During the freezing cold spell last week, while the rest of us wrapped up warm, one Limerick agricultural contractor was out baling silage.
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.
“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.”
Baling silage
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.
After cutting 20ac last 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.
While this is his first time baling silage in December, Eddie famously baled straw in Thomond Park in 2010 after it was used to protect the pitch from freezing temperatures.
But making silage in December has to be the final straw for Eddie who wishes his customers a and hearty Christmas.
