One of my neighbors died in a tractor rollover.
Another blew up his fuel tank while filling up a tractor with the engine running.
I’ve ignited my own fuel tank doing the same thing.
My dad lost a portion of a thumb in a belt.
I had a flying fragment from a fence post maul lodge in my eye.
I’ve fallen off a load of hay with my 4-year-old son in my arms and just missed being run over.
I could go on, but won’t. It is for these reasons that Rick Kubik’s “The Farm Safety Handbook” interests me. I’ve been around long enough to know how sublime my stupidity can be and how dangerous the most mundane of farm work can be.

“It was harvest time in 1983. Richard Polkinghorne climbed the ladder of the grain bin he was loading and discovered it was full. By the time he made it back to ground level, grain was spilling over the sides. He reached across the PTO shaft with his left arm to loosen the auger’s belts in order to shut it down. His arm became entangled in the auger and was later amputated below the elbow,” Kubik writes.
I can imagine myself doing that. I can imagine how fast it happened. Just like me, Polkinghorne probably had heard stories about the dangers of augers and PTOs. The stories didn’t help Polkinghorne. But reading his story may help me. And you. It may mean that our wives (or husbands) won’t have to call for help like Polkinghorne’s wife did.
Kubik’s book isn’t just a series of stories to make your hair stand on end. The dozens of stories will simply help you remember his hundreds of practical safety tips. The tips, suggestions and accident stories are well illustrated with photos and organized by chapters on subjects such as front-end loaders, hitching, machinery and implements, fire and livestock. There are also separate chapters on children’s safety and one on dust, mold, chemicals and gases.
I don’t own a front-end loader and haven’t operated one for years. If I were going to buy one I’d read Kubik’s chapter on them before I spent much time with my new loader. My guess is if you’ve been using one for years you might learn a few things, too. My guess is that the 63-year-old Saskatchewan farmer who died when the round bale he was lifting with his loader went too high and fell on his tractor cab and crushed him had quite a bit of front-end loader hours logged.

Here are some tips from Kubik on front-end loaders.

• Remove the bucket when the tractor is used for fieldwork, but keep the loader arms attached. This improves tractor weight balance, increases visibility for the operator, prevents interference with the headlights and improves safety.
• Loaders on narrow front tractors are dangerous. The higher you lift the load the greater the risk of tipping.
• As you lift the loader arms, adjust the angle of the bucket so that the floor of the bucket does not tip too far backward.
• Don’t work under hydraulic loader arms without mechanically blocking them.

Kubik also encourages you to think about your ninth-grade science class when you use your loader.
“Viewed from the side, a tractor with a front-end loader behaves like a lever and fulcrum system. At one end of the lever is the load in the bucket, while the weight of the tractor is the load at the other end. The fulcrum, or pivot point, is the front of the tractor,” he writes.
It is because of this lever and fulcrum that your brakes can become next to useless with something particularly heavy in the front.
In case you don’t take any of this too seriously Kubik tosses out a statistic.
“Of 22 patients admitted to Plains Health Center in Regina, Saskatchewan, from January 1979 to April 1986 with spinal injuries due to farming accidents, seven had injuries related to tractor mounted, front-end bale loaders.”
Farm accidents to adults can be tragic. Accidents involving small children seem even more poignant. Kubik’s chapter on children’s safety is an excellent addition to this practical and useful book.
If you’re too busy this fall to read it yourself, get a copy for a loved one to read. Then be prepared to have them ask you all kinds of questions about what you’re doing in the field or machine shed. Listen to them carefully. Remember, it may be them who have to make the 911 call for you. If you’re like me you’d rather not put them in that position.
“The Farm Safety Handbook,” by Rick Kubik, is published by Voyageur Press and can be purchased for $19.95 at most book stores or by calling the publisher at (800) 826-6600.

By Tim King
THE LAND (Mankato, Minn.)

Tim King writes for The Land magazine in Mankato, Minn.

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