also.  It is nice that he can  now haul and spread directly on the corn fields that have been chopped off.  Bruce did have an interesting story about his first load of manure.  As he was spreading the load he saw a mouse running around on top of the load.  He got off in the field and went to rescue the little guy and pitch him out so he wouldn't get ground through the spreader but he hid behind the hydraulic cylinder in the spreader and he couldn't get to him.  He spread the load and on his way home he saw him again, running around the top edge of the spreader.  Bruce backed the spreader under the barn cleaner and the little guy jumped from the spreader back under the safety of the cleaner!  If mice have 9 lives this guy used his all in one trip! He will have a story to tell at the newyears party that none will be able to top!

I have a love/hate relationship with silo bags.  There is always a certain amount of feed that spoils, more if rodents get into the bag and allow air in.  There are always pieces of plastic since, as you feed you cut more plastic away.Sometimes in winter it gets snowed under before it gets picked up and then it gets pushed into a pile with the snow and minor amounts of feed.  In the end there is a mess to sort and clean up.  Today we did just that, pulling out the plastic we could at first and then Bruce used the skid steer with pallet forks to stir through the old feed. We had more spoiled feed today than usual because we had a bag that got a hole in it (rodents)  that we didn't notice until the bag started to settle in the middle.  By the time he got done he had stirred through and repiled all the spoiled feed and loaded all the plastic onto our dump trailer.  This will get dumped  and then reloaded into our dumpster.  The spoiled feed is now ready to get spread back onto the fields.  These bags happen to be in the area that is now cow pasture.  Some bags store feed for a few years before they get used up so we are glad to have these empty and now cleaned up.  Next spring this area will be direct seeded and be part of the cow pasture.