Everything about farm safety

AUBURNDALE, Wis. — Looking back on his own early on-farm experiences, Mark Cournoyer recognizes the importance of teaching the youngest farmers that their own on-farm safety starts with themselves and their ability to recognize what is dangerous around them.

Cournoyer spoke April 15 at the AgrAbility Summit for AgrAbility of Wisconsin.

“Everything I learned about farm safety, I learned from my cousin,” he said. “I was 9 years old and my uncle put me in the seat of the tractor while we were picking up hay bales and said, ‘Here, drive.’ So I drove, and to stop, one of my cousins hopped onto the tractor, which was in first gear.”

For 25 years, Cournoyer, the agricultural education instructor and FFA advisor in Auburndale, has been tasked with teaching aspiring young farmers how to embrace the idea of farm and tractor safety. Over that time, he said he estimates over 500 youth have learned the fundamentals of on-farm safety. This year’s Youth Tractor and Machinery Safety Program, sponsored by the Sherry Tired Iron Tractor Club Inc., took place June 16-20 in Auburndale.

“Every year is a new adventure,” Cournoyer said. “There are new things to teach. The goal is to prepare these kids for the jobs they might realistically be performing on a farm.”

The course curriculum covers general farm safety, along with teaching tractor components, proper pre-operational procedures, safe operation skills and working with tractor-powered implements. Cournoyer takes the lessons he teaches one step further, bringing farmers and emergency personnel from the community to the classroom and taking his students to Liquid Coin Dairy LLC, near Milladore, where they can see and experience many aspects of a working farm up close, such as moving sidewall tires used for bunk covering. At the completion of the week-long course, students must pass a tractor driving test.

With the successful completion of the safety program, students who are at least 12 years old can earn a state certificate that allows them to operate machinery on public roads while helping their immediate family. At the age of 14, a federal certificate earned in class becomes active, allowing students to operate machinery on roads for non-family employers.

Recognizing the importance of providing learning experiences for the students, Auburndale dairy farmer Steve Becker has been bringing equipment to the classroom experience for more than 10 years. This year he brought a large square baler and tractor to demonstrate to students the size and scale of equipment, giving them the opportunity to learn about the equipment and see the technology up close.

“My goal is to make these kids think about all the implications of situations they might be in,” Cournoyer said. “They are operating a tractor on public roads —a piece of machinery potentially worth more than their parents’ house, maybe pulling a really nice car behind them — and they are going 25-35 mph, while other vehicles are doing 65. I try to instill that they are a slow-moving target, that they need to assume every driver is shopping on Facebook Marketplace, that not everyone is going to be looking out for them.”

The lessons learned in the program have already saved lives, Cournoyer said.

“It takes 30 seconds for an individual to become engulfed in a grain bin,” he said. “We teach the kids that if they see something happening, to stop the flow and get help. Fifteen years ago, a student was unloading high-moisture corn into a Harvestore silo at his uncle’s farm and his 5-year-old brother was there — suddenly he saw his brother’s socks coming out of the bottom. He remembered what he learned, stopped the flow and got his uncle, who said it was all he could do to pull the little boy out. Both boys are farming today, because he knew what to do.”

Cournoyer shares that story with his classes each and every year. Since that time, grain engulfment has become an even more integral part of the class. For more than 15 years, Auburndale Joint Fire Department Chief and dairy farmer Todd Bores brings members of his department to talk to students about grain bin safety and rescue.

Bores spoke at this year’s class June 19. He said entrapment happens when a victim becomes buried beyond the point of self-extraction, while engulfment implies a victim is completely buried beneath the surface of the grain mass.

“Once you’re buried in 2-3 feet of grain, self-extraction is nearly impossible,” Bores said. “A victim buried by three feet of dry corn or grain will require 325 pounds of force to pull his or her body free.”

Remaining calm is a priority for both the victim and rescuers, Bores said.

“There have been cases documented in which anxious rescuers have dislocated limbs or caused fatal injuries while attempting to free partially buried victims from grain entrapments,” Bores said. “There is no one strategy that is documented to be effective in all types of grain entrapment rescues. Each incident consists of a variety of unique characteristics.”

Bores related his own farm accident, a 20-foot fall from the outside of an upright silo. The incident has impacted his entire life.

“I wasn’t much older than you guys and was working for a neighbor,” Bores said. “I was in a hurry to get down to get a drink of water and get back up before my dad got back with the next load. I knew the ladder stopped, but I missed it and fell. I split every stomach muscle, caught the 3-point on the tractor underneath my chin, and ripped the calluses off both hands. That was in 1987, you didn’t hear about harnesses back then. Today you have them — please use them, they can save you a lot of pain. To this day, I still can’t do a sit up, and I used to be able to do them off the parallel bars.”

Bores and Cournoyer agree that farm incidents happen when a person loses focus on what they are doing.

“It only takes a few seconds for something to go wrong,” Bores said. “If we can make them stop and think by telling them our true stories that they can relate to, that is worth it.”

Cournoyer works to drive home the idea of being responsible for their own safety.

“I tell them all their middle initial is now ‘S’ for safety,” Cournoyer said. “Every farm is different, and they all have different attitudes about safety. I tell them their own safety starts with them. They have to be alert and thoughtful to recognize the dangers around them.”