Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Accidents shouldn’t happen, but they do
A near miss with a tractor while in a rush to get out leaves Wiltshire dairy farmer Ro Collingborn shaken
IT was Saturday morning and I’d got up early with the intention of being completely ready to drive to the smart James Martin restaurant in the New Forest for my daughter’s 40th birthday (yes, I am old enough). Start time was to be 10am. I was going to get ready in a leisurely fashion for once.
At this time of year, the cows nearing calving are in the field outside the kitchen window. This is when they look at their absolute best with their udders filled, looking really good. I know them all by name and when asked I can recite their mothers and grandmothers from memory. It comes very hard when a cow has to leave the farm.
An hour before we were due to leave, my husband looked out of the window and saw a cow that he thought might be in trouble calving and would need assistance .
“I’ll just pop out and get her in to check her,” he said, as another cow had calved overnight as well. I watched a pantomime taking place as he struggled to get cow and calf out of the field. He then disappeared from view at the corner of the house. Ten minutes later, I got a very anxious phone call,
“Ro, I need help.”
Obedient as ever, I raced outside. There were two cows approaching the garden, with a black calf some way ahead in a wheelbarrow. Instead of following her calf, cow number 156, Brinkworth Denmark, kept breaking away, rushing back to the field where she’d given birth. Her favoured route was through my flower garden, which I was very proud of. Every time we got her anywhere near her calf, which was lying quietly in the big wheelbarrow, she would break back and arms in her face wouldn’t stop her, or even the yard broom waved despairingly as she trampled the flowers yet again. The other cow had disappeared some time ago.
“We’ll have to put her back in the field and bring all the dry cows in,” said my husband, with a sensible suggestion at last, though time was getting on. After some persuasion, 156 Brinkworth Denmark accepted this approach and we were able to separate her in the yard and reunite her with her remarkably patient calf. The other cow had also reappeared and calved by itself without any problem.
All that was left, according to my husband’s instructions, was for me to shut the yard gate behind them. As I got hold of the gate, I realised it was wedged against the tractor tyre. The tractor suddenly started to move towards me, dragging the gate with it and knocking me into its path. From the ground, I screamed as loudly as I could. The tractor stopped just in time, and my husband peered down from the tractor, white faced.
“I didn’t see you there.”
“You told me to shut the gate,” I replied very shakily. With his comforting hug and heartfelt apology, I burst into tears. I think I was suffering from delayed shock.
We consider ourselves to be well
aware of health and safety. The tractor was in good order, the gate properly hung; it was rather the pressure of the morning’s race against time. What had just happened could easily happen on any family farm when two people are in a hurry. A farm is a constantly changing landscape of jobs and problems. Unfortunately, farm accidents appear to be making the headlines more often these days, sometimes with fatal results.
The car journey to the New Forest was initially quite tense, with me informing Joe that we should sell the herd and retire, but by the time we got there, only half an hour late, the bottle of champagne on the table and the enthusiastic welcome from the grandchildren soothed matters considerably, and we had a great time.
I have been part of other incidents involving gates – one when an 18-hand horse charged the gate, which fell on me and the horse luckily cleared both of us. The other was when I had stupidly wound the
horse’s lead rope round the gate while I was shutting it, and she galloped off still attached to the gate. That was terrifying and taught me never to attach a horse to a gate again.
Many other industries are increasingly under time pressure, not just farming, but not all are dealing with heavy machinery, and there’s no retirement age for self-employed farmers. It’s expensive to employ labour now, even if you can find any, and it’s tempting for farmers to work themselves to the bone to save money. Serious and fatal accidents most often occur when there is pressure to complete a job; a farmer working alone, getting frustrated by a long job, may be tempted to clear a blockage in a baler without shutting down, with dreadful consequences.
Pressure on our industry is caused by labour shortages and has been greatly exacerbated by Brexit. Without access to foreign labour, all areas are suffering. Priti Patel’s insistence on no immigrant labour is extremely irresponsible and blinkered. Farmers are facing massive input inflation, particularly for foodstuffs and fertiliser. The shortage of labour is having a knock-on impact on food supplies. Shortages of labour on the farm, and in transport, mean crops rotting in the field, and animals over fattening, leading to gaps in supply.
The Government’s reply that “employers should use the UK domestic work force instead of relying on labour from abroad” is shortsighted when advertised vacancies are unfulfilled. Is it the Government’s ill-considered plan to decimate our home industry and fill in the gaps with produce from Australia and New Zealand, ignoring animal welfare and exporting our carbon footprint?