Safety is Job One

At Zumbrun Farms we take safety seriously as evidenced by the photo below.

In case you can’t tell what that is, it’s a board I cut to hold the clutch down on the tractor we use to run the auger to unload corn. You have to press the clutch down to start the tractor, so you don’t start it in gear and run somebody over.

So when we start the tractor to unload corn, as we’ll do about 100 times this fall, you have to climb up into the tractor, stomp on the clutch and start it.

If my arms were about an inch longer I’d be able to stand on the ground and hold the clutch with one hand and turn the key with the other. But they’re not, so doing that involves a painful stretch.

After a week of this, I finally just cut a board tonight to wedge the clutch down so I can start the tractor from the ground without having to climb up in it.

What could possibly go wrong? Well, the tractor could accidentally get put in gear. Then as I start it the board could kick out, and the tractor would lurch forward, running me over while dragging the auger behind it and then careening across the road where it would hit a schoolbus full of children.

That’s why I carefully wrote “Safety First!” on the board.