Gardaí have confirmed that no-one was injured following a collision involving a tractor and trailer of straw bales in Co. Cork last evening (Thursday, December 22).

The incident happened at New Road, Bandon closet to the local GAA grounds at 5:50p.m. gardaí confirmed to Agriland.

The tractor was hauling a low trailer stacked with bales, when the trailer ended up on its side at a small roundabout at New Road.

Gardaí attended the scene and the collision was cleared within one hour, with no injuries reported and no other vehicle was involved.

Image: Ian Graham Twitter

A number of passers by took to social media to urge road users to avoid the area until the scene was cleared.

Bales

In other news relating to bales, the sight of a contractor baling silage at this time of year raised a few eyebrows in Limerick last week.

Eddie Conway, based in Ballysimon, got a call to cut silage on a farm in Caherconlish while an Arctic airmass was over Ireland and not the summer sun, but he wasn’t long dusting off his machinery and started cutting on December 13.

tractor baling silage
Image: Brendan Gleeson

“We’ve often cut a lot worse!” Eddie joked. “It was grand, a good covering of grass and we travelled on the land the finest.

“Grass has been growing since last September because it was so mild up until recently. You had so much rain in October and into November that farmers didn’t get a chance to graze it.”

The agri contractor has been in the business for 32 years and has been asked to do zero-grazing (cutting grass and bringing it straight into cattle) once before in December, but never baling silage.

tractor silage bales
Image: Brendan Gleeson

After cutting 20ac on Tuesday (December 13), Eddie started baling on Friday (December 16).

“We left it down as long as we could so that it would dry out some bit. We made 110 bales,” Eddie said. The quality of the silage will not be known until next year.