Safety on my mind
The upcoming cover story of High Plains Journal is a well-written piece by Senior Field Editor Larry Dreiling about the use of a checklist to help farm operators to provide a safer work environment, particularly when youth are an important part of the labor puzzle.
The awareness of farm safety continues to climb and the sobering story of farm accidents and fatalities remains a chilling one. In every county I have lived in during my years in journalism I can recall a serious farm accident in each one.
Accidents are unplanned and yet many are preventable. Over the years most accidents occur because of assumption made by people that a farm accident could never happen to them.
One of the poignant stories I remembered from many years ago when a farmer told me about mangling his hand on a combine in which he had taken the safety shield off several years prior to the accident. He felt he was in the clear and he was planning to retire at the end of that year when a cantankerous combine had a different idea.
The farmer, I can still remember him telling me, “It was stupid to take the shield off. I should have known better. I did not think it was going to happen to me.” He did not blame the manufacturer or the dealer for his decision to remove the safety shield. His story is an all to familiar one.
The list of people who have lost fingers and limbs is too many to count from PTO shafts to chains and belts on combines and balers. Electrocutions from power lines that strike augers are too painful to think about. Farmers who jump-started a tractor only to have it run over them have me shaking my head in disbelief.
Farmers and ranchers preach safety more than any other profession I have been around and yet the combination of long hours and precise timing of planting and harvesting crops, moving cattle and other workloads are enough to stress them and breach safety. Yet, that’s when it is important to dial in and take a step back and draw in a fresh breath of air.
Trying to shave time makes little sense when the risk of someone’s life or limb is put in jeopardy.
Staying safe on the farm takes more than lip service and as I learned at a recent youth tractor safety course. I was proud of the way Extension agents made their presentations. While the agents liked to keep things light and moving they were dead serious when it came to points that they thought young operators might encounter. One of the best pieces of advice made by several agents to the youth was if they did not understand the task at hand they should stop what that they were doing.
Making an unsafe assessment might be a deadly assumption and no one needs to carry that guilt.
