What's in your silo?

[Steve Kl.]

No, it's not the latest nonfiction self-help title.

Having grown up in rural Michigan, my firsthand knowledge of basic
agricultural terminology has led to me to rewrite and handful of
definitions that were obviously written by city folk, and add a few items,
such as chainfall. (Can't maintain a tractor without a good chainfall.)

Currently, I'm looking at silo, which AHD and pretty much every other
American dictionary restricts to "fodder", or "fodder or forage". W3 has a
chiefly British sense which talks of grain; and the OED has a grain sense,
leading one to think that the grain as opposed to fodder sense is British.

That said--I haven't combined soybeans since I was about 13, but it's my
dim recollection that my grandparents' silos held grain before schlepping
it down to the local elevator. I distinctly remember conveying grain from
the granary to a truck, but I don't remember putting grain in or out of a
silo, so I could be completley wrong. Furthermore, I can't find any US
evidence to the contrary. Hay we kept in haylofts.

So, I ask those of you from farm areas in the US: are grains stored only
in granaries? Are silos restricted to silage, or are grains stored there,
too?

-- Steve Kleinedler