Ontario farmer Edwin Taylor will never forget the morning of Nov. 16, 1990. It changed his life forever.
Taylor, a horse breeder from Grand Valley, Ont., survived a horrific farm mishap that day when an 1,100 pound bale toppled off his front end loader and onto the cab of his tractor.
Now a partial paraplegic, Taylor shared his story as part of Canadian Agricultural Safety Week March 11 to17.
“I remember like it was yesterday,” Taylor said.
“The freezing rain was stinging my face and I was lying there in the mud – so cold – with the horses sniffing and milling around above me.
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“I could feel a painful heat and numbness rising up my body from my legs, like boiling water. All I could think was, ‘Holy smokes! Maybe I’m dying here!'”
Regrettably, Taylor’s horrifying experience is not uncommon.
On average, at least 1,500 people are hospitalized and 113 are killed in farm-related incidents in Canada each year, according to the Canadian Agricultural Injury Surveillance Program.
The 2001 Census of Agriculture shows the most frequent causes of farm-related injuries in Canada are caused by unsafe use of equipment or material-handling practices, followed by fatigue, trying to save time and miscommunication between workers.
It was chilly morning on Nov. 16, 1990, and Taylor, then 36, was going about his morning chores.
A fence needed mending before the frost set in, but first Taylor needed to put out a round bale of hay for the horses.
Taylor’s daughter, Meghan, was only three at the time, but she was helping her dad with chores that morning.
She would often accompany her dad and visit her Pinto pony named Princess before being taken to the babysitter’s across the road.
That morning, Taylor had the bucket on his front-end loader.
He would need it for the fencing work so he chose to use it rather than the bale spear for moving hay.
Making do with the bucket would save at least 20 minutes and he’d moved hay bales with the bucket many times before.
But something went wrong that morning.
After picking up the bale, and opening and closing the gate, Taylor got back on his 674 IH tractor with a 2250 loader to put the hay in the feeder.
There was a swale causing a bit of a dip in the landscape and the loader was admittedly higher than it needed to be, he said.
“I guess I must have popped the clutch a bit starting up, and then it was coming at me, end over end,” Taylor recalled.
The 1,100 pound, four foot by six foot round bale dislodged from the bucket and rolled down the front-end loader toward the driver’s seat. With only a split second to react, Taylor leaned over to the side and toward the area under the steering wheel for protection.
The bale rolled right over his back and continued off the rear of the tractor.
Taylor knew he was badly hurt and going into shock.
He figured it would be best to try to get some help while he still had his wits about him.
Realizing he couldn’t move his lower body, Taylor used his arms to pull himself off the tractor but his coveralls got caught in the gearshift, leaving him on the ground with his legs partially hung-up.
The horses milled around, sniffing at him, then eventually turned their attention to the bale of hay.
Fifteen minutes went by and Taylor could feel a painful heat and numbness rising through his body.
Then he heard a little voice from behind the horses.
“Daddy, why are you sleeping in the mud?”
Meghan knew something was wrong.
With shock setting in, Taylor instructed his daughter to go to the road, look carefully both ways to make sure no cars were coming, then cross the road quickly and go to the babysitter’s house to get help.
She followed his instructions, but not before returning with a horse blanket and a bag of twine clippings for a pillow so her daddy would be more comfortable..
Help arrived shortly afterward and Taylor would spend a full year in the Sunnybrook and Lyndhurst Hospitals in Toronto to undergo multiple surgeries, rehabilitation and physiotherapy.
He suffered a compressed thoracic 12 vertebrae (level T12) fracture and today he considers himself fortunate to be classified as a partial paraplegic who can walk short distances with crutches.
“I can get around enough to get in and out of vehicles and machinery, no problem,” he said.
“I have some up and down movement in my legs so I can clutch and brake normally. In fact I got my A-Z licence a couple of years after the incident – passed no problem.”
The theme of this year’s Canadian Agricultural Safety Week is “personal protective equipment (PPE) only works if you use it.”
The campaign is being delivered by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and Canadian Agricultural Safety Association in partnership with Farm Credit Canada and Agriculture Canada.
“The farm safety theme ‘PPE only works if you use it’ struck home with me because the hay spear was the safe and proper loader attachment that I should have used to feed the hay,” Taylor said.
“I had a perfectly good hay spear right there. All I had to do was use it.”
After returning home from the hospital, Taylor decided he wanted to keep farming. After some restructuring, a lot of help from family and friends and a few renovations, he was back in the horse business, this time racing.
“We had three horses – Odds Against, Little Champ and Silver Champ – that got us back on our feet again,” he said.
Taylor has since sold his horse breeding business and is concentrating on cash crops along with several racehorses.
“I think we farmers get so used to the reality and dangers of farm life that we get complacent and careless,” he said.
“It’s a hell of a lesson to have to learn the hard way.”
Taylor is the Ontario representative for Canadian Farmers With Disabilities. For more information on that organization, visit www.fwdcanada.com.
