My neighbour Tommy Gordon has a philosophy that anything is possible if you have enough time and the cost is within reason. He’s proved this on many occasions to those who’ve come to him with problems that seemed beyond fixing.
If you have something to be repaired, welded, rebuilt, manufactured, blown up, blown down, or blown out, Tom is your man. He comes from a long line of self-reliant thinkers; farmers like him have to be, to survive.
At a young age Tommy took up dynamiting as a means of ridding fields of tree roots. He soon moved to blowing down unwanted farm silos. This unusual talent gained him recognition far and wide. If there was a silo to come down in southwestern Ontario, Tom got a call.
He had the reputation of being able to fell a silo within inches of surrounding structures.
But of all the things Tom blew up, the most famous was certainly the project on Ron Forbes’s farm.
Ron Forbes actually owned two farms that abutted the same concession. Ron’s problem was that he had a fine silo on the south farm, but needed one on the north farm. He had to haul feed from the south silo to the north farm daily, and this constant trekking back and forth caused a good deal of wear and tear on his equipment. In the fall of 1993, after harvest when things were a little less hectic, Ron met with Tom. They came up with the idea of moving the silo from the south farm to the north farm—a distance of about three-quarters of a mile. And so the adventure began.
The only way to move this behemoth was to get it onto a sled and tow it across the concession. The first order of business was to ensure that nowhere en route was the elevation greater than eleven degrees—if it was, the silo would tip over. The proposed route met the requirement.
Next, the silo had to be jacked up, one side at a time. Enough to get a sled constructed under each side, but never more than the determined eleven degrees. The silo had to be cut through about two feet up from the base with a cement saw.
Tom travelled to a shipyard in Port Dover to get clevises and cable heavy enough to do the job. In conversation with the ship repair people, Tom was advised to put the cable around the silo rather than around the sled—otherwise, the sled was likely to be yanked out from beneath the silo.
That meant the silo had to be reinforced so that the pulling cable wouldn’t crush it.
Finally the day came. The cables were attached. The sled was ready. Three bulldozers were fanned out with cables taut. The show was about to begin. Cars were lined up along the road and there was much argument as to whether or not Tom’s plan would work. There was wagering as to if and when the silo would topple over. Tom stationed himself in front of the three bulldozers like the grandmaster of a parade, which, I suppose, in a way he was.
The actual move was a bit of a letdown as the dozers and silo moved without a hitch. Once it got going the whole procession moved at the pace of a good walk. There was a problem, however, in that there was no base to put the silo on at the destination site. Tom, Ron, and gang had been pretty sure they could pull it off but not sure enough to build the base, so everything stopped twenty feet short of home plate. A cement base was poured, but by the time it was ready it had rained a good deal. It was a muddy mess to move the silo the last twenty feet, but they got it done.
The silo-moving business is slow; nothing has come up since the big move. I would guess that every time Tom drives by the famous silo he gets a little twinge of satisfaction. As the years have passed by, the silo is no longer in use, so maybe someday Tom will get the call to come blow it down. But I hope it stays standing because it represents what can be done if you’re positive and put your mind to it.
Woodstock, Ontario