A BIG Lunch Bag

Every so often I get this crazy notion to fill my freezer with make-ahead meals. Have you ever had this thought? Just imagine coming home from a hectic day, reaching into the freezer and a short time later presenting your family with a hearty meal. This idea is still just in my head...not my freezer, but this week we finished make-ahead hearty meals for our cows.

This week we finished filling their lunch bags with silage.  

 Corn silage is made by chopping the entire corn plant into small pieces using a machine called a forage harvester, which is pulled by a tractor. A wagon with tall sides is pulled behind the forage harvester to catch the chopped corn. 

 The wagons are then taken to the bunker where they are unloaded and the silage is tightly packed inside to avoid spoilage, and then the bunker is covered with plastic. Our bunkers are large, but not large enough to store all the silage we need for our animals, so we fill lunch bags too.

These plastic bags are 8 feet high and 150 feet long. They do the same job as our bunker- keep our cows feed fresh and safe.

The field may be bare, but our "cupboards" sure aren't. The silage in our bunker and bags will feed our cows until next fall. You can see how we mix the silage with additional feed by reading 120 Hungry Mouths To Feed.