by Andrew Wilson
Now then, if you’ll indulge me, I’m going to scramble onto my soapbox and have my tuppence worth of say on farm safety. For many years I’ve been frustrated by the age old and mostly useless advice given by industry experts of ‘farmers must do better’ – it makes precious little difference, but they keep trotting it out.
We as farmers and machinery operators can but use the tools at our disposal, and for the most part, the features and functions of our kit isn’t something we have much say on, nor the archaic and impractical legislation that we and manufacturers must follow.
Let me put this into farmer language. Fifty years ago, a combine header was reversible from the cab to release a blockage. Why is it then, that the same facility still isn’t possible on a baler, despite people getting pulled into them nearly every year? If an operator could release the blockage from the cab they wouldn’t go near the danger.
The same goes for potato harvesters – clod rollers are reversible, but not webs or scrolls. It surely wouldn’t be hard for manufacturers to build in this facility, but I guess they don’t want to admit that sometimes even their machines block.
Keep people away from danger with practical mechanical solutions, not guards, rules or procedures.
PTO guards are a long way from simple – there are umpteen designs and sizes, when for me they should be universal in different sizes, in the same way that linkage balls are. At the very least they should have the maker and model number indelibly scribed into the thing instead of the sticky label that’s illegible in a few months, to remove some of the mystery if parts are required.
It’s frustration that causes accidents more than complacency, in my view. Shutting a tractor down in today’s age takes time and upsets systems, and I get why people leave engines running. At least select a neutral PTO speed before exiting the cab (so that if someone presses the external PTO button, the thing can’t turn)
Carry safety specs and disposable gloves in machine cabs. If something isn’t right, send a message to someone that can implement a solution while it’s fresh in your head, so it doesn’t get forgotten when the next wet day occurs.
More than anything else though, stop for a brew. It needn’t be for long, but a breather and a quick natter with colleagues keeps everyone fresh and aware. Never mind all that ‘we haven’t time’ nonsense.
The official guidance on how to build a straw stack was clearly not written by someone that’s ever built a stack, which frustrates me immensely. One tip I can share is for the baler driver (or loader if a contractor is used) to carry a livestock marker spray on the baler, and paint a big cross on any dubious bales, which identifies them immediately as not suitable to be used on the bottom of stacks.
So, what have we been up to? The spring barley and oats are sown and through the ground, and I’m pleased I opted to put all the nutrition in the seedbed pre-drilling, given that we’ve had little more than an inch of rain in the past two months.
Sugar beet is drilled and anything a bit cloddy has been rolled, rightly or wrongly. Partway through drilling, the hydraulic motor driving my fertiliser pump spat its oil seals out. Given it was a Saturday afternoon and drying fast, and we wanted to start planting potatoes on the Monday, I opted to put the liquid fertiliser and phosphate on with a good rate of water through the umbrella jets on the sprayer straight in front of the power harrow drill rig. Placement it isn’t, but hopefully it hasn’t all evaporated. Machinery hey, there’s always summat!
My role at planting time is usually runabout boy, field checker, seed carter and spray man, but also relief operator for the rest of the team should that be required. It’s four years since I drove our planter, but such an occasion occurred just this weekend.
Suffice to say my brain had a workout the first afternoon while I remembered which buttons to press in which order, but it came back to me okay really. That was until the second day when the solenoid that operates the depth control decided 15 years was long enough on this planet and deposited its innards and 100 quid’s worth of oil onto the floor. Thank you to local mechanic George for bailing me out and helping build a replacement from two others, it’s very much appreciated.
So far, we’ve planted into moisture, mostly by working land up in a just-in-time basis, but an inch of rain wouldn’t go amiss soon, for all of our crops. T1s will be on winter cereals before you read this and the grass is romping on nicely – I anticipate another early hay time if the weather is still like this when we’ve finished planting potatoes. I can feel the eye rolling from my team already!
Stay safe everybody – however frustrating things get, tomorrow is a new day, make sure that you’re here for it.
This article was taken from the latest issue of CPM. Read the article in full here.
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