STETTLER, Alta. – Matt McRae and Ian Henderson have more than 60 years experience in the farm machinery business and between the pair there isn’t a piece of equipment that doesn’t have a farm accident story.
Henderson of Stettler knows farm machinery dealers who have lost fingers in grain augers. He knows farmers who have died when the overhead power line was too close to the grain bins and auger. He knows people who have been killed while repairing a grain box.
McRae of Trochu, Alta., has personal stories. His father became wrapped up in a baler’s power take-off and was badly injured. A few years later McRae was wrapped up in the pulley of a grain auger when his shirt caught on a nail that was holding the pulley in place. His skin and shirt were torn off and after several skin grafts he still has scars to remind him of the accident.
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“I always try to be careful, but I was not careful enough that day,” McRae told a group of children and adults during a farm safety day hosted by the Stettler Agriculture Society.
It’s these personal stories that children listen to and learn from, said farm safety event organizer Karen Spruyt.
Farm safety activists hope that talking with children will help them develop good farm safety habits and that the number of farm accidents on Canadian farms will drop.
About 115 people are killed each year in farm related injuries in Canada and another 1,500 people are injured.
“They blame it on stress and conditions on the farm, but I think it’s an excuse and they just don’t address safety,” said Spruyt, also the co-ordinator of the Safe Communities Coalition of Central Alberta.
By trying to instill safety in young children, Spruyt is optimistic the cycle of accidents and deaths on farms will be reduced.
“Our hope is tonight at the supper table this will be talked about.”
McRae and Henderson also made each of the children the “safety sheriff” for their farm. They are told to watch for power take-off shields that have been removed from equipment, auger shields left off machinery or tractors left running.
“If you see your dad jumping over the pto, what are you going to say?” McRae asked the children.
“Don’t do that, Dad. I don’t want to see that,” piped up Sheridan Lund of Pine Lake, Alta., who came to the farm safety day with her mother, Kimberley.
Kimberley said her family lives on her father-in-law’s farm and she wanted to know about the hazards.
“I don’t have the power to change things, but I want a better awareness of what to look out for on the farm,” she said.
Sheridan said she learned more about farm safety during her day-long farm safety camp.
“I learned you don’t go in the grain place because you would suffocate and I learned about combines, cause they could hurt you,” she said.
It’s the honesty of children that may give parents and grandparents the shock they need to be safer on the farm, said Dwayne MacDougall of Drumheller, Alta., one of the presenters.
“If my little girl was to say, ‘that’s not safe,’ it makes an adult think twice what they’re actually doing,” said MacDougall, a territory customer support manager for John Deere.
“I want to be there for my kids when I get older and I want to have all my limbs.”
Penny Geier of Galahad, Alta., said every farm can improve its farm safety practices and she wants to know how to make her farm safer.
“Dads and grandpas get too comfortable,” she said.
“Not everything is always safe.”
Her husband once hit the overhead power line with the tractor bucket and the only thing that saved him was the rubber tractor tires.
“He was just not paying attention and not thinking when he was lifting the bucket,” said Geier, who saw the shower of sparks from the kitchen window.
“It was scary.”
