Speaking Of Silos

Does an unused silo still show up on the property assessment?
My father-in-law pulled his down a few years after he gave up milking. A roofed silo is counted in the property tax. Unroofed is not but said he didn't like going up in the rain and snow to throw silage down. The staves were repurposed into trusses for a new 4-bay garage.
 
As you can see by the attached letter from Delaval to my grandfather, Delaval even sold silos. Not sure why this letter got saved all these years? I am thinking of framing it? This wooden silo was one of two that was on our home place. They were replaced by a poured cement silo in I think 1945? The date was somehow steniled into the concrete near the top of silo but I cant find a pic of it at the moment. ( everything including barn all gone now) Silos on our farm were multi purpose. Dairy and for fattening steers. On a year when the corn crop was poor we would fill the bottom part of silo with wet hay. Dad figured they did just as well or better on it than the corn?
 

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Anybody ever seen a silo INSIDE a barn? I went to an auction a couple of years ago where there was a small wood-stave silo inside the barn. It was maybe 12' in diameter, ran from the ground to the rafters. Had three doors, one at the bottom, another about 1/3 the way up, and a third 2/3 the way up.
 
As you can see by the attached letter from Delaval to my grandfather, Delaval even sold silos. Not sure why this letter got saved all these years? I am thinking of framing it? This wooden silo was one of two that was on our home place. They were replaced by a poured cement silo in I think 1945? The date was somehow steniled into the concrete near the top of silo but I cant find a pic of it at the moment. ( everything including barn all gone now) Silos on our farm were multi purpose. Dairy and for fattening steers. On a year when the corn crop was poor we would fill the bottom part of silo with wet hay. Dad figured they did just as well or better on it than the corn?
That is an amazing thing to see that letter, and follow up pictures
 
Anybody ever seen a silo INSIDE a barn? I went to an auction a couple of years ago where there was a small wood-stave silo inside the barn. It was maybe 12' in diameter, ran from the ground to the rafters. Had three doors, one at the bottom, another about 1/3 the way up, and a third 2/3 the way up.
Yes there was a darn very close to my farm that was taken down a few years ago, and it had a wooden silo inside the barn. The silo started from the stable floor as you described and went to the rafters of the hay loft above, probably 30’. When the barn was knocked down the lumber from the silo was salvaged to make furniture. The inside on the silo was as smooth as glass, from the corn sliding against it.
 
Didn't they call them "blue bankruptcy tubes" or something like that? Many farms went broke in the early-to-mid 1980s because they overextended themselves putting up Harvestores, and then the commodity market tanked.

Check out "10th Generation Dairyman" on youtube. His farm just abandoned their bunkers in favor of three 24x132 conventional upright silos to support robot feeders. I didn't think you could blow silage that high but the custom outfit that puts up their feed has this super-blower powered directly by a huge diesel engine.
Blue tombstones was another nickname for Harvestor silos.
When I ride through the countryside - anywhere, it is not unusual to see an old silo, no building attached anymore and often no roof cap on it.

It makes me wonder what was going on - on that farm back in the day.

Dairies, even in Virginia, use to be plentiful - small family farms.

I wonder to what extent these old silos represent a long gone dairy.

Question - what percentage of silos were typically dairy?
The percentage of dairy to fed beef cattle in any area might be proportional to the distance to a major population center due to transportation costs and dairy freshness needs.

As was already mentioned, in Western Iowa there was very little dairy after 1960 when grain and beef became more profitable. The small two to ten cow dairy herds disappeared about the same time small chicken or egg operations disappeared. Mom and the kids did the milking and took care of the chickens for household spending money.
 
There are a few that get used for grain storage around here ( temporary)but most set empty
 
Anybody ever seen a silo INSIDE a barn? I went to an auction a couple of years ago where there was a small wood-stave silo inside the barn. It was maybe 12' in diameter, ran from the ground to the rafters. Had three doors, one at the bottom, another about 1/3 the way up, and a third 2/3 the way up.
Yes sir I have seen a version of that.
 
Anybody ever seen a silo INSIDE a barn? I went to an auction a couple of years ago where there was a small wood-stave silo inside the barn. It was maybe 12' in diameter, ran from the ground to the rafters. Had three doors, one at the bottom, another about 1/3 the way up, and a third 2/3 the way up.
Round barn that was the plan on most silo in the center. We got to go on a tour of one about 20 years ago when I was in high school that was the hot thing to go see and the ag class took a field trip to a couple of them. Made a lot of sense but boy the person building it would have had his work cut out for him back then can’t even imagine it would love to just see how it was done
 
Here in central NY a silo represented a dairy. A just as you say, some survive, while everything else may be gone. Mostly concrete stave, and a few tile silos survive. Many were wood, but very few of them survive. This farm originally had a square, framed wooden silo. It was dismantled and replaced with a tile silo before I came here. An octagonal wooden framed silo just went over in a big wind we had last winter. It was the last wooden silo around that I recall. It was right on a four corners, and was quite a landmark for a long time. The silo on our home farm was thick wooden staves, tongue and groove, cut on an angle so they made a circle, held together with many steel hoops.
There was a local company that made the wood stave silos. The Walton area tractor club contacted the company not that many years ago and the company dusted off the old machines and made one last silo for them for the Delaware County Fairgrounds.
 

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