Nothing brings a cringe to our faces or makes the hair on the back of our necks stand up quite like hearing the term "farming accident" does to us Outlanders. This is 'sconsin after all and we are up to our missing extremities in these things. Trust me, I watch the news...
In between harvesters, back hoes, Bob-Cats, tractors, grain belts, combines, silos, planters, block and tackles, barbed wire, electric fences, fan belts, pulleys, chain drives, barn doors, loaders, chain saws, stupidity and milking machines (don't ask what you lose with a milking machine, it's kind of "personal") a few missing digits, a hand (hands), a foot (feet), an arm or two, a leg or two, a lower body or a head is not at all unusual in this neck of the woods. Add a limp into the equation and you have a Royal Flush to say the very least. Basically, the more of you that is missing the longer you have been farming. Missing teeth don't count. Those are usually attributable to getting kicked in the face by one of the herd and that's just the nature of the profession. Especially if your hands are cold... Think about it.
In 'sconsin a farmer with his body completely intact says one of two things: he's either way to careful to get any appreciable amount of actual work done or he has a shit load of hired help to do his dirty work for him. Both situations, by the way, lead to local rural scorn and getting your mail box smashed with a baseball bat in the middle of the night. Farmers can be so cruel...
Around here we have wonderfully inventive types of farming accidents to say the least. OK, truly weird shit when you get right down to it. My favorites are the farmer who fell into his half full silo and suffocated from the fumes. When they found him a day later is was partially dissolved from the acidic build up in the silo. Pretty. And the guy who was trampled to death by his herd of Holstein's for no other reason than that he was half an hour late to milk them and he had the stupidity to turn his back on them. These were Holstein's for chris' sake, the nice cows that we get milk from. Go figure. And most recently the idiot who decided to go do a bit of tweeking on the engine of the John Deere before he went to church. Of course, his tie gets caught in the fan belt which pulled him down into the fan blades basically turning his head into something akin to a spiral-cut Easter ham. A donation was taken in his honor later that day...
Farming is actually considered the 4th most dangerous job in America. Right after astronaut, test pilot and process server. Why anyone in their right minds would want to be a farmer is beyond my comprehension. Personally, I value my thumbs. I have found a myriad of uses for them that I have become quite fond of. Don't ask, don't tell...
"Farming accident" falls right up there with "grease fire", "smoking in bed" and "alcohol may have played a factor" kind of incidents. All of which I have some experience with to some degree or another. Yes, I have done some really stupid ass shit in my life. I have fed my arm into a wringer style washing machine (I was 5), I have slammed my hand in a car door (I was 6), I have gotten my arm caught in a revolving door (I was 16 and VERY high), I have grabbed unto an electric fence (I was 21 and ditto on the VERY high thing) and I have even temporarily lost a couple of finger prints to a meat slicer (I was 30 and just not paying attention...) but to this day I am still symmetrical for the most part. 2-2-10-2 & 10 as it were. I'm going to try to keep it that way. Unlike Oliver Wendall Douglas from "Green Acres", farm living is NOT the life for me. I'd probably end up having to teach the pig how to drive because what was left of my good leg would be too short to reach the pedals. Which is just as well because with the eye patch I'd probably just keep driving around in circles in the front yard anyway...
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