Air July 24, 2002

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. Just a reminder that this is county fair week. If you have an ag production emergency I can be reached at the fairgrounds. If you have a lawn and garden question, call me at the office next week.

These are some tough times in the ag community. The weather and the prices are not working in our favor. And now another serious farm accident in Geary County has seriously injured one of our farmers. Farm safety is something that I try to sneak into a lot of my talks, programs and writings. I say sneak, because the minute anyone realizes it’s a safety message, the mind seems to go into a tune out mode. Most folks just say, yada yada yada, I know all that stuff you don’t have to remind me. But knowing and doing are two different things. Why do you think big companies and government entities have regular, mandatory safety meetings? Because they know that everyone tends to tune safety out, switch into automatic pilot and then accidents happen. Accidents happen all the time to all of us. And some times we get lucky and know it, and sometimes we have close calls and don’t even know it, and sometimes we get hit square between the eyes. Times of stress and hot dry weather tend to numb us all, that is until a serious accident causes us to stop and think. But then how soon until we go back to business as usual. Let’s face it, safety can not afford to take a holiday. We have to be thinking each and every day about whether or not we are doing everything we do in the safest way possible. Knowledge, without action, is worthless. Only when safety information is applied can accidents be prevented. I’m not going to sit here behind the safety of this microphone and tell you that I’m perfect. I do my share of stupid things too. Sometimes I’m lucky and sometimes I’m not. After running my hand through a power saw many years ago, I’m lucky to have all my fingers on my left hand. And I can rattle off every single safety rule I violated that day when the accident occurred. In the last 12 months we have had too many accidents and lost too many friends. It’s time we all got serious about safety, again!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2002.

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