\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
We sometimes read, site<\/a> mostly in the few remaining farm magazines, about horrific farm accidents. I was very lucky as a teenager to live through two \u00e2\u20ac\u0153close calls\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. They both involved our John Deere Model B tractor and field work.<\/p>\n One fall day I was one-way discing a field after harvest. Our one-way was a Cockshutt \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a 41\u00e2\u0081\u201e2 ft heavy piece of equipment with large discs set on an angle to cut into the soil and turn the soil and crop residue back into the ground. It was a clear, cold, windy October afternoon. I stopped the tractor and (luckily, as it turned out) throttled back the engine of the machine. I wanted to briefly warm my cold hands by the engine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hot manifold. Instead of getting off the tractor safely \u00e2\u20ac\u201c off the seat and down and around \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I opted to jump over the drive pulley side of the tractor. John Deere tractors of that era had a long hand clutch which, when I jumped, slipped inside my parka jacket. As I fell forward, I pulled the tractor into gear and it started forward \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and stalled. I could easily have been carved into pieces by the disc, but I was lucky.<\/p>\n On another occasion, I was harrowing with 6 sections of harrows in a field north of our farm home. Approaching the end of the field, I turned the tractor, but too close to the fence. The harrow draw bar, a 20 ft 2\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by 6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, struck a fence post at the end of the field. This swung the draw bar in such a way that the chain attached to it caught on the tractor tire and instantly all 6 harrow sections flew in the air, just missing my head and left dangling between me and the tractor wheel. I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t touched, but I could easily have been killed.<\/p>\n Until my mid-teens I was pretty small for my age. At 13 or 14, or even before, I was driving Uncle Walter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s much bigger, more powerful Farmall \u00e2\u20ac\u0153M\u00e2\u20ac\u009d tractor and having to stretch to reach the foot clutch. No \u00e2\u20ac\u0153close calls\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as I remember. Lucky, too, as tractors in those days had few safety features or protective guards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00c2\u00a0 Two \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcClose Calls\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 on the Farm We sometimes read, site mostly in the few remaining farm magazines, about horrific farm accidents. I was very lucky as a teenager to live through two \u00e2\u20ac\u0153close calls\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. They both involved our John … Continue reading