Last night, I drove up to the White River ampitheatre in scenic Auburn, WA, to see Kiss and Def Leppard perform live. (Both bands absolutely kicked ass, and their opening act, Kobra and the Lotus, was equally amazing, but that’s a subject for another thread.) Coming from the south, the main way there involves taking a series of increasingly small highways until you’re just plain driving down a two-lane country road straight through the middle of farm country. I’ve taken that route to get there several times before for concerts in the past, but this time I wasn’t paying attention and I missed the last left turn, and I drove an extra six or seven miles out into the sticks before I realized I should’ve reached my destination by now. I eventually got myself turned around and made it to the venue in time for the show, but in the meantime I got to take in the sights of the farm country - cows, sheep, more cows, the ever-present aroma of dung, a fat elderly man in overalls driving a tractor down the highway, and the subject of my post today.
In several farms I passed by on the road, I noticed several dozen large cylindrical white objects lying out in the fields. I’d guess that they were about four or five feet tall or so and two or three feet wide, almost the exact same proportions as a marshmallow that you’d roast over a campfire. Not every farm had them, but at least a third to a half of them that I passed by had them, and they were mostly laid out in a grid across the area that I could see, maybe twenty feet or so apart from each other, lying on their round side. One farm didn’t have any laid out like that, but they did have a stack of them in the corner of the lot by the fence.
What the hell was I looking at? If it helps, it’s been mostly sunny and hot here recently with a few minor bits of rain, it hasn’t dropped below freezing at night since March or so, and it’s raspberry-picking season in this neck of the woods.
Tractor eggs. Although there’s no point in stealing one if you’re looking to get a free tractor. Like the banana, tractors have been so altered by selective breeding they’re now incapable of fertilising their eggs/fruits, and have to be produced by cloning. Under the right conditions (kept a secret by the manufacturers) as little as a single bolt can grow into a new tractor in months.
Those big marshmallow looking things were round hay bales, baled/wrapped in white plastic. I’m from the South and how I know this is my FIL and neighbor are old time farmers. Hope that helps.
Have a blessed day!
“sprayed with acid”? Silage is fermented hay, and produces its own acid. I’m not a farmer, but I do know some, and there isn’t a single mention of adding acid in the wikipedia article linked to by kayaker, just that some modern silage production uses starter cultures for a more consistent result.
I thought hay, but the description sounded all off. The hay bales I see are much bigger than that, and when in a field they’re certainly not twice as high as they are wide.
Also, I thought everyone would know what they look like. I see them all the time, and it’s not like I live on a farm or anything. Are there whole areas where most people might not recognize hay bales when they see them?
What can I say? I’m a city boy and I rarely venture into the parts of the world where fat elderly men drive tractors down the highway at their leisure.
With their corn fields as well. My buddy Herb plans his yearly corn maze a year ahead of time, using a computer and the help from a friend with a plane.
I don’t know where you are from, but on the farms of Minn (I grew up on one) silage is just chopped corn; cobs, stalks and leaves. NOT hay.
It’s stored in special air-tight containers (steel silos that are usually blue (it’s a brand)) and the decomposition stops once it’s used up all the oxygen.
These silos are filled from the top and ‘used’ from the bottom, which is the oldest silage.
