A 63 year old lesson

Fall of 1950, dad in hospital, I, 15 years old took the SC Case and the GI one row snapper to get some corn for the stock. General Implement was a cheap non husker, the only thing dad could get or afford after WW2 and was no good...always plugging. That Sat morning I took a lath and the rig to the field and didn't get 100 yards before it plugged, so I put the tractor in neutral and engaged the picker, got off and with the lath tried poking the plug through the running rollers. The plug moved and instantly took the lath down with it. I reflexively grabbed the lath tighter and for the lack of mitten grip lost hold of it just inches above the rollers. The morning is as clear to me this day as that day's lesson was. All I have to do is to look at my 10 old fingers, wiggle them and think what might have been. Leo

Some things will stay with you forever...glad your story had a good ending. In the mid 80's I worked in a farm dealership and one day the boss went out to "limber up" a picker in the yard that a customer was coming to see. He had it running and one gathering chain was not turning so he gave it a kick. Of course it started and it managed pull his boot off. That is the only time I can think of where not tying your boots was a good thing.

I read somewhere about a study that said with a combine corn head running at full speed,, in the time it takes for your mind to register that you've touched it and for you to pull your hand back, the snapping rollers would pull in 80 feet of your arm. Which is the reason so many old farmers have lost fingers and hands in pickers. While I was in high school we watched a video of a guy doing a safety video. He was wearing a white lab coat and was standing in front of an auger pto with the pto running. The wind came up and puffed out his coat and it hit the pto and was pulled off his body so fast it didn't show up on the video. One frame you see the coat on the guy the next frame it's around the pto. The guy didn't even realize it was gone right away because he kept talking for a few words.

I almost didn't read the last half for fear that it had gotten you. Accidents around the farm give me the willies, but it doesn't take long with a repeated problem like that for you to do something out of routine that can't be undone.

Every time I am cussing at a plugged bailer things like that come to mind. I've always shut it off and hope I always do.

A friend of my mom's killed his dad when he was about four. Dad was working on the grain truck with the box up. The door was open. The kid climbed in to "drive" and pushed in the lift levers like he'd seen his dad do a million times. It wouldn't have taken a second to shut that door and it sure would have changed that kid's life forever.

guy i worked for years ago lost his arm above the elbow in a picker trying to get a rock out. tied the stump with is belt and drove the picker back to the house for help. neighbors dad lost his arm in an old jd cable operated manure loader. had another neighbor get killed tanksgiving day filling a bin. they figure he must of reached for something and got caught in the auger. when i was about 15 got the tips of 2 fingers cut off in a hammer mill feed grinder. doc sewed em back on.

Some of the old tractors were "an accident waiting to happen", too. I had a McCormick W4, which had the seat placed way back, directly over the PTO. There was a ledge to put your feet up, out of harms way, but if you just let your legs dangle, your pantleg was right next to the PTO. I only ran PTO implements a couple of times, but always wrapped my pantlegs with duct tape.

my cousin decided to pull a piece of twine out of the way 5 hrs surgery and hes still got a hand. the arm pulling the needles got him. people working on balers without shutting them give me the jitters

Sometimes, when the snow blower plugs up, I turn it off to clear it, because of these stories.
SDE

I was teaching at a training session at the firehouse a few weeks ago and this subject came up. I had a uncle who had a stump of a hand- two partial finger and a thumb stump- after an encounter with a New Idea picker way back in the fifties. Easily described as speed. The rollers on a corn picker move about 9 MPH. If you have a good grip on something going into a picker, your hand will enter the work area at about 13 feet per second. It will take you at least 3/4 second to realize your hand is being pulled into the machine and release whatever it is that you're holding onto. If you WERE 4 feet above the rollers when you started, in 3/4 of a second, you are about 4' into the rollers when you start to release whatever you had a grip on. Do the math. You lose.....

Sounds too familiar Leo. Similar thing in 1960, forage harvester pickup plugged and I work it loose with a fork. Fork got caught and I held on as long as I could finally let go and the fork was in 2" pieces, lucky the spout was missing the wagon and the pieces went out in the field.
Later Bob

Spring of 1961 Dad was seeding sudan grass with the JD B and the JD grain drill.I was a young lad of five but was always with Dad!Mostly rode with dad on tractor but that day he let me ride on the plank on the grain drill,wearing a loose long sleeve sweater managed to to get it caught by what gears are their, pulled my right arm into the gears right quick made a mess of my arm, major surgery later saved it Lucky,could had been much worse!Even though I was a young lad gave me a great respect for moving parts on implements!Work Safe!

Maybe twenty-five years ago I was baling hay and I had to rethread the knotter. When I first went to check the problem I noted that it was only half way to making another bale so rather than go back to the tractor I just slid under, pulled the twine through the eyes and the hole in the needle, just then it CYCLED. It took my forearm with it squeezing it against the bottom of the chamber. It hurt pretty bad and it was numb and I couldn't move it. I left my partner to finish and drove myself to the emergency room. They X-rayed it and found nothing broken, just badly bruised. I learned my lesson the easy way.

Farmer near me lost both his arms in a sweep auger, while doing a clean out ,in a Harvestor silo, back in early Dec/2013 . These things are still happening.

On old man in our neighborhood educated all of us about the dangers of PTO driven machinery. He was picking corn in a little field way back away from civilization, when his picker choked up. He got off of his Ferguson and went back to correct the problem. It grabbed him and sucked his hand into the rollers. He said, "The tractor knew nothing about his problem". He was several miles from home, and not expected to show 'til suppertime, so he got out the new Case pocket knife that his son had recently gotten him for his 70th birthday. He carefully cut off all of the fingers that were caught in the picker, and then devoted his attention to unhooking the picker from the tractor, since he knew that he would have trouble getting the tractor/picker down the narrow forestry trails and back to his house. The bolt that he used for a hitch pin had required two wrenches to tighten, but it was in enough of a bind that one wrench successfully removed the nut, and he hammered the bolt out of the draw bar with the crescent wrench. He drove away, letting the PTO shaft hang on the tractor like a forgotten rag. His neighbor knew something was wrong when he saw him speed past his place without so much as a hand wave, and the neighbor jumped in his truck and ran him down, forcing him to stop and explain himself. The neighbor drove him to the hospital, and they stitched him up - minus the fingers that were still back in the picker. A few weeks later, old Bill was in the gas station where I worked, and I asked him if it was hard to cut off those fingers, thinking about the psychological aspect of the situation. "Naw", he said as he pulled the bandages back, "A good sharp knife - you just feel around a little - you can find the joints and off they'll come". I stepped over to the coal bucket and heaved up my breakfast.

The family around the corner from me has at least three
generations of farmers all missing fingers and/or parts of hands.
All from unplugging the corn picker while it was running.