I have read posts in this group concerning safety issues. If you just got your first tractor, or you have been farming since you were knee high to a grasshopper, safety is important. Let me tell you about a few incidents that happened to people I knew in my community in the past few years. One man, a good friend, (who had been around tractors for at least 50 years) tried to start his tractor by using a screwdriver to cross the contacts on the starter. The tractor was in gear and when it cranked up, the rear wheel ran over him. He died in the hospital. Another man, (also an experienced farmer) while shredding his pasture with a rotary cutter, stopped because something had caught under the outside edge of the cutter. He turned off the PTO and tractor engine (with safety in mind) before dismounting the tractor. He failed, however to wait for the cutter to stop turning. When he stuck his foot under the cutter to kick away the hung object, the turning blades caught his pants leg and pulled him underneath to his hips. He lost a leg. Several years ago, a local man was moving round bales of hay with a front end loader. No one knows for certain why, but he raised the bale high enough that it rolled back down the loader arms onto the tractor and him. He was found dead underneath the bale. I tell the folks I supervise at work that farm machinery is man eating machinery. Nothing you do around a farm is worth losing fingers, arms, legs, or your life. If you come to work in the morning healthy and with all your appendages intact, use caution and go home that way in the evening.
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