“A close shave,” my grandfather would have called it – a random accident that could have been much worse. My most serious farm accident was a silo incident at my first herdsman job in the sunny southland. A silo unloader is a goliath of a mechanical contraption with a hefty motor along with augers, shields, belts, pulleys and drive wheels often made of studded cleats on an iron ring. I’ll dispense with the details other than to say I was in the wrong place at the wrong time in a silo in northwest Georgia. I was trying to unplug the feed chute of freshly fermenting sorghum silage when a winch failed and that goliath of a contraption fell on me, resulting in a compression fracture to one of my thoracic vertebrae. I was out of commission for six months but still eating sausage biscuits and gravy with a side of sorghum syrup for breakfasts as well as other southern delicacies. That was 40 years ago and I swear I’m still trying to take off that weight.
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Greg Galbraith owned and operated for 30 years a grazing-based dairy farm in central Wisconsin, until selling it to another couple who continues to operate an organic grass-based dairy. He’s an agrarian writer who’s involved in projects promoting the environmental and social benefits of an agricultural landscape dedicated to the functional permanent cover that managed pasture provides.
