The Perils of Farm Life

When you work and live on a farm, you’re bound to experience some hardships. Most of them seem manageable, but there are some that are so bad they land you in the doctor's office or emergency room. I already shared the story of getting kicked in the nose when I was 5, but that was not the last time I would end up in the emergency room.

Being on the farm gave us kids ample access to things that were dangerous - and some things that really shouldn’t have been dangerous but that we made dangerous in our quest to make things interesting.

When I was 9 or 10, Fred, Tracy and I all decided it would be fun to stick soybeans in our ears. However, I was the only one that really stuck them in there deep. Fred and Tracy kind of placed them on the edges of their ears, so when our parents called us for something they shook them out. I wasn’t able to get the beans out of my ears and we were afraid of being late - so I just ran with them in there hoping they would eventually fall out. Well they never did.

A couple of days later when my mom asked me a question I said “What?” one too many times and she got mad at me asking what my problem was. Fred and Tracy were kind of snickering of to the side so she snapped at them, too, wondering “What is so funny?” They proceeded to tell her that I had soybeans stuck in my ears. Mom looked into my ear and tried to get it out only to realize it wasn’t coming out and was concerned because it looked as though it was sprouting inside my ear. So off to the emergency room I went with Mom!

Once we got to the emergency room the doctor asked what ear had the soybean and I replied “Both” at the same time my mom was saying “The left ear.” At that moment, my mom looked at me, completely perplexed. When it was one ear it was bad enough, but to be stupid enough to get beans stuck in both ears...! The doctor tried a couple of different methods before finally settling on a suction device that was able to break the beans free and suck them out of my ears. Once they were out, it was clear to see that they had, indeed, sprouted and started to grow inside my ear!

I was not the only farm casualty. When Tracy was about 8, she was playing around with a milker and stuck it on her face. That may sound innocent enough, but the milkers had a pretty good suction on them - kind of like a vacuum. So next thing we knew, she had a quarter-sized mark on her face! The mark looked kind of like a bruise, and she had to go to school looking like that. We all still kind of laughed because she should have known better by this time. We had stuck the milkers to ourselves previously, but only for a few seconds. This time, she had left it on too long and had to pay the price.

A few years later when Tracy was 10 years old, she had another incident. After morning chores we usually had a coffee break, where we would eat some kind of sweet treat and drink milk or coffee. Because we were still in the barn, we didn’t really have seats, so most of the time we would stand around or find an old 5-gallon pail with a lid to sit on. Most of the old pails around the barn were from this strong soap mixture or from acid that was used to clean the milk tank and keep it sterile. Well, one of these pails had some excess acid sitting on top of the lid when Tracy sat down. We had sat on it before and never thought anything about it. However, this time the acid seeped into her pants and through her underwear. Within a few hours, it was apparent that the acid had done some damage. Tracy’s butthole was in a lot of pain, and she had to spread her cheeks for Mom, “Dad” and so many other people to see what was going on. Eventually, she went to a doctor, and they confirmed what we thought had happened. The acid had burned her butthole and was causing intense pain. So the doctor prescribed her a “donut” to sit on, which is basically a small inner tube. She was pretty embarrassed to take the donut to school and sit on it while in class, but it was better than being in pain. She was in fifth grade at this time, so it was not a good time to bring this kind of attention to herself.

When Fred was a kid, and even to this day, he became obsessed with plants and agricultural stuff. He has always had a green thumb and could make anything survive, whereas I would kill all plants. On the farm, he especially got into marigolds and black soybeans. When we would open the pods of soybeans there would be black ones intermingled with the normal white ones. Well, he did an experiment and planted several black ones, and sure enough, we soon had a ton of black soybeans. Even though he truly had a love of black soybeans, he also was insanely obsessed with marigolds and would save the tops of them in Mason jars so he could plant them the next year. I never got the obsession. To me, marigolds smell really bad! He would plant his marigolds around the front of the barn and would be in charge of maintaining them. One summer, when he was 11 or 12, he was especially proud of how his marigolds were doing when it was suddenly jeopardized! There was a thunderstorm rolling in, and our Australian Shepherd, Ace, was not a fan of storms. In fact, he was downright terrified of them. So he went to the place that seemed the safest in this situation - a corner in front of the barn, right on top of Fred’s marigolds. Fred saw this and turned furious! Tracy and I watched as he walked up to Ace and hit him HARD on his stomach. Of course, Ace was not pleased with this treatment and was already terrified of the storm, so he retaliated the only way he knew and bit Fred on his forearm. The teeth went in deep and Fred was bleeding pretty badly. So once again, Mom was off to the emergency room with another child. I can’t remember exactly, but Fred may have received a couple of stitches for two of the cuts that were deeper, but he was mostly just bandaged up and told to keep an eye on it. From that day forward, we all knew to keep our distance from Ace when he was frightened.

A few years later, Fred would be rushed to the hospital again, this time for something that seemed much more severe than a dog bite. By ages 14 and 15, we kids were basically running the farm, but there were still a few things that were best left to the adults because of their dangerous effects. Well, one day Fred went out and wanted to get a jump start on the chores, much like 5-year-old me had the day I was kicked in the face. One of the longest and most tedious jobs was cleaning and sanitizing the milk tank. It had to be kept up to standards that would allow our milk to be picked up and later sold in stores - so that whole soap and acid mix that Tracy had sat on was a very important part of running a dairy farm. Fred started the process of cleaning the tank. It started with a cycle of the heavy-duty sanitizing cleaner, and then the acid would get added and run through its own cycle. Well, apparently he didn’t wait long enough between the cycles or didn’t rinse thoroughly enough before adding the acid. The effects were bad. He inhaled the mixture and immediately started coughing and having difficulty breathing. So off to the emergency room again. It turned out that when he inhaled the chemicals his lung had collapsed! This resulted in him being put on inhalers and getting medical treatments to help him heal from getting these chemicals deep into his system. That was one of the scariest things I ever saw on the farm, and I was pretty worried for Fred.

Each of these short stories shines a little light on farm life and how difficult it really can be. Although not all of these directly relate to the work we did on the farm, they all tie into the dangers of working at such a young age and being around machinery and chemicals.