Someday, when I am driving through the farmlands of Wellington County en route to Stratford, I am going to count the silos. Rising here, there, everywhere, they seem to pin down the rippling fields, preventing them from rising under high winds and being caught up into the magnificent cloud formations that, this summer, have accompanied the frequent forecast "chance of showers and the risk of a thunderstorm". Is that too fanciful a perception? There is worse hereinafter.

Many people have dreamed (if you prefer, dreamt) of dwelling in marble halls or of living in a castle. The hermit in me, or perhaps it is the romantic, has sometimes thought of refitting and living in an abandoned silo like the one at the Mount Alverno retreat centre in the Heart Lake Road. Another possibility would be the larger one at the DCMA. The ground floor would be divided between food preparation and vehicle storage - an odd combination, to be sure but remember that this is a fantasy. No garden tools would be needed because the grounds would be graced only by a tree, perhaps a spreading chestnut, under which one could sit and which would provide lodging for what King James's translators called the fowls of the air.

The first floor up would be reached by an spiral iron staircase, enclosable at its top by a trap door. That would mean that en haut I should be as secure as one ensconced in a San Gimignano tower but with an overview of my surroundings like that of a life guards at the city swimming pools and beaches which our parents, wary of infection and water pollution, would not let us visit.

In the circular walls there would be casement windows to be opened in season to the four winds. Overhead would be a beamed roof above which a loft would provide additional accommodation and storage space under the round, conical roof. As in army camp training, my bed would be a palliasse stored under a long writing table above which there would be a large, low-hanging, electric lantern. The curved walls on each upper storey would be lined with what Samuel Pepys called "book presses".

Such fantasies could arise from my unconscious because there may be in my racial memory a cylindrical 'keep' high upon its 'motte and bailey' My more recent forebears stored out-of-season cattle fodder in trenches or bunkers, so towers have probably little bearing on my 'O silo mio!' fantasy. There are times when I plan the novels I shall write far above the madding crowd. They will have the quality and, one hopes, the appeal of paintings produced in lonely garrets rising above the narrow ruelles of Paris. Scoff if you will; I laugh, too, when reality returns.

The word 'silo' has acquired several meanings. It can mean, traditionally, a storage space for fodder. More about that in a bit. In the atomic age it can also mean an in-ground installation for ballistic missiles. Then there are the data silos, sets of computer files that need independence from the rest of a data base. Goodness knows what coming weal or woe may be stored there as the energy barons wait to see in what direction their future contests for power may lie. Even the most politically ignorant of us must know that it is they, and not our elected legislators, who will decide our future unless someday they are dethroned and, so to speak, bunkered.

But I return to fodder storage. The methods encountered on farms are of four kinds: towers, trenches, bunkers and bags. The trenches came first, below ground storage space with reinforced walls where dried hay or full-stock Indian corn were kept for future use. That involved tight packaging of the materials, covering them carefully, sometimes with a top layer of boards and earth packed to exclude as much oxygen as possible. A bunker is a low, below ground receptacle sealed nowadays with plastic.

Any green crop continues to live after it is cut. As it breathes carbon dioxide is produced plus heat. The mass of 'ensilage', the dried and mixed material, loses its nutritional value unless oxygen is eliminated. The control of air intake and of acidification (the formation of lactic, acetic and other acids) is necessary. Sometimes the addition of hydrochloric and sulphuric acid is needed to speed fermentation. Molasses may be used as a sealer.

Tower silos, the objects of my reverie, were introduced in the mid 19th Century in Europe. The hazard is that they can explode if spontaneous combustion ignites the stored material. Towers can also be dangerous if they are loaded or unloaded from the top by mechanical means. Sometimes a farmer must stand under or close to hazardous machinery. One can also be asphyxiated by the methane gas that develops.

We have become familiar with the great white rolls of ensilage (silage in production). that one sees in fields. From a distance in spring, they can look like the last of winter's snow.

Bound in heavy plastic, machine packaged into a large bag and tightly bound at both ends, they are not visually pleasant and do not improve the rural landscape. For me it would be a case of 'nimby'. But there is the reduced cost of storage to be considered.

Silos, especially cement ones, are now a major capital investment.

One also foresees the necessary expense of the addition of windows, floors, staircases and the like to make a tower silo habitable. Advancing age, arthritic or cardiac problems would have to be considered. But only a spoilsport would wish to be realistic and inject stuff like that into my dreaming.

A final note. Silage is used chiefly to feed milch cows and for fattening livestock. Since only 2% of Canadians are now active farmers and fewer are cattle farmers, and since this incurable dreamer belongs to the other 98%, the actual operation of silos is a mystery to most of us. All of the above likely proves that.

I'll publish my new address when I get a round toit. Toit, roof. Just a little bilingual pun.