Columbia Basin, Ephrata, WA | Patriot81 - 9/8/2024 05:49
I smell it some every year but we always have the blower running when we enter the silo at filling. Typically never smell it after a few weeks when it’s time to lower it a couple doors.
Seems every year I hear stories about stuff like this and I just wonder how that will affect the family and business dynamics down the road…it will a great deal and my heart breaks a little every time I read one of these stories!
I love silage harvest, but it can be deadly. My extended family was hit directly by it in the late 60’s. My grandpas first cousin was chopping corn one early morning after a frost on a self propelled open station Fox chopper alone.
Story goes that the crop wasn’t feeding well and he had been leaning over the rail to help the crop feed better with his hand with the machine running. My grandpas other cousins found him dead several hours later with his arm in the feed rolls…assumed he bled out from his arm being in the chopper.
He was engaged to be married and that one event completely changed the trajectory of their farm…much to the negative as you could assume.
Be careful fellas…things can jump up and snag you pretty quick!
I know/have known two guys that lost a leg at the hip to those old open station SP corn choppers. Both jumped over the railing to kick a whad of corn through and when it went their foot went in too, then it folded them in half as it chopped their leg and jammed as their torso got to the intake. Both barely survived the blood loss, and only because they were chopping into trucks with drivers that quickly sprang into action.
Today’s machines would just make a big red wet spot in the truck if you managed to get yourself sucked into the feedrolls.
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Local farm fatalities today
