An Angel Must Have Been Looking Over Me

Silo Safety Part#3

     I have had the opportunity to work around silos from time to time when working on different farms. These can be quite deadly  also when it comes to farm accidents. Falling is probably one of the most common accidents , whether from inside or out side the silo,  Falls can be quite deadly. a ladder is usually installed on an inside chute of most concrete silos. these chutes usually house most of the door hardware necessary to unload the silo. and this closed passage serves as a chute for silage to be expelled from the silo. These doors are closed when filling the silo well above the level of silage to the top. A silo for those that don't know anything at all is like the large toilet paper cone next to the barn , and is used for fermenting of feed stuffs like corn and haylage, to be fed to the cows. 

     Numerous trips up and down the silo  are needed as the silo fills and over the course of the year as maintenance of the silos continue. Slips on the rungs of the doors can leave you hanging in the chute or allow you to fall to the bottom of the silo. Outside man ladders also have a protective cage that surrounds your back but vertical falling inside the caged area is still possible. a safety line is something that would allow you to have some level of safety if used properly. they usually allow you to drop only about 5-6 feet before stopping you . this should be used with a safety harness  and proper training on the importance of securing your fall line often as you ascend or descend the silo.Also ventilation of the silo is necessary before entering into area where the silage is stored. Silo gasses can be extremely harmful to you if inhaled .It is my understanding that they are  worse from the time of finishing filling the silo up to a month afterward , with the gas laying heavier close to the surface of the silage. a fan blowing air up he inside chute prior to entering should sufficiently stir the air and provide you with enough fresh air to prevent being overcome with gasses. 

      The  next biggest cause of accidents is being buried under an avalanche of silage. never enter a silo on your own without telling someone where you are , in fact you should have a team approach when you and someone else are both present as one always stays outside the silo in the event of being overcome with gasses. A life rope should be attached to a safety harness . in the event of the person in the silo needing help, first the outside person should try to extricate his partner with the safety rope, and if unable to do so, Immediately call 911 and get help on the way. never enter the silo to assist the victim who remains inside. The person helping may also succumb to gasses or possibly be buried also. One other possible means is electrocution . This happened to me when working on a 125 cow dairy farm in ohio during the winter of 1979.
       The farm owner's  name was Harold Nicholson and when I went to work for him I was getting 125 dollars per week and all the milk i could drink, As well, also furnished a 2 room little square house barren and desolate sitting on a corner lot. I had a  kit-bathroom and a living bedroom . just what a 6'4" inch ,240 pound man needed . no since wasting space.
      It was winter and in January with a cold spell in the zero's, silage began to freeze on the walls of the silo about 4-6 inches in in places and the automatic silo unloader would be moved in by at least 6 inches also as its wheels would run sideways in the silo and would run up onto the frozen silage.  being out of center was causing the unloader to stop its forward movement. also the temperatures had changed and now chunks of silage were beginning to fall and bury part of the unloader causing it to stop. what ever the reason it was important to have someone outside the silo and down on the ground , I was blessed with being inside pulling the frozen silage down. Now at this point i need to describe a silo unloader a little better.
      It is about 16 feet long and hangs from  a cable in the top of the silo. this cable is attached to a winch to raise and lower the unloader. Along the length is an auger which is directed to the center of the silo .this auger pushes silage into a blower which blows the silage down the main chute and falls 60 feet to another belt conveyor that moves the silage to the feed chute which automatically places it for the cattle in a long feed bunk. we could feed 80 -120 cows in a matter of minutes. Well many accidents are caused by this auger . Tales of farmers being chewed up in silos always haunt me every time i enter the silo.
     Well i had the silage  just about pulled down around the silo, level with the unloader . as it worked its way around the silo. If it would hang up on a big clod of frozen stuff I would lean my back against the cold silo wall and place my foot on the guard and push against the guard which when the loader is running would chew up the frozen hunk and spit it down the chute. The unloader was going great as it went almost completely around the silo with its wheel gripping the silo wall on its own and we were getting it operating the correct way, When it stopped by the door in its three and half minute trip around the silo. There is a stabilizing bar which hold this unloader in the center of the silo, and this stabilizing bar also serves as an umbilical cord for the motor supplying the electric power to run the electric motors which makes this whole thing work. Really neat concept when it works , when it doesn't it sucks as i was soon to find out.
      This stabilizer bar is attached to the door of the silo and need to be moved time and again as the silo is unloaded. The frame of each of these doors are set in concrete but extend to the base of the silo. so the doors are about 2 foot in height and it is about 3 feet between each door. So in a 30 foot  X 80 foot silo it will hold about 3000 tons of silage. Well as complicated as the unloader is it is a real labor saver. it can throw the equivalent of 40-25 pound bags of dog food down the silage chute and to the cows in about 2 minutes.
      Bear( actually intended to use bear instead of bare)with me folks as i am headed somewhere with this story as  I was in the silo by the door getting ready to help the unloader by grabbing the stabilizer bar as it was in my road and would give me better leverage, and i had my other hand on the door of the silo, kind of leaning back getting ready to give the unloader a push and i shoved hard with my  foot and then i felt an electric shot burn coursing  through  both arms , fingertip to fingertip feeling like it was pulling me into its grip more and i resisted so hard i exploded into a heap on the floor totally exhausted . My heart was beating out of my chest as I just laid there in a heap watching that same damn unloader that was trying to just kill me, Grind up that frozen silage and begin its three and half minute trip around the silo, just like it was supposed to run. Only problem was i was still laying like a heap on the silage staring at the auger opening side as it is now no longer being chased by me  but was chasing me and i wasn't moving.i was facing the death end of the unloader and it was running way to good.
       i tried to move but felt so sluggish. i tried to yell but couldn't be heard if i wanted to as the silage unloader makes a considerable amount of noise and my yells were being drowned out by the noise. i needed to get up and get by the door to be heard 60 feet below in the feed room by my boss Harold, who was oblivious to my peril.
       I needed to get up. Thoughts of being chewed and spit down the chute forced me to move and soon   I moved to an upright position, then stood up  and was able to lean into the chute and yell at Harold to shut it down. and of course he was hoping we had it in good shape but knew it had not lowered to its complete level , So he was apprehensive about shutting down. again i yelled louder and this time he shut it down and yelled angrily up the chute about not being placed right , and then i told him i was just shocked and was coming down and had no plans on going back up till he had a bill from the electrician in his hand.
       I had been shocked several times while working there, and Harold in an effort to save money  choose to do the wiring himself. Looking at one of his electrical junction box's is what what one would assume is a huge spider with legs in an electric line. I accidentally would come in contact with one now and then, while working, but nothing like the shock this one gave me.
      I was exhausted from the electric shock and also from him whining about how much it is going to cost him to get an electrician. Although the unloader was currently working it still needed fixed. So i got the hell out of the barn, before i said something i didn't want to. I headed for my  2 room house , and think about how I couldn't wait for my 25 dollar payday, couldn't say to much was good about the old days except being thankful I can sit here and tell you the story.
       After producing a bill when he couldn't find anything wrong and Harold had to still get the electrician. There was a short in the plug to the unloader and when I grabbed the stabilizing bar and then the door frame I grounded myself to the stray current to my shocking surprise. Lessons was learned . Farmers are too cheap for their own good and make poor electricians. there must have been an angel in that silo that day. I thought a couple times I was a goner.
     

baler accidents

       this baler can easily be a killer as well as a lifesaver, especially when it is open in this position to eject a bale. the hydraulic lines could fail causing that upper hunk of metal to come swinging down acting like a guillotine and effectively cutting you in half. they have safety stops to effectively stop this from happening , but as a general rule i never enter into the inside of the machine without taking additional measures to assure my safety. other hazards exist also. 

       again the pto power take off unit is still an ever present danger with loose clothing etc. , being wrapped around shafts and dragging you into the machine possibly causing loss of life. hydraulic fluid shooting under skin or into eyes from sudden loss of pressure due to rupture of line. this is a heavy unit when it is full with a bale and must be handled with caution as it is being transported and when the bale is released as the bales do roll,  and it could possibly roll over you or some unsuspecting individual if in the wrong place and with  a steep enough hill. i have watched these bales roll and they can pick speed and could easily run you over or a child . so one needs to be careful.
      so one day when i was a child of 5 and i was helping my grandpa by taking the grease gun and a rag back to the garage after visiting him in the field. he had just  finished greasing the baler as it was an old roto baler 66 made by allis chalmers and was capable of making a 66 inch long round bale about 2 feet in diameter. a much smaller bale than the one in the machine above. he had an old ford 8 n tractor he used to bale with and it was attached to the baler. he had to grease all the fittings on the baler and i watched as he worked in the sunshine. finally he handed me the grease gun and told me to head for the house. carrying the grease gun was important business for me or  at least i thought it was. i was helping grandpa when no one else was around. he waved at me as i headed down over the hill past the barn and to the house and the garage . i put the grease gun where i was supposed to and went to playing with my sister when i looked back up at the barn in what seemed like no time and there was my grandpa walking off the hill all hunched over.
         i ran to him to see what he was doing back so quick and as i approached he went down on one knee and asked me to run and get my mom. i ran and yelled for her to come as grandpa was hurt, and she came running back to where grandpa went down on one knee. he told her he had been run over by the tractor and that he needed to go to the doctor . she ran and grabbed the pickup and drove right up beside grandpa in the yard and helped him into the cab of the pickup and was soon headed to the doctors office , but upon realizing the extent of his injuries the doctors shipped him on to the hospital where he stayed for 2 weeks.
       he had fractured 13 ribs and the tractor's rear tire had ran up over his chest  and barely missed his head as it had ran over him in a diagonal fashion , doing as much damage as possible. on top of the broken ribs he had double pneumonia .
        but he  recovered and was soon home to recuperate. his recollection,as it was the only one ,as no one witnessed what had  happened, was that he had exited the tractor and was making his way back  to the baler to see what the problem was with it . as he did he noticed the baler was moving and so he ran to the tractor which was speeding down the hill now, and tripped as he was about to climb on and slipped under the tractor and then under the tire as he lost his grip of the fender . he recalled turning his head as the huge rear tire of the tractor grazed his jaw and went by. still the baler was coming at him as it was connected to the tractor  and he was still laying on the ground , he tried to roll over on his side and noticed the tractor and baler were stopping. it had come to the bottom of a small hill and didn't have enough momentum to go any further.he said it took all his energy to rise up on one knee and then to stand and walk down that same hill i had just walked down. it was at least a quarter mile to where i saw him again and he sent me after mom. to be run over by a tractor and make it back to the house was quite a feat in itself and only thing that saved him.
      i remember seeing his chest and the tractor tire bruise he had and you could clearly see how truly close he was to dying that day. he was truly more of a man than i ever hope to be. he lasted many years after  that.
     how quick things happen at times. he had set the brakes on the tractor but it still released and started rolling. in retrospect the best thing to do in that situation is to let it go. attempting to climb on a moving vehicle while rolling can be deadly. in the end it stopped on its own , but even if it hadn't, is it worth losing your life for?

hazards of farming -part 1

      a variety of hazards exist for farmers across this country. it has one of the highest mortality rates among all occupations one could have. mainly because farmers are usually working by them selves in a variety of hazardous situations from operating heavy equipment on slopes, to filling silos, to operating corn pickers , to being gored by animals. for some farmers this is just part of their daily routine. it could be something so simple as milking a diseased cow, and becoming infected with what she has, that can create debilitating conditions leading to amputation of body parts. i can only begin to access the full scope of injuries and illnesses one might expect when farming as an occupation. 

      it seems as if accidental entanglements with moving machinery is at the top of the list. losing an arm or a leg to a corn picker or even worse has happened, resulting in death,and this is at the top of the list. next i feel would be tractor overturning and pinning of driver underneath tractor as the second most hazardous situation a farmer can get into. being gored by animals is also an ever present danger, death by silo or succumbing to accidental suffocation in grain bins and silos is a common occurrence on a farm. electrocution and pinning of bodies under equipment or between equipment are also major causes of death. a variety of causes in farming are responsible for death including probably the worse and that is death by sewage lagoon. falling into a sea of shit and not being able to claw your way out. i would rather point a gun to my head than have that happen. but it has and on numerous occasions. thankfully it is nothing i have ever experienced even from afar.  just have always heard tell of it. 

     now if someone were to ask me to take their combine or for that matter if i had enough money to buy my own john deere combine with a corn head and pick maybe 60 - 100 acres of corn, i would say how soon or wheres the keys? as i love to operate the big toys. bigger toys for bigger boys, the world is my sandlot. to be able to sit  in that seat and do nothing but pick corn all day has always been a dream of mine. much the same as my mom and her publishers clearinghouse winnings. that would be the first thing i buy if i won the lottery. you are taming nature and listening to hank jr while doing it. but it is also one of the leading causes of death if not operated correctly. the allure of running that equipment is far greater than the acknowledgement of the risk involved. something gets stuck in the corn head and requires you to exit the safety of the cab for a chance to find out what is wrong firsthand . you become stuck in the machine accidentally or you could possibly be run over. a million things could happen. 

      so how do you avoid the consequences of accidental anything harmful going on. common sense. 

      1. turn off machine and at very least disable all pto devices before exiting the tractor. with the new button actuated pto systems it is entirely possible to stand alongside the tractor and accidentally engage the pto. also a rider on a tractor, as they are now furnishing seats and seatbelts for an additional rider could accidentally engage the tractor pto while you are working on the equipment it is attached to. it all can be remedied by turning off the tractor as it shuts off additional accessories that may also cause you injury or possible blinding or injection injuries if the problem is with the hydraulics. so shutting down the equipment is the first thing you should do. if you are in a rollover situation again turning off the equipment may be the difference between life and death.

      2 access your situation before making any drastic moves. a slight turn of a wheel or engaging a drive system or moving a hydraulic lever may cause more damage. if you are in a silo and for some reason feel yourself being swallowed by the grain or silage to stretch out as flat as you can may be your best option to save yourself. to try and think quickly under these situations requires a cool head and i must say if i lost a hand or what ever and knew i was facing a death situation it is hard to be calm . but it is what will save you for another day. be calm and think about your next course of action. if it is heart attack or what ever you still need to remain calm.  

     3. plan a course of action and first should be to locate your cell and call for help. try someone familiar with your situation first and 911 second. finding an injured person on a farm can be a problem due to the rural nature of farming in general. having someone familiar to assist the local fire or rescue workers to your location where you need assistance is always a time saver. never leave the house with out letting someone know where you are so in the event you don't return someone knows where to begin looking. how many hunters have died due to them failing to tell anyone where they were headed. they walk out into a woods and die of a heart attack. so simple and yet one of the easiest ways to avoid this is to communicate to someone where you are going to be. we live in an age of easy communication and in our area of ohio we are covered by 911 services and a cell phone works great when used as an emergency device to contact for help. never leave the house to work on farm without it. it can be used even if it is not in service to call 911. just make sure it is charged. this one device can be used as a locator in the event you are not able to talk or no one knows exactly where you are. they are able to locate you with gps positioning and cell tower location to pinpoint your signal. so if all you can do is dial 911 you stand a chance of being saved. i always carry my phone when out on the farm. but at same time when operating equipment using the phone can be a distraction and using all your power for senseless talking when you might need to call for help is a consideration one should keep in mind. especially when operating equipment or putting yourself in a dangerous situation. 

       4. don't be afraid to call for help even when you think you are in control of a bad situation. you never know when it might get worse. say for instance you were able to extricate you self from an overturned tractor only to have the tractor roll on you again as the only side available to you was the lower side when you were trying to free yourself. the second time you may not be so lucky, so call for help if you know that you are in a bad situation. a lot of what i describe for farmers is also applicable to anyone in dire situations . say for instance a car in a creek with water coming in and moving the car. do you stay or do you attempt to extricate yourself from that situation? it all depends on keeping a level head and thinking your way through this situation as to whether you will survive or not. a call on your cell phone again may be the first thing you should do. getting used to the cold water first before attempting to swim may be your second choice as who hasn't gasped when diving into a cold pool of water for the first time.  now add the excitement of trying to save your life to the situation, and immediately you sense what you are up against. 

     in summary what you do in the first seconds after a tragedy can make the difference between life and death. be calm as you can , and assess your needs, quickly. this is hard to do as you may feel pain. or if you are unconscious there really is nothing you can do. but at least try if you are able to respond quickly and remove yourself from danger,and call for help .

the day from hell

more self deprecating humor 

     i guess if you cant laugh at your mistakes i will give you more of a chance to laugh at mine. i don't know  if you can consider it a mistake on my part as i tried to do  things the right way . but somewhere along the way shit happened , and when it did it dumped the mother load on me. i was using  my truck pictured below, and because my boss at the time , needed another truck to haul his bobcat to below cadiz to a small town down there and regrade a telephone company's parking lot to prevent water from entering building. so i had to use my truck and his trailer and his bobcat to run down and do this work. a friend of mine rode along and she took the shots and we took off and i made it down there just fine, and was heading back and decided to fill up with gas at gas station and were pulling out of a drive when the truck conked out in the middle of the roadway, and with not enough time to get to side of the road. people behind me suddenly started expressing their discontent with my parking situation immediately,  in blaring beeps with arms a waving . i  had my flashers on and  my hand was waving them around as i sat there dead in the middle of the road. the truck would turn over but wasn't starting. i jumped out threw the hood open and started checking for a problem i knew wasn't there when i started . back in the truck and try it again and again.

       it would turn over but wouldn't start. a guy stopped and asked if he could help and i said sure as it was frustrating where i was. there was a bunch of th really pissed off people who suddenly were trapped behind me . and about then the police showed up and asked if they could help.

       i asked if he could do traffic control and let me work on the truck to get it to the side of the road. 

       without the key on the electric brakes wouldn't release the hydraulic brakes , and to just pull the truck off the road and into a nearby parking lot was a major effort with the police getting more irritated and wanting me to get it going or tow it. 

      well i thought if i poured some gas down the carburetor we could possibly get it started well the guy who as pouring ended up with a pool of gasoline on the hot manifold , and when i tried the engine not seeing the spilled gas the truck tried to start and backfired spouting flames out the carburetor throat igniting the gas on the top of the engine and flamed out about 4 feet sending us in different directions until the flame subsided from lack of fuel and instead set out to cause as much damage before it finally died down. i decided i couldn't wait for the flames to subside and ripped my shirt off and threw it on the flames putting it out by smothering but not before it singed those nice holes into them. 

       well this didn't impress the policeman or my friend who decided for her best protection to take a seat on the curb far away from the truck and away from the full gas tank she was sitting above in the cab. somewhere a fire extinguisher appeared after the fire was out and amazingly damages were only slight. i was able to get the fire out before my new friend who helped me torch my truck , was able to call the fire department , in  his other job. he was a volunteer firefighter , he told me as we were now able to release the brakes as in my haste of being able to get the truck running briefly i was able to release the brakes and now we were able to pull it and the trailer off the road. with a chain and the help of the firefighters truck we pulled it maybe 60 feet into a vacant parking lot of a building to sell. whew i was off the road but not home or out of cadiz. 

      convinced it was a gas problem i tried everything from buying another regular  gas pump to buying an electric gas pump which finally allowed me to get the truck home. 3 trips to the auto parts store and 6 hrs of intense wrench twisting i was able to get it started and finally made it back to my bosses shop where she took the pic of me in this t -shirt. this guy who helped me down there was a blessing as i doubt i could find anyone in cadiz so willing to help. maybe but i was sure lucky. took a carved bear with a fish down the next day and he treated us to a tour through the cadiz fire department . it was real treat and my thanks and appreciation still goes out to him. 

        sorry i wasn't able to take pics of me beating the flames down with my t-shirt bare chested in cadiz on a hot august afternoon with angry drivers waving their arms out windows, but hey i was busy. i was told it was a sight to see. especially the cops face and his look of dismay thinking he was going to have at least another hour of traffic control till they cleaned the mess up. 

      thankfully it never happened that way and i was able to drive it home intact and finished the job. i was just a little more beat up than usual. my friend did a great job of not complaining and was treated to some rather humorous moments of me being taken advantaged of by life in general . the trouble was it was my favorite t-shirt explaining what the feathers symbolize in native indian culture. oh well i guess it means put the fire out. 

awww the miracles of modern science or 

take a trip and never leave the hospital room

the case of the green jello cubes 

  

           what a title!, need to abbreviate but not quite sure how, and yet it needs that much to draw upon your curiosity to see what a guy who apparently looks fit as in a recent pic here,could possibly have in common with a hospital and the rest of the title. 

          it all started with a back injury back at the end of the last century as if to age myself more. it was 1-10 85 , i injured my back unloading a truckload of dynamite . as scary as it sounds the unloading part is the same as if it was groceries . dynamite is fairly safe as long as it isn't around something else to make it go boom like another smaller explosion . blasting caps work well for doing this providing the initial charge to get the explosion started. so it was more like unloading a semi trailer load of boxes all the same size and weight. 60 pounds to the box. not that much weight but after the first 150 -200 of them your back gets a little tight. and mine snapped and put me in the hospital with 2 herniated discs. i had a chymopapain treatment for the one disc which is an operation where they insert a needle across the back of your abdominal cavity and into the center of the affected disc and inject meat tenderizer to eat out the center of the disc and collapse it off the spine thus alleviating my spine pain. sounded easy enough as the foreign doctor explained it to me . tests were run to determine if i was allergic to the papaya enzyme and the operation was performed and i woke up to 2 weeks of constant muscle spasms or tweeks that made my skin jump and crawl as it tired me out physically and mentally . i was told i had a bad reaction to the medicine as apparently a lot of people had as they have discontinued this treatment since then. 

    to say the least Demerol was my friend and every 4 hrs i would want my friend to visit an give me a moments peace from this relentless rounds of spasms from my head to my toes. i lay in the hospital bed and they would administer physical therapy in the form of ice and heat packs to my back. nothing was working and after one day of relentless pain a little nurse came in my room and asked me how i was doing and to rate my pain. i gave it the regular 11 on a scale of 1-10, and she asked me if i wanted pain medicine. of course my reply was the same . bring it on. she said she was going to do a consult with the doctor and see if they couldn't get me something else that would be more effective , i said go for it. and she left and came back about an hour later and had the new script. it was morphine and she mainlined it into me and as she took the rubber band off my arm  and as i felt that rush hit my head i said 'what pain.' she made me comfortable and placed my liquid meal before me. 

    how inviting that dinner looked.  beef broth in styrofoam container and tea, as well as a small bowl of green jello cubes in a plastic pedestal fruit bowl. i stared at this and in my fuzzy mind contemplated what my life was coming to but before i could get very far with my analysis the tray the dinner was on shook, and i swore i saw those one inch jello cubes shake and divide. watching more intensely again the same thing happened . i was amazed at this and intentionally shook the tray and sure enough one dropped off the side of the bowl and onto the tray. this episode was repeated time and again till there was a pile of them on the tray and beginning to fall on the floor. 

     at this point my mathematical brain began to kick in and i started doing computations on how much available space i had for green jello cubes in my room. i had figured that each cube was approximately 1 inch by 1 inch and that it would take 144 to make 1 cu ft. and that i had approximately a 10 by 20 foot room 8 ft tall or 1600 cu.ft. and that is where i decided i better get help in there soon or else  i would be buried in green jello cubes as they would sit still for a second and double into twice as as many as before. i couldn't figure fast enough to determine how long i had as the room was filling up fast. 

     i figured i was at the end room down a long hall and yet i was right across from the nurses station. i pushed the button for the nurses help and no answer. panic was on my side as i wondered how long i could breathe under the weight of jello cubes , and to imagine drowning in your room in a hospital because of jello cubes , what would the preacher say? suddenly a commotion appeared  in my room and just that quickly all the jello cubes were gone and that little nurse stood in front of me asking what was wrong. having felt like a heal as i could see my relentless nagging with the buzzer resulted in her hurrying to my room for no apparent reason, then i became violently ill. it wasn't pretty but there was no way i was going to eat my liquid diet after this and yet to this day i refuse to eat green jello, cubed or not. 

       now as to the operation, it was flawed from  the start.  as in their haste to get me under the knife, apparently forgot to check and see if i had any more bad discs . which i did,  and i was back in the hospital again a year later getting a laminectomy done. now i am even more gun shy when a physician suggests anything to help me with my back. i still and will always have problems but hopefully not man made ones like this operation gave me.