The past few days have been fairly uneventful. We have been tending gardens a bit, Eric has been helping bale hay all day yesterday, but no photos of that because they were far off in the field. But here is one of my lilies!

I thought I would share with you tonight the dangers of farming. It is one of the MOST dangerous professions there is.

Darrell was hurt last Thursday, as my friends already know about. He had forgotten to unhook one clip from the baler. That's all it took. When driving away from the baler that he thought was harmless and quiet, the clip that was on the end of a rope hit him on the arm twice like a bullet firing out of a gun. The rope had broken causing this to happen. He is SO lucky that it did not hit him up higher on the body, like the neck or back of the head.
Blood spurted out of his arm so quickly that in moments it had covered the entire bumper of the tractor. (the metal covering the tractor tire)
He grabbed his arm and drove the tractor as fast as he could (in 5th gear, which is too fast for the field) and once at the house, we got his shirt off, his arm wrapped in a towel and I got him in the vehicle to go to the emergency room as quickly as possible. (Yes, I broke the speed limit a few times.) ;-)
Once the doctor had his wound cleansed he had to first stitch the large vein that was bleeding so much, then the wound itself. The clip had actually taken a chunk of his arm out - about the size of a nickel.

He left the hospital with a sling and is now icing his arm regularly to attempt to get the extreme swelling down. I have told him that there will be no more working with equipment for the rest of this summer. He wants to argue it with me, but I'm pretty hard to argue with. :) Time will tell!

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Now, I want to share with you the statistics and associated information regarding farm accidents.

According to:

http://www.farmlaw.com/injury.html

Farming is one of the most dangerous jobs in America. Doug Nill's grandfather lost an arm in a tractor power take-off accident in 1941, and farmed the rest of his life with one arm. Nill's father suffered a back injury after falling from a combine.

The national rate is 22.1 farm accident deaths for 100,000 workers. The 10-year state-wide average in Minnesota is a similar 20.52 farm accident deaths for 100,000 workers. Nill has taken several farm accident/injury cases to court.

These are the most common types of injuries:

agricultural equipment injuries such as tractor overturns and machinery entanglements (Darrell falls under this category.)

farm structure emergencies such as grain bin entrapments, electrocution, silo entrapments

farm chemical exposures, spills and fires, toxic gas exposures

farm animal incidents

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Here are more statements:

More than one in every 10 workers will suffer an amputation on the job.
Virtually every farmer knows of a family member, friend or neighbor who has been injured in a corn picker.
Farm tractors accounted for the deaths of 2,165 farm workers between 1992 and 2001.
More than one in every 10 workers will suffer an amputation on the job.
On average, tractor rollovers crush 110 farm workers annually in the U.S.

Farm Workers 800% More Likely to Die on the Job

(from http://farminjuryresource.com/2012/05/farm-800-more-likely-to-die-on-the-job/ )

Posted May 25, 2012

Did you know that farm are 800% more likely to die on the job than in other industries?
That’s a staggering statistic! And according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, fatalities and injuries among agricultural are on the rise.

The unfortunate truth is that if you’re a farm worker, you’re working in one of the most hazardous industries in the nation. The National Safety Council reports that of the approximately 3.1 million people who work on America’s 2.3 million farms and ranches, 1,300 die each year and 120,000 are injured.

That means, for every 100,000 farm, about 25 die each year and 243 are injured. Five percent of these injuries result in permanent disability.

300 Youth Farm Workers Die Annually

Many farm fatalities involve youth. The National Center for Farmworker Health estimates between 180,000 and 800,000 agricultural in the United States under 18. More than 300 of these children die each year in farming-related accidents.

In 2012, the U.S. Labor Department attempted to ban children under 16 from using power-driven farm equipment, including tractors—which account for the majority of farm accidents—and to prevent youth under 18 from working in grain silos, feed lots and stockyards. However, the proposal was widely rejected.

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