Reading this board brought back these memories. Seems that a lot of bad accidents happened on farms when I was a kid.
I had one cousin get run over while doing field work on a tractor. He walked with a shuffle for a long time.
This cousin’s father got the bottom of his foot peeled off by a barn cleaner.(Conveyor that takes out the manure.) Most of the meat on his foot was gone.
I had another cousin fall from a hay loft onto a pitch fork. The fork went through his leg. He had fainting spells for years after that.
The last cousin’s uncle got his nuts ripped off by a power take off.
My grandpa married a woman whose husband got fried by lightening on a tractor.
I’m not going to list incidents with nails through the feet or gashes with stiches.
Please keep this discussion about farm accidents. I’ve seen worse. I just want to know if you feel accidents on the farm occur at a high rate and your experiences.
Actually, I read not long ago that farming is one of the most dangerous occupations in the US. I’ll have to see if I can find a cite with the info, but farming is, indeed, hazardous.
If nothing else, tractors seem to roll over on people rather frequently.
The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. - Henry Van Dyke
Pitchforked my own feet a couple times in my youth, fortunately not very far in.
New tractors now have roll bars and seat belts, it’s the law.
I’ve had several cousins fall down hayholes, never done it myself. Two of those cousins ended up taking a precautionary trip to hospital.
My father has gone to the hospital after getting a nail ricochet into his eye after he tried pounding it into something.
I’ve been to the health clinic twice for scratches on the eye, cow tail and flying bark.
A relative of mine (early 1900’s) got struck dead by lightning while fixing barb wire fence.
If I’m not bloodied or bruised by the end of the day then I haven’t worked hard enough.
Saved the worst for last. Last year my mother spent 12 days in the hospital after being mauled by our bull out in the pasture. Broken pelvis, broken ribs, broke the orbit of her eye (replaced by plate). Oct. 16 1998, worst f*&king day of my life. In the year previous to this another local woman had been mauled by a young cow and a young man up around Little Falls NY was killed by a bull. Never underestimate domestic animals.
The lady my grandpa married also had a husband killed by a bull. She had many husbands and they all met horible deaths.
My great grandpa was killed by a bull also.
Me and some cousins almost got gored by a bull. We thought it was locked in the barn. We just made it through the fence before it got there. I’m glad it was a sturdy fence.
I’m only your wildest fear, from the corners of your darkest thoughts.
I had a great uncle who (they say) was struck by lightning 3 times. The first 2 times, IIRC, he was hit while riding on his tractor, but he survived. The 3rd time, he died while trying to hide under a tree.
My great grandfather (1920’s) was pulled into a combine. Picture his lower half still hanging out the front, his upper half as part of a bail of hay.
The family farm also had oil wells on it. When it had pumped all it could pump, the pump is removed leaving a hole in the ground with some residual oil in the bottom. My grandpa and great uncle Wahoo (sadly, that is his real name) liked to take matches, throw them in, and watch the bonfire burn. One time, there was enough oil that it blew them back approx. 25 feet, where my grandpa promptly landed on a rattlesnake and was bitten. He came out OK, but didn’t light anymore oil wells again.
I got a lot of energy ready to be wasted on somebody - Mookie Wilson
I guy from near my home town of Lancaster was ‘baled’ three or four years ago. Nasty, but what do you expect when you try to dislodge a rock with your foot while standing in the ‘jammed’ baler???
A kid at school ‘drowned’ in a grain silo. Nice.
Back in 1976, just a few days before my high school graduation, one of the seniors was driving the tractor back from the hayfield and his younger brother was riding. The tractor overturned, killing them both. Very sad graduation.
Neighbor with bad eyesight didn’t notice a telephone pole guy wire as he was bushhogging a field. It knocked him off the tractor, and he lost a limb to the bushhog.
This doesn’t compare to the stories above, but I was a eye-witness: When I was about 8 years old, my granny went into one of the old barns and came out with a nail through her foot. She was wearing Keds and had stepped on an old rusty nail and it went all the way through her shoe and foot.
The funny part was that she drove herself to the hospital and ended up pulling the nail out herself. She got a tetnus shot and left.
This woman has been doing yoga every day for the past 30 years (she’s now 80). She kicks ass.
Well, it must have been the early eighties, say 1983. I was about ten years old, and I was learning to drive a car together with my best buddy at the time. His parents owned the farm we were racing around. The object was to lap as quickly as possible. On one of the quicker laps, I lost it in a corner, broke through some barb wire and landed 2 meters below in a field with cows. I just missed a cow by a few feet, I might even have flown over it ! But I wasn’t really injured except for some bruises, although I must have left the ‘track’ at over 90 km/h…
To see what sort of car I learned to drive in, check this out: http://home.earthlink.net/~palmerj/nsu/1000.jpg
Also, it had no reverse gear so it was mandatory you dind’t get yourself into the mud WITHOUT a way of turning around in first gear. I sure broke that rule by digging the nose of the car in the mud
Incidently, this is one of the few production cars ever made with a rotary engine (“Wankel” engine). NSU was bought by Volkswagen in the early 70’s. The model I crashed must have been 20 years old at the time.
Now, after all these posts about crashing cars ‘n’ stuff, you guys don’t consider me a bad driver or anything ??
Melanie: I don’t know what it is about feet, nails, pitchforks, etc. One of the aforementioned forkings I didn’t even know I had done it until I took my shoe off and the sock was all bloody, this was an hour later. It looked like it was a good half inch in and when I did it I was standing in loose sawdust and didn’t even notice doing it. Maybe the foot has less nerve endings or something.
As an addition from earlier, the worst day of your life is not when something happens to you but to someone you love. I’ve talked to others and they seem to agree with this statement.
