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CAUTION - this episode contains some material that listeners may find graphic or disturbing and may not be suitable for young children. Emily's dad, Dale Krekelberg, joins the OG3 to discuss the accident that resulted in the loss of his right leg and how that moment changed his life.
Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
[background music].
Emily: Welcome everybody to The Moos Room, OG three here with you as usual. We have a very special guest today that I am very excited about. We are joined today by my dad, Dale Krekelberg is with us. Hi, dad.
Dale: Hello.
Emily: [laughs] We have my dad on today. This episode is very special, of course another one that's important to me but this week is National Farm Safety and Health Week. Of course, we have to do a farm safety episode and I'm really excited that we're going to be joined by my dad to learn a little bit more about his story about the role that farm safety and farm accidents have played in his life and in our lives as a family when I was growing up on my family's dairy farm. Before we do that, and I did not give you a forewarning on this, dad, but it is tradition that every guest we have on the show needs to answer a couple questions for us. Joe and Brad will tell you that there is a right answer and that is a lie. I want you to answer these questions with your heart.
Joe: Dale, we need to know what your favorite beef breed is.
Dale: Hereford.
Brad: Yes. I like [unintelligible 00:01:35]-- [crosstalk]
Emily: I had a hunch he was going to say that. I'm like, "I think he's going to say Herford and Brad will be happy."
Joe: It's been a while since we've run down the totals. We have Angus with eight, creeping up on Angus's Hereford with seven, black baldy with four, belted Galloway with two, Scottish Highlander with two, and then all with one, stabilizer, Gelvy, Brahman, Chianina, Charolais, Simmental, Nelori, Jersey, Normandy, and Shorthorn.
Dale: Wow, they're quite a lot.
Emily: Hereford are really coming up there. I didn't realize now they're only one behind. Of course, I always have to shout out black baldies being in the third position. I just think that's great. [laughs]
Joe: As you might have guessed, we need to know your favorite dairy breed.
Dale: Holstein.
Joe: It's very unfortunate.
Brad: Jersey is the right answer, but we'll let it slide because you said Hereford.
Dale: That's what I had for 40 years, so I've just attached to it.
Joe: Totals on the dairy side. We got Holsteins at 14, Jersey's at 9, brown Swiss at 5, Montbelliard at 3, Dutch belted at 2, and Normandy at 2.
Emily: I correctly predicted your answers, dad. I think we can prove once and for all. I am your daughter [laughs]
Dale: My favorite child.
Emily: Yes. For the listeners who don't know, I have four older siblings so I am the youngest, most spoiled, and the favorite and it will always be that way. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, we have my dad here with us today for our National Farm Safety and Health Week episode. I think before we really dive into all of that stuff, dad, give us the really brief history of how long you were farming, you had an additional job while you were farming, and what you are doing right now with your life.
Dale: I started milking cows in 1978 and I only had like 20 some cows until about 1992. Then I got a full-time job being occupational therapist and I continued to milk 20 to 25 Holstein cows, had help from the kids on and off, but I mostly did it myself. I'd get up a quarter to four in the morning and milk, go to work, come home at 3:30 and do all the barn chores at that time and just did it that way. Now I think back, I did that for 24 years. I had the job and cows, I must have a lot more energy back then because I think now to get out of bed takes enough for it.
Anyhow, at the time, I sold the cows three years ago, I retired from therapy two years prior to that when I turned 62. I just milked cows for several years and that just got to be, it wasn't as much fun as it used to be milking. I still miss the cows. I go in the barn and I still get that little lump in my throat because I really loved cows. It was just in me. I still get sad when I see the barn empty because it's full of life then, and it was just very warm place to be in the wintertime and cool in summer. That's in a nutshell.
Emily: Thank you so much, dad. I think loving cows just runs in our blood. I mean we all love cows in my family and now you all know where it comes from. Comes from my dad. I have mentioned this on the podcast before and so if you are a long-time listener, you know some about my family's history with farm safety, with farm accidents, et cetera. I think we are just going to jump right into it. I've mentioned before, and maybe this is your first time listening, but my dad is an amputee. He lost most of his right leg in an accident when he was 19, I believe, right, dad? Yes. Many years ago.
Dale: 50 years now.
Emily: Dad, I just think that your story is really powerful and I would love for you because you're always really willing to share about that day and the details of the accident. I would love for you to do that again. I am going to throw a warning out there. It is a little bit graphic, my dad spares no detail, but I think that that's really, really important for us to hear. If you do have maybe your kids that listen with you or something, just a heads up that we do get into the gory details on this. Dad, I'll maybe just let you take it away, talk for a few minutes about what happened that day, what went wrong, what you maybe could have changed or would've changed. We'll just let you have a floor here for a while.
Dale: It happened December 29th, 1972 at about 9:30 AM. I worked for a place called Minnesota Valley Breeders by New Craig which was a big stud company. After we had morning break, I was to go out and feed the young stock and then that was behind the dairy barn and there were three harvesters in a row that our bottom feeds. There was an auger that laid in the floor and they just had steel plate, so they would slide different places so they can load from the silos. That morning was a snowstorm. It was a snowstorm so when I went out to feed the animals, when I walked into the building, it wasn't airtight.
There was about inches snow covering the whole floor of the feed room. Then I say there was three heifers in one row and two in another, and they all faced each other, so I started up the outside auger to feed the heifers and I started the inside auger that brought the feed from the silos out to the outside auger. I had the two front silos that were closest to the bunk going. I went to the very backside to turn that one on, and when I wanted to open up the door, which you just have to-- it's like a sliding door that you pull up, it flips up like this, and it was, froze down for some reason and I couldn't quite get it to open up and the auger was running, but because there was snow that morning, there's about an inch of snow when the auger was running.
The snow did not fall into the opening and all there was an opening. There was no hoppers, there was no guards over, it was just the auger running. I calculated that it had stepped over the auger with my right leg to get the leverage so I could pry open that frozen door. When I stepped over, I don't know if the snow fell in, but I could just feel the augers just tick my heel, just barely felt. I thought to myself, "I better move my foot because the next auger's going to come along and pull me in." Before I could react, the next auger came and it just pulled my foot off the lip of the trough, and I was then in the auger and I thought, "Well, this isn't a good thing." It didn't hurt.
Then at that point my foot was caught and then, so as the auger was running, I went flipped and I saw, the auger is probably-- there was three harvesters, so it was probably a 60 foot auger at least. Once my foot got caught, I started going down the trough. As I was going, the steel plates that were just sitting ther,e I was pushing them aside. I got a scar on my hip from when I was pushing them away, and I knew I was in trouble because I thought I'm not going to get out because I tried to grab onto the harvester with my hands to try to pull myself out.
My hands were just putty. I couldn't do anything. My life really flashed before me because I knew right away this is not good. It wasn't hurting yet, but I was in the auger and I was going down and I just can't describe how I was in. I was very fearful. I was just like, my life was literally flashing before me because I just knew this wasn't good. Then when the auger got up to my knee approximately, then my leg was too big to fit between the augers. Then I can remember when one of the augers came and it just literally tore the skin off my leg right down to my bone. I remember that happened. It was just so painful. Then I was still in the auger, still going down and I was getting to the end of the 60-foot auger where there was a universal joint and then there was another probably 6-foot auger with big flippers that flipped the feed to the outside bunk, and I thought to myself- well, I just didn't know it wasn't happening. I said, "I'm going to go up that little auger, those flippers are going to just chew me up," but I got down to the end of the floor auger, where the universal joint was in, and for some reason, the auger just came out of its trough and it was running in midair. I remember I thought, "This cannot happen."
I pulled my leg out and the auger just dropped back into that trough and I still couldn't believe what I'd seen. I saw it, like an idiot I put my hand over the auger again to look down into it to see how that wasn't broke because it was still running. I thought, "Well, I'm out." I was in a lot of pain, bleeding profusely. I went to the doorway because I tried to stand up and I knew I couldn't. I knew right away that my leg was gone. It just took seconds, took a split second and I knew I couldn't feel my leg, I couldn't move my leg, I couldn't stand on my leg.
I went to the doorway and I pushed it open against the snow. There was about probably 10 inches foot of snow out there, and I knew that they were going to come back to get feed for the bulls, which were across the yard from the [unintelligible 00:11:23] dairy barn, so I thought, "I'll just have to wait until somebody comes to get it." I was waiting there for quite some time. I was shivering off the ground because I just didn't know what else to do. I knew I just couldn't drag myself to the snow, to the dairy barn. I wouldn't make it, I didn't think.
Finally, somebody came along pushing snow and he found-- He thought I was just sitting in the doorway waving because I was killing time. Finally, I said, "I need help." I remember when they called the ambulance and the breeders had three different farms at that time, and they forgot to tell the ambulance which farm to go to. We were waiting because the other workers had found me, put a blanket over me and I was just shaking off the ground. I was just shivering. They kept saying, "Don't go to sleep, don't go to sleep, stay awake." I said, "I'll stay awake and I'll stay awake."
Finally, the ambulance came to the flash place. They put me on it, took me to New Prague Hospital, and back in 1972, I was just a sidebar. There was a song by Bloodrock called Dead On Arrival. It's a song about the sheets being read and moist next to me. That was a song that was in my head when they cut off my clothes and it was a mess because I know the nurse was there and all she said was-- She just gasped, "Oh, my God." Because I knew I was bad, then I asked the doctor if I could go to sleep and then they put me under and I woke up about two days later at Methodist Hospital. My life had changed at that point because it just took a second for it to happen.
I wasn't in a hurry. I was just simply doing my job. I think back, as soon as I was injured then there was some guards put in there, some hoppers, things that should have been there back in '72. It probably, as they say, wasn't that much of an issue, but it was quite painful. I was in the hospital for several months, had a bad infection because I had feed in there. They did try to reattach my leg for about a week, but it just kept dying. It just stunk. It was the most awful smell you could ever think of. Finally, they said, "Dale, we got to cut your leg off", and I said, "Doctor, I'm surprised I've got it." I was only 19, but I just said I'm a statistic. They cut it off and I went back to the intensive care and I was a pretty good patient.
I woke up after the surgery, that was probably my fourth one in five, six days. They took me every day to try and get that leg to stay because only 19. I got back from when they did the actual amputation and there's two or three nurses by my bed because I was pretty sick yet. I woke up and I pulled up my sheet and I looked down and I said, "Well, it's short but at least it's good."
Those nurses just sat there, they were going to lose their mind. They were crying. I said, "Well, geez, I just never-- It's how it is." I didn't like it, and it's a struggle. Did the best I could, but it's always been a struggle. It takes me about 50% more energy to walk than does anybody else. That's a brief synopsis of what happened.
Joe: Dale, thank you for sharing all of this. It's amazing that you're so open about it and I really appreciate that. You seem like you've had a very good attitude about this whole situation, but it can't have been easy. Can you walk us through how you worked up the courage to get back into dairing and talk through that struggle a little bit?
Dale: Rights, first got hurt, because I was really depressed for several months. I remember my mom came into me because I was just kinda laying around there and she said, "I wish it would have happened to me instead of you.", and I knew if I was that depressed, and I talked to her a little bit about [unintelligible 00:15:05] after something happens, you could be stoic but I would felt much better when I talked to people about it just a little bit how I was feeling because that helped me a lot. For about five months I was very depressed. How it's affected me, I've always been able to do what I wanted to, only I'm just a lot slower. I think people thought that I shouldn't milk cows.
When I first got done, that's why I went to school. I went to St. Thomas and that's why I got to be a therapist. Because I said, "You can't be a farmer," but after about five years, I said, "I can do this. It's just going to be slow." Then I went and bought my dad's place and I started milking cows in 1978 and milked them until three years ago. It's hard. It's every day you wake up and you get out of bed, I get on my crutches and I crutch to my leg and you put it on, and wearing a prosthesis, it's always like wearing an uncomfortable shoe. You can put it on and you can walk with it and you go from point A to point B, but at the end of the day, I've had it on for sometimes 16 hours, it feels so good to take it off.
There's no other way of explaining. It just feels very good. Once you lose a limb or you get hurt in a farm accident, it's going to be there forever. Isn't something like, "Wow, this is going to heal up in two months or three months." Sometimes it does, but when you lose a limb, it's permanent. It's never going to get better. You're going to adapt to it. That's the best use, adapt and do the best you can and move forward, but it's every day you're going to wake up and it's never going to ever go away. That's why you just have to buck up, I guess, and do it.
Sometimes it's hard. There were some days I was just like, "Oh I just didn't want to put on my leg, but I had to," but once you get it on, you go and stuff, but it's safe. It just happened that morning. They say 9:30 in the morning. I had two legs that morning. Then basically, it probably took, I suppose it was another several minutes, but it just took a second for my foot to feel that auger. I just knew once that second one came, that it was not a good thing. That's how quick it happens. I say I wasn't in a hurry, I was just doing my job and it happens. I think there could have been more safety things in place that never would've happened, but I said it happened in 1972, so you just go on and there you go. I think I maybe would talk too much or--
Emily: I am somebody that hears the story a lot, but Joe and Brad maybe notice I still can't help but get a little emotional, a little choked up when I hear the story. Because it's hard, it's sad. No matter who you are, whether you are my dad or somebody I've never met, my heart goes out to you. Your life changes forever. You know, dad, I think that it's really important that you share this because Joe and Bradley and I, we can talk until we're blue in the face about being safe and being cautious when you're farming, but when you hear what somebody has actually experienced, I think that that really makes all the difference.
Dale: It does and it happens so quick. Because I think I'm paranoid about a lot of things now. Because things are like PTO shafts and just things like that that are spinning because that auger was going slow. It wasn't going fast and still, I was 19, I should have pretty fast reflexes, but I was no match for that. You take something that's going faster than that, it's quick. You don't even have time to think about it. It's gone and it's too late. That's always got to be really thinking about am I safe? Is this a good spot, because that one split second that I think this will be okay and it's not, you can't go back and change it. It's already done. You had to really be proactive about that. I said and I wasn't in any hurry but it still happened to me and there's so many things out there that are a lot faster moving than a slow-moving feed auger. It's still, I couldn't, and I was no match for the speed of that. No match whatsoever.
Emily: I think you bring up a good point, dad, of yes, the speed, and also I was just teaching a farm safety training the other day to new farmers, people with no experience with farm equipment. I just remember emphasizing, I'm like, the number one thing you need to understand is farm equipment is designed for one thing, and that is power. You may be quick, you may be strong. Equipment is always going to be quicker and it is always going to be stronger because that is what it is designed to do, to provide high power at low torque. That's basically what tractors do and how they power equipment. I appreciate you mentioning that and just the importance of guards and different things. I do want to get to the next chapter of our family story in this because never over, but first I'm just curious, Joe and Bradley, if you have any thoughts or questions or things that are really on your mind before we move on?
Brad: What strikes me is that you have perseverance and you accepted what happened and have moved on with life. Yes, it was more difficult, but I just appreciate your outlook, your positivity on life, and being able to dairy and all of that without the leg there. I think the positive attitude is what really hit me. I appreciate that.
Dale: Well, thank you. Yes, I went to St. Thomas. There's a gentleman there who lost his leg, too, and he just had a whole different attitude. They said I should meet him because we both were amputees and I don't know what-- That's all we were because we were two different people. He was just- sat around and they didn't do anything. It's hard though, but you have to. If you don't, you're just going to not do well. It was difficult for me to walk. I don't remember what it's like to run. I remember running, but I don't know what that feels like. I remember riding a bike, but I can't ride a bike because I'm above the knee amputee, so I have a lot more difficulty doing simple things.
If you have your knee left, it helps a lot. Because sometimes people, "Well, can you run?" I go, "No. I see people running." I said, "Well, if you have your knee left, that's a whole another ballgame." When you're short, it's much more difficult. That's why, back to the farming and being injured, it happens so quick and it can be so permanent and really you can do things, but it's a lot harder. You really want to think about that. If you don't have to get yourself injured, don't. Be safe because in the long run, it's going to be much, much more fun than if you do.
Emily: A story I tell people a lot just briefly is growing up, my dad would take us to the pool a lot. The Chaska Community Center, they had a good pool with a water slide, all that. I just remember people always staring at us. I didn't really get why. My dad is actually a very good swimmer because he'd come with us and he'd have one leg. To me, I'm like, "Well, yes, it's just my dad. That's just the way he is." To really realize that that was different and it was limiting. I've told people that. I'm like, "My dad couldn't run". There were some things that my dad couldn't physically do. Certain things, games we couldn't play, whatever.
There was still plenty of fun and he was a great dad and I had a wonderful childhood on the farm, but it's just those little things that you don't realize that you miss them, but then when you really sit and think about it, it's like, yes, this has lifelong impact, and not just on the person who was injured, it has impacted all of us. My mom, my siblings, everybody.
Dale: Like Emily said, it doesn't just affect me. It affects people around me. I remember, she's brought about going to the swimming pool in Chaska. I would hop up these steps to go down the slide. It was quite a few hops. I was standing there and one of the [unintelligible 00:24:01]. This little boy was behind me. He's going, "Dad, dad, look at that. He's staying on one leg." He was trying to stand on one leg without dipping over and he says, "Dad, how can he stand along on one leg?" I turned around, I said, "I practice a lot." I always try to put people at ease about when I don't wear on my leg because they're like, "Oh", it's like, "Oh, that's how it is." You got to do the best you can, but it's more difficult.
Definitely has some drawbacks. Because I'd love to run someday, but maybe when I die, they say you're united with your body parts. I'll be disappointed because my leg will be 19 and I might be 100 years old, so it won't even fit. We'll have to see what happens. That's just a thought.
Emily: I think they can get you an upgraded model, maybe. [chuckles]
Dale: That's all.
Emily: I wish I could say that that's it, our story stops there, but there's always more. You know the Krekelberg family, there's always more with us. Again, I've talked about it a little bit on this podcast. I just want to brush on it again because I want to do our story justice. I want to do my dad's story justice, our family story, my individual story, our farm story, all of that. There is another piece to this, another missing piece, [chuckles] and that would be my brother. We are coming up on the five-year anniversary of my brother, Jake. He's the middle sibling. He works at a cheese plant. He was in what I call an eerily similar accident to my dad.
Again, he was working at the cheese plant and he was fixing a piece of equipment that moved cheese via an auger, and thinking that the equipment was shut off so he could deal with a maintenance issue. There was some cheese that was clogging it up, had to be cleaned out. He got the cheese cleared out and the auger started to move and took his arm in. Of course, this was overhead, so he had been standing on a ladder. Was pulled off of the ladder and as I understand it, was just hanging on by what part of his arm was tangled up in the auger.
It's a strange detail, but I still remember that they had to bring on a forklift with a pallet. That's how the EMTs cut his arm out is up there. That's another dangerous situation, but there was no other way. Yes, I remember that day well. I remember the phone call from my mother and all she said was, "He lost the arm." I had known that he had been in an accident. We didn't know how bad it was. He was airlifted to HCMC. Unlike with my dad, there was no attempt to save his arm. There was nothing to save as I understand it. Here we were, my whole family just flocked to the hospital, to my brother's bedside. It was just surreal.
I feel like you can hear it in my voice now because my mind is just wandering with it thinking about how that felt. I know for you, dad, it was especially hard to see one of your children go through the same hell you had been through. You knew what that felt like.
Dale: Very devastated.
Emily: Yes. With my dad's, there was just, it was a different time. There was a general lack of safety equipment, safety knowledge, all of that. In my brother's case, it was truly an accident, a freak thing that happened. I like to highlight that, too, because we just, we need to be cognizant of all of these things. If there is no safety measures in place, that's bad. Even if there are safety measures in place, that doesn't mean that we can be complacent. Accidents still happen. I tell that to people all the time. I get it if you've done it a million times. It only takes one time. It doesn't take anything more than that. It just takes once to really change your life forever.
I've seen that in my family now twice over, and it's just offered me a lot of perspective. I've said it before, it is the reason I do what I do every day, why I'm so passionate about farm safety, because I don't want my family's pain to be anybody else's pain because it sucks. There's really no other way that I can say it. It's difficult. I am so, so grateful that my dad and my brother are both still here still with us. They were very fortunate. Some people are much less fortunate when they're in these accidents. I will put my soapbox away here. [chuckles] Dad, any other thoughts, or Joe and Brad, any questions or anything from you guys?
Joe: I think my big question is for you, Emily, growing up on a farm where someone had had an accident, how do you remember those talks going with your dad or anybody else on the farm? When you're talking about safety, how was that approached? How did you guys talk about farm safety when you were growing up?
Emily: Yes, it was, I always knew why and how my dad had lost his leg. That was something that my parents were always very open about, being very clear that, "This is what happened to dad. This is why he does not have a leg." I think they did a really good job of just creating that awareness right away. For us as kids, and of course, we grew up on a farm. There were five of us, we did dumb stuff. We did very dangerous stuff. [laughs] We're lucky that we're alive but we definitely did have that added awareness. PTOs were always really pointed out to us, and those were I think, pretty strict of kids, you stay away from these, these entanglement risks, stay away from them."
That was really emphasized. At the time, when I'm six, seven years old, you get like, "Okay, yes, dangerous, got it." Parents are telling me to stay away from. It has been interesting just as I have grown professionally now in this field and study it and work with it intimately every day. Realizing how dangerous it really is. It's like when your parents tell you, "This could kill you", they mean it, and it comes from, in my family's case a place of experience of, "I don't want my child to go through what I did, and unfortunately that happened with my brother", and again, that's how accidents work, right? They're accidents. You can't control who's going to get into them and when it's going to happen.
Yes, it definitely, I feel like we did have a heightened sense of safety on our farm. Again, we were kids, we were all young and dumb ones. It wasn't perfect. I remember playing in gravity boxes full of corn and all the other dangerous things. I am grateful now just for those experiences and for especially my dad's openness, he would always answer our questions about his leg. We'd have friends over, he would pull up his pant leg, show them the prosthetic. He's always been really open about it, which I think in my mind, I feel like it helps with his healing, but also helps with our healing and understanding. Especially when you're working with kids and now I do a lot of youth farm safety training and I have my dad come quite a bit to speak to the kids and being able to see with your own two eyes, like this is the reality of it. These are the potential impacts. There's just no replacement for that in my mind.
Joe: I am become very, very aware having now a 13-month-old at home, that there is a lot of copycat going on at my house. Anything that I do, he's trying to do as well. The openness with which your dad is able to share a story today, I'm really thankful that you're willing to share, Dale, because I think it is part of this whole process that we talk about in sharing stories and being open and setting an example. I wish you hadn't had to gone through that to get that perspective of farm safety and slowing down and doing things differently and imparting that on your kids but it sounds like you've clearly set a great example for Emily as she's moved into the field. Can you tell me your mindset as you introduced kids to things that you knew were dangerous? That's just the way farming is. There's things that are dangerous and there's not a whole lot you can do about it.
Dale: They didn't know but I had a lot of anxiety when there's like power takeoffs were going like filling silo or chopping corn or something. I always, in the back of my mind, I always be thinking, just [unintelligible 00:34:05] get hurt. Just take your time and don't be in a hurry, because I don't care how long it takes to do it. Because I know how fast it could happen, and even if you're careful, you can still slip or do something and it's too late. Yes, I didn't express a lot but I was always glad when winter came, when all the equipment went into the shed and we were done, just milked the cows because the barn cleaner's pretty safe, [laughs] the pipeline milking, there was nothing that was really alter that was going to be too dangerous.
My worst was like feeling subtle because that was just a lot of stuff moving and going and just one thing, power takeoff thing after another. I was always glad when that was done. I know my son, Jake, who lost his arm, I know my-- Got the phone call from the cheese plant one morning. I was devastated but Jake has really adjusted well to it. I know one time made the comment, he says, "Well you did that, so I guess I will too." Sometimes we'll be on the farm and he has, he works out and he has steers, but we'll be doing things together and he said one day I said, "Well, dad, between me having two legs and you having two arms, we can do a lot together." It's how you look at, he'd be my [unintelligible 00:35:18] because there's some things he can't do.
One time we even talked about it, I said, "Jake, what do you think? You think it's worse having an arm or a leg missing?" He said, "Well dad, I think I'd rather have my arm missing because you can't run and you can't go up these hills and you can't do a lot of things and I know there's things I can't do, but at least I can get up and go and you can't." I said, "Well, in my perspective, I have both my hands because I can do much." It's just interesting. I think if something happens, how you adapt to it, you hope you don't ever have to, because it's not a good thing to do, but how you just-- This is how it is and I'm going do the best I can. One day Jay said, "Yes, well, between the two of us we're complete." I said, "All right, I guess if you're going to look at it some way, that's the way to look at it."
Emily: I know, I always joke, I'm like, oh yes, two farmers, six limbs, the math checks out there. Just a little anecdote, I remember shortly after my brother's accident, it had been less than a year, and I went out to the farm one day and him and my dad had been working on something and my brother was still getting used to his prosthetic arm. I walk out and there's Jake standing there wearing the arm, futzing around with it and my dad's standing there with him holding a screwdriver [laughs]. He's like, "All right, well I think if we do this, that will fix it, then you can bend your elbow." Then struck me as funny that I'm like, for anybody else, like this is just normal for us. Oh yes, that they just help each other fix their prosthetics.
That's our new normal. It's funny, we are a family, we cope with humor, we do like to make jokes and laugh about it but I would give anything to not have that story to tell. I think with that, we're going to wrap it there. We have really talked about a lot. I know this was a lot of story time, a lot of heavy stuff but I am so grateful to my dad for being on, for sharing his story. Grateful to all of you listening for letting you share our story. I tell people, my family allows you all into our darkest days for a reason. I hope that you really get something from this message and that it helps you think again about the way you farm and the way you practice safety on your farm. With that, I am going to say, if you have questions or comments, I am not going to accept scathing rebuttals on this episode. You can always email us at themoosroom@umn.edu.
Joe: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M @umn.edu.
Emily: You can find us on Twitter at UMN Farm Safety and at UMN Moosroom. Again, this week is National Farm Safety and Health Week. You can learn more about that from UMASH, the Upper Midwest Ag Safety and Health Center. You can also learn more by visiting the National Education Center for Agricultural Safety website. They are the ones that put on National Farm Safety and Health Week. We hope that you stay safe this harvest season and stay safe all year round. Farm safety is not limited to just one week in the year. It is every single week, 24/7/365. Thank you so much. Thank you again to my dad, Dale for joining us for this episode. We will see you or we will talk to you all next time. Bye
Dale: Bye.
[00:39:09] [END OF AUDIO]
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