My aunt always used to say that my cousin and I learned to reverse a trailer when playing with model tractors on the carpet. After playing with them for many hours, you know which way the wheels go to send the trailer in the desired di rection. This is also applies when you are driving a pedal tractor around the garden. The learning soak s in.
Of course, many children do r ide in tractors. They do see how it works and many will be allowed to steer, or to dr ive along a f lat f ield with their mother or father sat next to them supervising. I ’m not saying if it is right or wrong, but it happens a lot. I f for whatever reason you need to look af ter your chi ld when you are farming, the safest place for them to be is nex t to you in the passenger seat, with a seat belt on. You can see them and modern tractors are very safe.
Are they safe enough for a thir teen year old to be baling though? The tagline for the video in question was ‘ this gi r l can’, and ignor ing the fact that
I think i t was
probably illegal, it was a really empower ing video for young gir ls. So, where do we go from here? I drove a tractor f rom a young age, but because it was thir ty odd years ago it was a small tractor. With a small trailer, or set of har rows. I helped load bales and put them in a barn. I har rowed f ields and rolled them. I took feed out for the sheep and did other low powered task s.
As I got older I was allowed to mow f ields and turn the hay and af ter that I was allowed to bale the hay. All this was done on low powered tractor s, but in all fairness, i f I ’d done something stupid, I could wel l have been injured or worse.
The accident record on UK farms is not good. We are the most dangerous industry by far. The law is there to protect people and in this case children. I f you look up the fatal farm accidents involving children they make for sober ing reading. The main thought I came away f rom reading them was, why was the child in that situation? Surely it could have been prevented?
In probably all cases the accidents could have been prevented i f the chi ld wasn’ t in the place where they were k illed at all. Simple as that. You can’t be run over if you are not in the farm yard and you can’t be injured by a piece of machinery if you are playing in the garden.
I t is really hard for many busy families. Childcare is quite expensive, and farming is an all consuming job. I t is of ten very dif f icult to f it around what most people call a normal life. I have changed my farming life to f it around the fact that my wife work s full time. We try and take joint responsibility for the care of our son and by and large we manage. I don’ t want him to be in a dangerous situation, but
growing up on a farm. I t is easier
I still want him to enjoy for me to do that
though, because our farm is relatively small and not that busy. We simply don’t have lots of machinery driving around.
The unavoidable truth is that farming is dif ferent f rom how i t used to be. The ki t is bigger. The tractor s are wider and faster. Li fe is more f rantic,
for al l of us.
I remember an eighteen year old lad work ing for a neighbour a few summer s ago. He was put on a large tractor, with a large trailer to haul bales. He managed to hit and break one or two gate posts over the summer, which was unfor tunate, but also not surpr ising. That was the f i r st tractor he’d dr iven. The tractor I star ted driving was probably a third of the power and half the size and the trailer was at last half as long.
We expect too much of our selves, our staf f and probably our children. Some thir teen year olds are more mature than many 21 year olds. That’s just how it is, but it doesn’t mean we need to give them the big jobs on our farms. We all need to slow down and think a little harder about the situations we put ourselves in.
I don’t care how important the job is, it is not worth a child’s life.
Rich, Risbury 109
Regenerative Farming
LIVE24-SEVEN.COM
BUSINESS ON T H E FA R M
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