great grandpa's silo

The silo is about all that's left on my great-grandfather's farmplace. I decided to climb it. It's made out of interlocking cement block. Every other course of block is held together by a band of galvanized steel. There's a galvanized ladder starting about ten feet off the ground going up to the top. I went slowly looking for rusty parts that looked like they would give way. Didn't find any. Enjoyed the view from the top for a nice long time, although there wasn't much to sit on. It's so old the roof isn't a sheet-metal dome; it's made of wood and wire lattice with cement spread on top. These things have as good a chance of anything on the horizon of being around a couple hundred years from now. My cousins tore down a block silo on their farm. First wrapped a big chain around the base, hitched it to a big tractor and pulled. The silo wasn't going anywhere. They got through about half the metal bands before they got it down. In addition to being high enough to die falling from, they're also dangerous in at least two more ways I hadn't thought of. My uncle says in olden times when farmers had to get up in there and shovel silage out to the livestock below, if they didn't turn on a blower first, they'd suffocate in the oxygen-starved air of the silo, caused by gases given off by decomposing silage. He also said occasionally a silo's contents would catch on fire. Compacted vegetable matter encased in a giant vertical concrete tube apparently makes a fuel so dense a fire in it can't be put out and was usually left to burn itself out. That's me in this photo looking down from the top of my great-grandpa's silo.

ladder

galvanized band

silo inside

silo inside

silo roof

At the center of the roof of the silo there's a round hole where all the curved wood beams meet.

view from on top