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College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences

CFAES
January 14, 2025 - 8:58am -- klenovich.4@osu.edu

I loved to watch the tv show Dirty Jobs, with Mike Rowe.  Mike has a great personality, and he always seemed sincere in wanting to learn the tasks associated with jobs the majority of the population would prefer not to do. Many of those tasks he highlighted had related safety concerns.  I am not sure if he coined the phrase but when a safety issue would be glossed over, he would state “safety third”.  We know that we always want safety for ourselves, our family, and our employees to be our first priority.  It almost always starts as a point of focus, but over time we get caught up in the individual tasks and safety slowly creeps down the ranking.

Farming may not be the most dangerous job in the world, but it is pretty high on the list.  Accidents happen every day.  Some of these are unavoidable while others could have been preventable.  We need have safety on our mind every day to help prevent those accidents that are preventable and have a plan to deal with possible incidents that are truly unavoidable on our part.  Winter weather brings its own safety issues but also provides us with opportunities to address those that can be avoided.

Sometimes minor repairs are the biggest step towards safety

This is the time of the year that everyone is running their equipment through the shop to make repairs in preparation for planting and forage harvest season.  Equipment that works properly is also safer, but have you avoided making repairs that don’t directly affect the operation of the machine?  Are all the shields present and in good repair?  If it has lights, are all of them functioning?  Are the steps on the tractor bent?  These may seem like minor cosmetic repairs, but addressing those less obvious problems can prevent future accidents.

I have covered stored grain management in several of my articles since late summer.  If you had read those, I would hope you are making a trip up the ladder on your grain bins to monitor the stored crop every couple of weeks.  I know of producers who have fallen off a bin ladder in good weather, so what is the likelihood of slipping on a rung in the current weather?  Do you have a cage around the ladder or use another form of fall protection?  I love to wear a hoodie when working outside this time of year.  What are the chances that the strings on the hood get caught in an auger or PTO?  As the temperature warms a little, we have a danger of ice sliding off a metal roof.  Do you have ice dams installed?

All of these situations I have mentioned are little technical details.  If we give it thought, it is always a little detail that leads to a serious accident.    “Safety third” is an amusing statement to throw out when you see someone make a harmless mistake.  It is easy for safety to slip down the list of our daily priorities and it takes a consistent, conscious, effort to keep it at the top. 

Pesticide and Commodity Marketing School reminders

There will be two private pesticide and fertilizer applicator certification opportunities in January.  These first two are in Holmes County. The January 21st program will be held at Mt. Hope Livestock Auction and January 30th will be at the Harvest Ridge Event Center in Millersburg.  You will need to call the Holmes County Extension Office (330-674-3015) to register for both of those opportunities.  The last January program will be January 29th when we will host our Commodity Marketing School.  In addition to talks on completing your key financial documents and crop insurance options for 2025, we will host Dr. Ken Burdine from the University of Kentucky who will talk about beef cattle marketing and Dr. Carl Zulauf who will discuss post-harvest grain marketing strategies.  On February 4th, we will be hosting our annual Agronomy Day at Secrest Welcome Center.  This program will run from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM and there will be CCA credits available.  If you want to know more about our upcoming programs (including Salmonella in Dairy Heifers, NE Ohio Dairy Conference, Small Farm Conference, and the Farm Transition Workshop) you can check out the events calendar on our webpage at http://wayne.osu.edu.   As always, I hope that you have a safe and prosperous week.  If you have any questions or would like to register for one of our programs, please contact me at 330-264-8722 or yost.77@osu.edu

John Yost is an extension educator IV, Agriculture and Natural Resources, at OSU Extension-Wayne County.
This article was previously published in The Daily Record.