We filled the silo in the spring with grass and in the fall with corn. My grandpa, (Gus Waschke) was big on corn silage. He and my grandmother were photographed by Northwest Farm News in 1946 standing in front of a stand of 
Minnesota 13 field corn. Judging from the photo, the corn was over twelve feet tall. Dad (Ted Waschke) less inclined toward corn. Dad did not like to spray with pesticides and herbicides and raising a good crop of corn in those days without spraying meant many passes with a cultivator and some hand hoeing that took time away from tending the pasture, haying and the grain crops. Not long after Grandpa died, Dad quit growing corn silage and increased his small grain acreage.
I was enthralled with silo filling and remember much more about spring grass silage. Probably because the fall corn silage filling was after school had started and I didn’t participate as much.
Silo filling was a community event, but it was a different community than most of the other events on Waschke Road. Unlike hog butchering or chicken catching, silo filling was more business and equipment rather than a gathering of friends and neighbors. And had an element of danger.
In the early 50s, my dad went together with three other dairy farmers in the North Bellingham-Laurel area to buy silo-filling equipment: a field cutter and a blower. The machines were expensive and only used for a short time each year. Each farmer supplied their own wagon for hauling fresh-cut silage. Now days, silage is usually hauled on trucks and self-unloading wagons, but in the 50s and 60s, farmers used hay wagons outfitted with wooden sides and a sliding partition that was drawn by cables to the back of the wagon where the silage was unloaded. Men with forks pulled the silage from the wagon to a conveyer attached to the blower. The silage was blown straight up forty or more feet to the top of the silo where the heavy chopped grass or corn made a hairpin turn and was blown forcefully into a flexible distributor pipe that dangled down to the level of the silage already in the silo.
The blower was powered by a big tractor with a thirty-foot drive belt. The tractor was run with the throttle wide open. Log chains held the tractor to keep the belt tight and stable. The roar of the blower and tractor could be heard 
a mile away. The ground thumped and shook with raw energy when a wad of silage weighing fifty or more pounds hit the blower blades and was thrown up and over the high wall of the silo.
In the silo, a half dozen men and boys directed the distributor pipe and walked in a circle around the perimeter of the silo, leveling and packing the chopped fodder to prevent air pockets that caused spoilage. Wisdom was that the center would take care of itself, but the edges, especially around the unloading doors, needed attention. Tramping silage was work, perhaps not as hard as pulling silage off the wagons, but fresh silage is spongy. Every direction is up hill. Leveling the silage required some heavy fork work, especially when the silage was wet. Filling never stopped for the soaking rain storms that come in off the Pacific in June in Whatcom County, because the silos had to be filled quickly while the fodder was at its prime.
As the silo filled, the work in the silo got harder and more dramatic. As the level of silage rose, sections of distributor pipe were removed and lowered to the ground. As each section was removed, the silage became more difficult to direct and more silage had to be forked from the center as fast as the ground crew pulled it off the wagon. The men on the forks began to sweat.
About twelve feet from the top, the pace of the men on the forks became feverish. The distributor pipe was so short it was nearly useless. If the silage was not moved fast enough, the flow from the blower pipe might be restricted for an instant and the pipe would back up and clog. If the crew feeding the blower did not kill the tractor quickly, the energy of the roaring tractor would pack the pipe solid with tons of silage. If the crew was quick and lucky and the silage was dry, the pipe could sometimes be cleared by disconnecting it at the blower and shaking the clog loose. But in pouring rain, the wet silage packed tight and the blower pipe would have to be lowered on a cable and taken apart to clear it.
Raising the pipe with a cable and tractor when setting up was a tense and tricky job. But when the pipe was crammed with heavy silage and the yard around the silo was churned into a mud bowl by the wagon traffic, lowering the blower pipe was risky.
One year, the tractor on the cable lowering a jammed pipe lost traction in the mud and pipe came crashing down and the pipe was damaged. No one was badly injured, but it was close. When the pipe hit the ground, it jacked around out of control and could have broken limbs, cracked skulls, and crushed chests. The man guiding the end of the pipe got a nasty gash in his hand and my mother had to take him in a car to the emergency room at the county hospital at the corner of Northwest and Smith where they sewed his wound up so he could return to work. One of the other owners rushed off in a truck to the Allis-Chalmers dealer on the Guide Meridian for a replacement section of blower pipe while my Dad and the rest of the crew disassembled the mess in pouring rain and cleared out the packed silage.
The clog occurred shortly after noon dinner and the pipe was back up and operating in time to get in a few more loads before quitting time at five.