“I was in a hurry.”
That’s how many stories about farm injuries and near misses begin.
That’s how mine begins.
I was in a hurry to get the feeding chores done because I had a meeting in town. A few hundred steers were waiting for their dinner and they had to be fed before dark.
The high-moisture barley was running slowly through the roller, and from there to the auger and into the feed wagon. Three-phase power made the process reasonably simple but on that day, it wasn’t going quite fast enough to suit. I increased the flow of grain running into the roller.
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When the larger amount of dense, rolled barley reached the auger, it stopped dead. Plugged.
Cursing the fates, the steers and the machinery, I rummaged in the toolbox for the wrench that would open the trap door at the base of the auger Ñ a small panel installed by the manufacturer for just this eventuality.
It was plugged, all right. After some minutes of baling out barley, I exposed the cold steel throat of the auger screw. I reached a skinny arm up inside the housing to draw out more grain and get on with the job.
And as I did, the auger gave a tiny, oh-so-slight twitch.
In that millisecond came the horrifying realization: I hadn’t shut off the electricity before digging in. The barley was no longer feeding into the roller, and the roller was shut off, but the auger was live.
I yanked out my arm and staggered back just as the auger spit out the clog and sprang to life.
It was awhile before my weak knees would hold me up again. I’d just come within a twitch of losing an arm because of poor judgment, distraction and haste.
Alone on the ranch that day, I was about a quarter-mile from the house, without radio, cell phone or other means of communication. An arm might not have been the extent of my loss, but I was lucky Ñ luckier than so many people, far more experienced in farming, who are injured or killed in this dangerous line of work. I’m lucky to be typing this using two hands.
Statistics made available during national farm safety week show 61 percent of Canadian farmers are run by single operators, which means they routinely work alone. Even on multi-person operations, many jobs involve solitary work. Safety is an issue.
There’s nothing easy about farming, except how easy it is to make one misstep.
While we officially acknowledged the special week March 9-15, every week is farm safety week in our books.
“I was in a hurry.”
You don’t want that on your epitaph.
