This bright blue October morning, Todd Herron swings one artificial leg up to the first step on the combine ladder. Then he swings his other artificial leg up to the next step and starts pulling himself up. Soon he is in the cab, ready to start his workday cutting soybeans. The smile on his face as he sits behind the steering wheel says he is right where he has always dreamed he would be.
Herron's dream is like so many other disabled farmers: He just wants to continue doing the work he loves. In his case, determination has allowed him to do just that. But disabilities have cut short more than one farming career.
Enter the National AgrAbility Project (www.agrability.org), a program that, for the past 20 years, has enabled farmers to keep working by making adjustments to the way they farm. The program provides technical assistance everything from locating tractor lifts for wheelchair users to spring-loaded gates. It's something of which Purdue University Extension Specialist Bill Field is exceedingly proud.
The farm safety specialist with Purdue's Breaking New Ground Resource Center has been involved with and partially responsible for AgrAbility from the get-go, but he credits earlier programs for the initial ideas.
"The concept of helping farmers with disabilities goes back to after World War I and World War II," Field says. "There were veterans' programs put in place to help those returning from combat who may have been injured."
The first concerted efforts to help disabled farmers in recent history came when Vermont's Cooperative Extension partnered with the state vocational rehabilitation agency to help farmers by financing needed modifications. Then, around 1978, Field and his colleagues formed the Resource Center. "We began providing services to farmers with disabilities regardless of disability," Field explains.
Their innovations are what set AgrAbility apart from other programs that are solely financially based. "Our interest was centered on the engineering and technology that made continuing to farm possible, Field says. "We focused on the equipment side of things."
STILL FARMING
Only by the kindness (and bravery) of strangers is Todd Herron still alive, much less scaling tall farm equipment.
On a foggy November morning in 1991, he collided with a semi outside Lancaster, Wis. His car burst into flames, and a passerby pulled him from the smoking wreckage. Doctors later told him that if he had been in the fire a minute or two longer, he would have died. As it was, his legs were so badly burned they had to be amputated: the right one above the knee, the left below.
Five months in the hospital and eight months in rehab left Herron mobile but an unlikely candidate for farm work. Still, farming is all he ever wanted to do.
Six years later, the determined young man was back on the family farm in Rock Port, Mo., working side by side with his dad Russell and the proud new owner of 140 acres. Today, Todd, 43, and Russell, 67, farm about 800 acres of corn and soybeans. They share labor and equipment, much of which has been modified so that Todd can climb into it or work around it. For now, things run smoothly.
But Todd is looking to the future. Russell won't be farming forever, and, though Todd can do many things himself, he can't do everything. For instance, he can't climb to the engine compartment to do mechanical work on the combine. Nor can he navigate a grain bin ladder to open the lid.
If only he had a lift.
David Roos has one. The Havana, Ill., farmer was injured in a 3-wheel ATV accident 25 years ago and left paralyzed from the mid-chest down. The accident happened in July. By that fall, his father Herbert and brother Steven had used a front-end loader to build a lift system that got David back in the combine cab.
"I wasn't able to work for long periods of time because I got tired. But just being in a combine cab clears your head and gives you perspective," Roos says.
Over the years, he got assistance from the Illinois Department of Rehabilitation and moved out of a homemade lift into two custom-made lifts, one mounted on a tractor, the other on a combine. The lifts were built by Life Essentials, an Indiana company that specializes in assistive technologies for farmers. (See "What's In Your Toolbox?"). Three years ago, Roos replaced those two lifts with one that mounts on a flatbed truck.
The lifts have made a world of difference to 48-year-old Roos. Being able to continue to farm with his father and brother, "makes you feel worthwhile as a person."
FIRST LIFTS
"We began building the first tractor lifts in 1978/1979," Field says. Aid from the John Deere Foundation provided seed money to the cause, allowing Field to hire students to begin documenting assistive technology for disabled farmers.
From there, efforts snowballed. In the mid-1980s, the project garnered the attention of several Congressional leaders, including Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin and then-Secretary of Agriculture John Block. "The next thing you know, we're part of the 1990 Farm Bill," Field says.
A small amount of start-up money was allotted in the farm bill to help finance eight pilot projects in eight states. The agreement stipulated that the funding be provided to land-grant institutions to help farmers with disabilities in need.
In the next 20 years, the National AgrAbility Project expanded. Currently, there are 25 state projects. Extension in each state partners with a nonprofit disability organization, and many state projects work with organizations like Goodwill Industries International, Arthritis Foundation and Easter Seals. AgrAbility and its partners assist clients in finding funding sources to pay for all or part of the cost of assistive devices, depending on the recipient's financial need. Cost of some of the needed modifications can run $25,000 to $50,000, depending on required features to accommodate a farmer's needs.
In two decades, about 11,000 people have received direct services from AgrAbility, and the impact on families has been priceless. According to a study published in the Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health in 2006, 88% of those helped by AgrAbility continued to work on the farm or ranch.
"We've been instrumental in enhancing technology for those farmers with disabilities," Field adds. "We work with a lot of small farmers, returning veterans and those who want to change their enterprises."
Richard Stanley is one such farmer. Seven years ago, he noticed he was losing strength. His legs didn't work, and his knees would give out. For two months he couldn't lift his hands off a hospital bed, and it took three nurses to sit him up. Testing confirmed the 69-year-old's diagnosis: Guillain Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that attacks the nervous system.
After several months in an Atlanta hospital, the Blue Ridge, Ga., farmer returned home. "The next morning, my nurse called to check up on me and ask what I was doing," Stanley relates. "I told her I was looking out the window at the mountains and grassland, and counting my cows."
Stanley had been farming for more than 30 years. It's in his blood. And he certainly wasn't going to let his current challenges keep him from it. He'd faced challenges before. Several years earlier, Stanley quit growing vegetables to raise cattle. It was an economic decision, but "I thought cattle-raising might be easier," he chuckles. "It was harder."
And it became harder still when he was out of the hospital, wheelchair-bound; his herd of Charolais and white-faced Herefords still needed tending and hay needed cutting. His brother took over the feedings. His wife, Charlotte Ann, who has a beauty shop, also pitched in. Hired hands cut the hay.
Then Stanley heard about AgrAbility. Andy Carter, service coordinator with Georgia AgrAbility, began working with him. "We put a tractor lift for his wheelchair on one of his tractors," Carter says. "We also added hand controls on the clutch and brakes."
Stanley's days are still long seven years after his diagnosis. Long days spent on the tractor, driving through spring-loaded automatic gates that AgrAbility recommended to lessen the number of times he has to climb in and out of the tractor. Long days in therapy.
The therapists and doctors keep hoping Stanley will be able to walk again one day. "But some days my legs just don't have strength," he says. "I keep getting encouragement, though; I don't give up."
"Farming," he adds, "is a lot of work, but I reckon it's what keeps me happy. I sure do love it."
Back in Missouri, Don Schuster and Jackie Allenbrand, of University of Missouri Extension, have worked with Herron to guide him through the paperwork to qualify him for assistance and a lift that will help him farm independently. He has been approved and, at this time, is getting equipment bids.
When his lift finally arrives, Herron's outlook on the future will become more clear, and some uncertainty will disappear. "It will mean I can keep following my dream," Herron says.
WHAT'S IN YOUR TOOLBOX?
Hubert Von Holten has always been an out-of-the-box thinker. He's had to be. The West Lafayette, Ind., farmer and engineer has been farming his entire life, but a bout of polio at age 5 left him without the use of his legs. Far from stopping him, it propelled Von Holten's innovative side. As a teenager, he figured out a way to modify a throttle control on the family's Model A car that got him to and from the fields.
Von Holten started out with a small machine shop to modify equipment; Purdue University Extension Specialist Bill Field approached him in the late 1970s to build a tractor lift as part of the newly formed AgrAbility and Breaking New Ground Resource Center.
"When you're a farmer, you're busy working, not complaining about aches and pains and inconveniences," Von Holten says. "No one's looking for a handout; all they want to know is if you can give them ideas to help put them back to work."
Von Holten himself stays busy with his manufacturing company Life Essentials (www.lifeessentialsweb.com), and he's seen hundreds of implements come to fruition over the past 20 years. "The results of [our innovations] are just fantastic," he says. "We're in the business of putting farmers and ranchers back to work."
Lift owner/Illinois farmer David Roos agrees: "Put the right tools in a man's hands, and he can do anything."
As part of its 20th anniversary, AgrAbility has collected all of the implements into a cohesive online database called The Toolbox. The Assistive Technology Database allows the public to browse the ideas, innovations and designs collected over the years to help farmers and ranchers. To search the toolbox, visit www.agrability.org/toolbox.
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