Portnellan Farm: organic beef and moorings

The importance of good silage Portnellan cows are fed almost totally on grass and silage - a form of "preserved" grass to make a natural and nutritious feed for the cows in the winter months. To make silage, we cut the grass during the summer months when the grass supply is plentiful and gather it in  into rows. Later a machine lifts and chops the cut grass and transfers it into a trailer. This is then tipped into a pit, called a silage or silo pit, and covered with polythene and weighed down with old tyres to make the silo airtight. Naturally produced organic acids, chiefly lactic acid, then convert the sugar in the grass, effectively pickling it. This usually takes about two weeks. David goes to enormous trouble to make sure that his silage is made at the right time of year – at Portnellan we make two cuts the first being about the end of May and the second is approximately 6 weeks after the first cut. Every farm is different – too early and there’s not enough for the winter; too late and the quality isn’t quite right! Of course, there’s the weather to contend with too and sometimes that can mean that silage is delayed for weeks as we watch it getting much too long and stalky – not exactly what our cows need. The pastures on Portnellan are permanent leys – that means that they have been there for a very long time and we don’t plough them up.  Since we went organic the clover has returned to the grassland – clover is a nitrogen-fixing plant and it means that we don’t need to use artificial nitrogen in the form of fertiliser to make the grass grow. Where the clover is, the grass is long and lush, using the nitrogen that has been ‘fixed’ in the soil. The finished product. Silage is moist and it not only has a higher food value than hay, but our cattle find it more palatable. It forms the bulk of their diet in the winter months when the grass is not growing.   Day 1 of silage making: the first cut Day 2: "lifting" and chopping the grass     A freshly lifted field and ... ...the grass waiting to be converted into silage