LAKEVILLE, Minn. — The silo towered above the farm of Gordon Fredrickson's youth, serving as an ever-present reminder of its importance in the survival of his family.
"With only 65 acres tillable on our 120-acre farm, growing corn for silage offered the most efficient use of our rocky acres. Growing enough corn to fill our 14-foot-diameter by 50-foot-high silo was always a priority," Fredrickson writes in his latest book, "A Farm County Silo Filling."
For him, the silo was a symbol of what they needed to do all year: Plant, cultivate and harvest corn to fill the silo to carry their dairy herd through winter and provide a living to their family.
It's hard to overstate the value of the silo to dairymen in the mid to late 1800s, Fredrickson said. For the first time, it allowed dairy producers to __have fodder to sustain milk cows in a good way through the winter months. Silage was an amazing invention that enabled farmers to __have good feed all winter, he said. Prior to the invention of the silo, many farmers sold cattle in the fall and purchased them back in the spring.
Upper Midwest farmers quickly adopted silos, Fredrickson said. In 1882, there were 91 silos in the United States, he writes, citing USDA data. By 1895, there were more than 50,000. By 1903, there were an estimated 300,000 to 500,000.
Fredrickson, who grew up in Scott County in the 1950s, is a retired teacher turned author and agricultural storyteller. He has written 11 books, all inspired by actual events from his and his wife, Nancy's, farming experiences.
"A Farm Country Silo Filling" follows on the heels of "A Farm Country Harvest," finished in 2013. Fredrickson said silo filling was the obvious choice for his next book. The ideas filled his head for several years before he was ready to put words to paper.
The book includes four parts. Part one focuses on the silo before and after 1950. Part two is a fictional story from Fredrickson's youth based on actual events illustrated by Robert Williams, of south central Minnesota. Part three is growing corn before and after 1950 and part four is celebrating and preserving the corn harvest experience. The book includes historical photographs as well as photographs of present day harvest events.
A lot of people, even farmers of today, don't know what trouble it was to deal with corn before combines came into use, Fredrickson said. Imagine rigging a planter with knotted wire so a seed would be dropped every 42 inches so it could be cultivated both ways. It seems ridiculous now with all the technological advances in agriculture. Those advances have changed the world, he said.
