One continual concern for all farmers is safety. Lori Brown-Whillock from Gentry, Ark., is an Arkansas State Trooper with an extensive background in farm safety both personally and professionally.
Last July 17, Lori wanted to go for a ride down to a nearby creek to exercise one of her horses, a 3-year-old she had ridden for over 100 hours. She was very confident in the horse. That day she just saddled him up and was ready to take off, not warming him up first. Lori said, “He gave me no warning like laying his ears back or humping his back. He just blew up like a bronco out of a chute. I rode him for three good bucks and thought I was going to ride him out when I saw the fence coming.” Lori said the last thing she remembered was leaning left. She ended up with two broken wrists, one requiring a plate with eight screws, and a broken tailbone. She is still healing and getting ready for surgery on one of her wrists.
The worst family accident happened to her father Johnny Ravoe Brown, or JR as most of his friends called him. Every day as he did chores, he walked among his cows, which numbered up to 50, petting or scratching them. At the time he had a Brahma bull named Trailer that he had raised himself and petted and scratched routinely. One day, however, one of the cows was in heat, and when JR came near her in the lot, the bull came after him and sent him flying down a hillside where he hit his head on a rock and was momentarily paralyzed. According to Lori, the hill probably saved his life because he was far enough away from the cow that the bull didn’t bother to chase him down the hill. “After that accident, his health never was as good.”
Lori said there are two kinds of accidents, those that result from carelessness and those that can’t be predicted. She said, “Sometimes you are in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong atmosphere such as a gust of wind blowing off a piece of tin and spooking an animal near you.”
Nonetheless, she believes that a decrease in farm injuries is possible by following a few simple practices. The first is not to take things for granted like her dad did with the bull. The next is to keep all equipment in good working condition. “Basically, it’s all common sense, but sometimes people just forget to be careful,” said Lori.
