Farm Safety

There have always been dangers on the farm today and yesterday. Parents constantly make children aware of these dangers. Still, accidents happen. Today, most accidents involve machinery like augers, tractors, mowers, and combines. In the past, many accidents involved animals like large draft horses and cattle. My mother was always afraid of horses because a draft horse burst out of the barn as she was about to enter when she was little. However, there are always dangers that aren't foreseen, dangers you don't think of to warn your child.

My mother, Dora, experienced one of these dangers firsthand when she disappeared into a strawstack. I will tell this story, Dora and the Yellow Strawstack, in a children's picture book, which should be published sometime in the spring of 2024. Strawstacks aren't inherently dangerous. My mother's situation was dangerous because a new strawstack was created against an old one, making the side where the two met slippery. My mother fell between the two stacks and almost suffocated in the freshly blown straw.

Fortunately, there is air inside a newly blown strawstack, which allows time for a rescue. This is unlike a similar danger today when a child falls into a pile of harvested flax. There is no air between the kernels, and a child suffocates quickly,

The story of my mother's rescue in the book Dora and the Yellow Strawstack is a tribute to my mother and her rescuers, without which I would not be here to tell the story.

Comments: From Facebook

-Lucille Granger

Two of my cousins fell into a grain bin when we were little. My uncle saved one but not the other. She suffocated in the grain. She was twelve.