Today, in a world where productivity is measured by how many pieces you produce per hour, or how many acres you can till up per day, or in the fall when you get your snow tires installed, how many sets can the garage change per day.
Every year there are . . .
cars and trucks that have a loose wheel or even lose a wheel because someone didn’t take that few minutes to check the torque on the wheel nuts after changing the tires. If your vehicle has aluminum wheels, then the wheel studs have to be re-torqued after driving a few hours. Every year, some people get killed when a wheel comes off and bounces through a windshield.
My uncle Russell built hundreds of buildings in Eastern Canada from small houses to post offices and barns. Russell always told his employees, (and he trained many to be excellent tradesmen) “Measure twice and cut once.”
My father always told me to fix something right the first time. It might take a little longer, but you will not have to fix it again and maybe lose another entire day to fix it right the next time. I had a couple cousins who worked at Atomic Energy building new reactor facilities and everybody took that extra time to do everything right because one mistake could mean disaster for thousands of people.
From the time I was a kid cultivating my first field to plant a crop in, dad told me that it’s better to overlap a few inches than leave strips of untilled ground which grew weeds and grass than have the neighbours point it out to us all season. He said, “Take that extra few minutes to go over that grassy spot again” before leaving the field.
A few extra minutes checking the seeder or corn planter can pay back in less seed not germinating, seeding too heavy or even a blocked run.
Sometimes the sprayer operator thinks that his boom sprays a foot wider than it does and then there is a strip of grass in every corn or grain field that he sprays. He obviously never calibrated his sprayer for accuracy either.
In the fall, a couple weeks after harvest, people drive through the beautiful countryside in our county and remark, “Why are there green strips in that grain field?” That’s caused by a combine operator who didn’t take that extra few minutes to set up the combine. That green strip is small or light grain that blew through the combine and germinated into a green carpet about five feet wide. The grain that blew out the back of the combine could easily have paid the combining charge.
Farmers will tell you that the last few minutes they walk through the barn at night checking for leaky water bowls, tie chains that are too tight, checking for signs of estrus when the cows are lying down, checking to see that everyone has adequate feed and checking that there is no one not tied are the most productive minutes of the day.
Observing a herd of animals well fed and resting peacefully lets the farmer walk out of the barn a lot happier and ready for his own supper.
Almost all of the accidents and fatalities both on the farm and anywhere, could have been prevented by just taking a couple seconds to observe and rethink before making that fatal move.
During these extra stressful times we are experiencing now it is even more important to take that extra minute to rethink what you are about to do and to observe and talk to you friends and neighbours who might be even more stressed than you.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations. gladcrest@gmail.com
