WIBBERLEY WAY OF MAKING ENSILAGE 57 



regards the small farmer, the covering of the stack with 

 soil can be dispensed with by simply building a hay- 

 stack on top of the silage stack, placing a layer of 

 rubbish between the ensilage and the hay. 



Again, where stack silage is fairly intensively 

 followed, and a sufficient quantity of hay may not be 

 available for making these super-stacks, the lifting of 

 the soil on top of the stack can be done with the assist- 

 ance of the horse-fork, a wooden bok being hitched on 

 to the rope and used to elevate the earth. Also the 

 labour of hand-digging the soil can be dispensed with 

 by running a horse-drawn cultivator or disc harrow 

 several times around the stack to loosen the soil. 



Silage made on this plan is sweet, nutritious, and, 

 above all, is succulent, so that the big farmer at 

 least, who is almost at his wits' ends to find a good 

 substitute for roots, might well follow this system with 

 a view to providing green, succulent food for winter use. 



The possibility of being able to convert the tare 

 crop into ensilage in the manner described serves us 

 with another example of how continuous cropping fits 

 in with adverse climatic conditions. 



CONQUERING THE CLIMATE 



In practice we make vetch ensilage when the weather 

 is not good enough to make hay. More labour is 

 required to make ensilage even in the new wsiy than 

 is required to convert the crop into hay, assuming good 

 or even fair weather conditions to obtain. The very 

 weather conditions, however, which compel us to under- 

 take the extra labour of silage-making, make the tilling 

 of the tare stubble for the winter-green crops to follow 

 all the easier. 



Rain in spring-time often hangs up tillage operations 

 for a week at a time ; but rain in the months of June 

 and July only facilitates tillage work. 



