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OSHA on the farm

N

notjustair

Well-known Member
Reading a post about older engines got me thinking - what were some of the things that you did as a kid that would push OSHA buttons? I'm not talking now. I do lots as an adult that I probably shouldn't on the farm. I'm talking as a kid when the equipment was less than stellar. Here's what I posted on that thread:

When I was about 8 my new job for several years was running the grain cart and augering into the bins. Our auger had an OLD Briggs engine on it. It looked huge but I think it was just one if the big old 8 horse units. Wind the rope, pull, and pray.

The problem was the engine was up about five foot off the ground. Might as well have been a mile for me. I would stand on a bucket and turn on the gas and wind the rope then jump off that bucket pulling the rope with me. At least twice a day that rope knot would clobber the top of my head. I would get on the tractor and start augering watching that thing like a hawk. If it ever died and I didn't catch it I was dead meat! When it was done I shut off the gas and went back to the field. I can't even tell you if that motor had a kill switch on it. I wouldn't have been able to reach it. That auger had no guards and I was the only one on the farm if there would have been a pto incident. I was running the grain-o-Vator cart with an old Farmall H.

It would either be that or when I had to put an extension ladder in the loader of the tractor so dad could raise me up high enough to top out a tree. I was probably 14 by then, though.

Oh, or maybe chaining the riding mower into the loader and trimming the evergreen hedge. That was nice.
 
It isn't just the things we worked with back then. I was thinking this morning about some of the toys we had back then. Remember wood burners? How many over protective parents would give one of those anymore? Then there was the Thing Maker where you poured Plastigoop in to a mold and heated it up to make rubber bugs and such. There was another one where you put a sheet of plastic in it,got the mold hot and dropped the sheet down over it to make your own plastic toys.
And they recall toys now because a part could come loose. Go figure.
 
I suppose they may have taken a dim view of a 10 year old kid, tying bales on a Case wire hand tie baler. I recall that my mother sure did. One morning, she thought that I was just too tired, and forbade Dad from waking me to go out with the crew. I woke up about 9, and was in a panic- I just had to get out there, they needed me!!! Mom took me out, and told Dad, "He's as crazy as you are."

I have a picture of that crew somewhere- 12 year old cousin driving the 8N, 13 year old cousin keeping the hay feed going with a pitchfork, 10 year old me tying the bales, and dad "pushing needle"- threading the wire through for me to tie.

All this was necessitated by the milk price crash of 1958- got down to about $4 per CWT, IIRC. We couldn't afford alfalfa, so made the grass hay. It was terrible hay, milk production went down the tubes, and in 2 years we were broke and the cows went down the road.
 
"...what were some of the things that you did as a kid that would push OSHA buttons?"

Just about everything, starting with getting out of bed, getting dressed, and walking outside, especially not wearing a helmet, knee and arm pads, and having a parent hold our hands when we did. Amazing that any of us are still alive, and that Earth hasn't spun off of its axis because of it.

Mark
 
When I was 16 months old, I lost my left index finger to the second joint by getting it caught in the open gears on a pump jack.

Now, when I do an insurance inspection, whenever I see open gears, belts and chains with no guards, etc. I have to write them up. My reports are reviewed before they go to the client insurance company, and if a reviewer saw, say, an auger without a guard over the belt in the background in a photo of a bin, I'd have to explain why I didn't focus on it with a separate photo and write it up.
 
If you were to look at a chart of the highest accidents and fatalities on the job, I am sure that Farming would be at the top, along with excavating cave ins, and failure to lock out machinery while performing maintenance. Kids get run over while riding with dad or granddad on the tractor. Lots of terrible accidents, when kids are in the obit column it makes you think.
 
They probably don't even sell pick up sticks anymore. "You'll put an eye out" or they resemble a weapon.
 
OSHA dosen't care ! Family members on family farms are exempt. Feel free to tear yourself up anyway you want to. No one from OSHA is going to bother you.
 
They haven't worked up the nerve yet, but OSHA is coming to the family farm. The feds don't like anything they don't have control of - the family farm is one of the last of them. You're right though - a lot of the things we did back then we sure wouldn't let our kids do
Pete
 
OSHA will not be on the family farm, but they will be on the corporate farm and that is a good thing.

There is a different level of diligence that must be maintained for employees.
 
I personally know two children who were injured in auger accidents, one of them fatally. One was in the sixties, the other in the seventies. As far as I know, nothing has changed in either the design of grain augers or in farm safety regulations that would have prevented either accident. Those kids should have been nowhere near operating augers, yet parents let them get close enough to be pulled in.
 
I've known several kids that were killed on bikes as far as I know bikes haven't changed much either.So I guess they should stay away from bikes,cars,horses etc etc etc because somewhere someplace they all have been responsible for a kid's death.
 
I remember my erector set very well. When my batteries went dead, well I thought I would just plug it in to the wall outlet. Yep! Big flash lots of smoke, melted motor and a hide tanning.
 
I came home from 1st grade saw a brand new JD 420 in the yard. My Dad said "come over here boy' and showed me how to drive it. It was pretty easy compared to a CC Case or an SP-3 Sheppard. My Mon freaked but I was the only Son. So got put to work early. Good Memories
 
When I was in grade school one of the boys had a bike with no brakes. To stop he'd put his sneaker on the front tire behind the fork (no front fender). One day he was going faster and when he put his foot on the wheel it caught and he and the bike went over head first. Lucky he didn't bash his head.
 
One of the things I did I wouldn't have let my son do was climb the ladder to the top of the haymow when it was full and climb over the big beam. This wasn't far from the top of the barn which is over 40' high.
 
Didn't work on a family farm, but I have vivid memories of building Soap Box Derby cars when I was 11-14. Was running power tools in the garage while Dad was at work, no supervision. I needed weight for the front end so Dad brought home sheets of lead that he used in his work as a cable splicer for the phone company. I formed molds out of wood and would melt the lead with a torch and pour it in. I remember the fumes being pretty bad. He also brought home carbon tet for me to use as a cleaner. I'd soak rags in it. Today, Dad would be in jail for giving that stuff to his son.
 
Homemade cannons powered by powder scavanged by cutting black cats in two, acetylene and oxygen cannons from the cutting torch, homemade "firecracker" guns that shot rock salt, rocks, nails, ball bearing, etc.

Chasing calves on the mini-bike.

Messing around with all types of farm machinery.

Driving everything on the farm by 10 years old.

Going to the creek with a fishing pole and .22 rifle, by ourselves when we were 9 or 10.

Running our own trap line.

"F" Osha !!

Gene
 
Yeah, some of the things I did as a kid, truly a miracle I'm still alive and have all my parts intact!

Guns, power tools, old electric motors, lawn mowers, TV sets, anything I could get my hands on was fair game. One of my favorite toys was an old neon transformer I discovered on the roof of my dads service station!

And it wasn't just play... Fixing flats when I wasn't big enough to put the wheel up on the machine. I'd get help lifting it up there, and I'd take it from there! Putting cars up on the lift, changing oil, had to raise it only part way up so I could reach it!

But, even though I learned most things the hard way, mostly because I wouldn't listen anyway, I learned to be careful! To respect the beasts we build!

We've hired some young'uns around the shop, mostly someones relative needing a job... Start them out as janitors, saw operators, simple jobs...

None have even come close to working out. Why? Danger to themselves and everyone around them!

Evidently they have lived some protected lives, no clue of the effect of gravity, fire or inertia!

Quite happy to be living their lives tuned out to the world via ear buds and texting, oblivious to cause and effect!
 
(quoted from post at 17:12:57 04/08/14) I've known several kids that were killed on bikes as far as I know bikes haven't changed much either.So I guess they should stay away from bikes,cars,horses etc etc etc because somewhere someplace they all have been responsible for a kid's death.
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Thing of it is you take the total number of kids who have a bike and figure out just how many per 1,000 die every year on that bike and then take the total number of kids living on the farm and figure just how many die from farm accidents. That's really the only way to compare them. Do the same thing for serious injuries.

Rick
 
We now have mountains of useless regulations and an endless supply of mindless bureaucrats to enforce them, all in an attempt to regulate human stupidity, it does not work, all that is accomplished is higher prices and fewer goods on the market.
 
I remember our erector set. My brother and I spent hours making a cart to be pulled by the one barn cat that was partially tamed by my mother. Cats are not very good draft animals, to say the least. We played with the erector set after that, but most of the pieces weren't very straight.
 
I know a guy that hires middle school kids to run a 4020 and a square baler. The tractor does not have a starter. You have to pull it to start it. The baler has no PTO shields of any kind and most of the tin has been removed. All moving chains and shafts are out in the open.
 
(quoted from post at 20:08:15 04/08/14) I know a guy that hires middle school kids to run a 4020 and a square baler. The tractor does not have a starter. You have to pull it to start it. The baler has no PTO shields of any kind and most of the tin has been removed. All moving chains and shafts are out in the open.
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Boy that guy is playing with fire. If I understand the laws right a kid under 18 can work on a family owned farm and run equipment but hiring off farm people has to follow the age laws. If I'm right and one of those kids is seriously injured or worse that guy not only stands to have his pants sued off but could face jail time too.

Rick
 
Dad had a sawmill and did his own logging. Cracked a sprocket on bulldozer in the woods when I was 10 and was told I should know better. Had to be 12 to run saws in mill or chainsaws. No ear, eye, head protection didn't know they made it. No cab on dozer. Edger in mill had an open shaft collar on the side walked by all day, was between edger and rollway. Flatbelt that drove slabwood conveyor used to come off pulley on cutoff saw, had a stick with a nail in the end to pull belt up and put on pulley with it running then had to go under floor and kick pulley on conveyor to get it moving again
 
(quoted from post at 02:24:59 04/09/14) So I guess your point is that maimed children and disabled laborers are good for the economy.
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Obviously that's not anyone's point. The point is that over regulation is just as bad, in a different way, than no regulation. If OSHA could access our farms, small businesses, backyards and rural roads they'd probably find millions of kids doing things that they'd consider verbotten. If OSHA could legally inspect many small businesses, the 2-4 man outfits, they'd shut them down in a heartbeat. What good is done by putting people out of business, by keeping kids from chores or play time or by fining people into submission because the 1946 tractor their 15 year old is raking hay with doesn't have a ROPS, dead man switch, seat belts, sound proof cab, etc???

Some here once said that the best safety engineering in the world is no match for the determined efforts of your average idiot. He had a good point.
 
Too many to mention. Everything from hedgeapples and sugical tubing slingshots between two trees to M80's and coffee cans full of ammonium nitrate. Im glad Im here and got all my parts.
 
And I have a hard time with these 5000 acre guys calling themselves family farms. I'm no fan of regulations but lets call a spade a spade. With these big operations running a million worth of equipment, two million operating loans, up to this year $75k in FSA payments and profiting $300,000 off $60/acre then why shouldn't the same regs apply as any mid sized construction company? Why the sales tax exemptions? I'm a farmer myself so I know enough that a "family" can make a great living off 10 to 15% of that ground, and actually run a higher per acre margin through sensible land rents and better knowledge of their acres.
 
frst thing that comes to mind was riding the drawbar and fenders of the tractors, i alwayd did that when we had to go someplace either to work or pick up some impliment or wagon, i never remembered falling off, but i also had enough sence to hold on and i mean get a good hold on to the tractor
 
I would guess that 90% of the things that I did as a kid would have an OSHA inspector screaming his head off. Hurt myself less in those days than I did when I got old.
 

We used to fill silo with a Blizzard filler. My Brother and I would step over the drive belt " because it was a long one " instead of going around , until Dad caught one of us.
When I was younger, about 8, I was riding on the back of the grain drill, and poked my finger into the drop cup because oats were hanging up, and got my fingernail taking off by the gears that kicked out the seed.
 
My bike had a basket on the handlebars- I needed it during the week when riding to the bus stop with books, but it looked geeky, so I took it off on weekends.

Put it back on hurriedly one Monday morning- just attached it at the handlebars, and left the struts going down to the axle unhooked. You can guess what happened next- halfway to the bus stop, one of the struts drifted over into the spokes, front wheel stops and bike goes over frontwards, landing me flat on my back with the bike on top of me. Ouch. Much laughter and hooting when I got myself together and got on the bus.
 
My point is no government agency is ever going to prevent maimed children and disabled workers. Parents are the parties most interested in preventing their own children from being maimed and the vast majority do a pretty good job of it, all disabled laborers are disabled through their own or others stupidity and laziness. All of the accidents that take place in my industry are the direct result of the injured party or someone they are working with being too lazy to follow the correct procedures or get the right tools and equipment for the job. When someone claims they were in a ''hurry'' to get the job done that is a dead give away that they were too sorry to go after what they needed or take the trouble to do a job correctly. All other accidents and incidents, without exception that I have ever heard of, read of, witnessed or been involved in were caused by human error, there are no ''acts of God'' in industrial accidents, just man made laziness and stupidity.
 
(quoted from post at 08:44:44 04/09/14) My point is no government agency is ever going to prevent maimed children and disabled workers. Parents are the parties most interested in preventing their own children from being maimed and the vast majority do a pretty good job of it, all disabled laborers are disabled through their own or others stupidity and laziness. All of the accidents that take place in my industry are the direct result of the injured party or someone they are working with being too lazy to follow the correct procedures or get the right tools and equipment for the job. When someone claims they were in a ''hurry'' to get the job done that is a dead give away that they were too sorry to go after what they needed or take the trouble to do a job correctly. All other accidents and incidents, without exception that I have ever heard of, read of, witnessed or been involved in were caused by human error, there are no ''acts of God'' in industrial accidents, just man made laziness and stupidity.
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Thing of it is the companies had very unsafe working conditions where trench collapses, cave in's, falls from buildings and such were the norm because businesses could get away with it and there were a lot each year. They pushed workers to be faster and more productive without regard to safety. Many lives were lost. It's all a part of history. If businesses had taken care of these problems there never would have been a reason to create OSHA. Did OSHA get out of hand? Sure they did. That part is the governments fault.

Rick
 
Business are the ones that have taken care of these problems, there is no efficiency or profit in hurting people and destroying property. There was never a reason to create OSHA, the same way there is no reson for 95% of the current government agencies from the feds down to the town council. Any form or fashion of Federal Government in excess of what existed when George Washington was President is not needed and has done nothing but harm to the American way of life and individual liberty and freedom. All centralized government is inherently corrupt and staffed by those intent on proliferating their power.
 
So, the "lazy and stupid" mineworkers killed in the Upper Big Branch Mine were the victims of their own stupidity, eh? And management actions to deliberately circumvent safety regulations had nothing to do with it? And that they would have died even had government officials done their jobs and zealously enforced those regulations?

Sometimes workers die because a corporation puts profit ahead of people. We can thank the many workplace safety laws and their enforcement, which date back to the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, that more workers aren"t maimed and killed every day.
Upper Big Branch Mine disaster
 
Man o" Man. You guys can sure work yoursaelves into a frenzy over some casual comment. Point was "what were the things we did as kids that would push OSHA buttons". Hypothetical question!

We did a lot of really stupid things as kids on the farm and in the country. I shiver thinking about a lot of them. Most of us survuved. But some of my young pals did not...RIP. One fell out of a moving pick-up DOA (no booze involved he was 15). Another shot himself while squirel hunting DOA (careless accident). Another blew up a gas tank with a welding torch. Burned his face off..but he survived.

We don't need an intrusive government and a bunch of silly or frivolous regulations.....BUT...you guys that think business will fix all the safety problems without being required to......need to get off the farm and get a dose of the world reality.
In the quest for profits, business can and will only do what it's competitors are also forced to do. Forced = regulations.
 
I have a pretty libertarian mindset for the most part, but I have to agree that some regulation is needed for the majority of people. The problem is that when you give someone the power to regulate something, it almost always results in the regulator going a lot further than is required to meet the need originally giving the problem. As with most things, it's finding a happy medium that's the key.
 
You say that, but when it's *YOUR* kid, or *YOUR* spouse, or *YOUR* best friend, what is an acceptable rate of loss?

If your kid fell off the 2-step ladder, had a bad stroke of luck on the landing, broke his neck, and ended up paralyzed for life, would you think a safety harness requirement was silly or frivolous?

My guess is you wouldn't shrug your shoulders and say, "The kid was acting stupid. He had it coming."

No, you'd be suing the company into oblivion, and pounding your fist on the table at OSHA headquarters demanding more oversight and regulations!

That's how it happens. It's easy to play armchair quarterback, until someone we know, or we're personally hurt.
 
We did that too! And fought with wooden "swords", again using garbage can lids for shields. The hardware store garbage can lids would get bent up and would have to be pounded back into shape so they would fit on the cans. But we had one can that was WWII USNavy surplus that was real heavy. The lid to that did not bend, so I always chose it. Heavier to hold up, but much stronger.

Rocks really make a loud noise when they hit a garbage can lid you are hiding behind. And they really hurt if you don"t deflect them and get hit.

I won"t even get into BB guns!
 
And how about lead soldiers that you cast after melting down wheel weights. A friend of mine had that equipment and we cast hundreds of soldiers. Did we get burned? A little, but that taught us to be careful about getting the soldiers out of the molds too soon. To my knowledge, no one in our group of friends ever got injured with the molten lead. Fun times!
 
(quoted from post at 06:42:15 04/10/14) You say that, but when it's *YOUR* kid, or *YOUR* spouse, or *YOUR* best friend, what is an acceptable rate of loss?

If your kid fell off the 2-step ladder, had a bad stroke of luck on the landing, broke his neck, and ended up paralyzed for life, would you think a safety harness requirement was silly or frivolous?

My guess is you wouldn't shrug your shoulders and say, "The kid was acting stupid. He had it coming."

No, you'd be suing the company into oblivion, and pounding your fist on the table at OSHA headquarters demanding more oversight and regulations!

That's how it happens. It's easy to play armchair quarterback, until someone we know, or we're personally hurt.
Click to expand...

So, you wear a safety harness or make your kids, family and friends wear one when on a step ladder???

I didn't think so.
 
I doubt you dad would have given those things to you if he had known how dangerous they really were. He probably gave them to you because he worked with them often and he wasn't aware they were hazarous. His employer and the people selling those products were not going to tell him they were dangerous if they were not required to tell him, would you?
 
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