AgPro students earn farm safety certificates through Safety Buzz

Southern Alberta Newspapers Photo by Anna Smith. FARM SAFETY CERTIFICATION: Irvine AgPro students received farm-safety certifications at the Safety Buzz Campus earlier this month.

By Anna Smith
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

After several weeks of trips out to Dunmore, Irvine’s Agricultural Students received their certificates for truly understanding the buzz about safety.

Students have been coming up to Safety Buzz Campus once a week for the past five weeks or so, said Nichole Neubauer, Irvine School Agriculture Discovery Centre co-ordinator. While there, they have been learning the ins and outs of safety while out on farms.

The idea for the event is several years old, and the ADC is thrilled to be able to make it a reality, because while many of its students come from rural backgrounds, they may not always follow current safety guidelines.

“A big one that came up was helmets,” said Shawn Yeast, the Irvine School CTF instructor. “So we got pumpkins, and we dropped pumpkins from elevated spaces to see, like, this was going to happen to your brain if you’re wearing a helmet and you get into an accident, or this was going to happen to your brain if you don’t.”

The goal of the exercise was to get visuals and hands-on elements that would make an impact on the kids and be meaningful, said Yeast, so when they go to get on their quad, they might remember the pumpkins and make sure they have their helmets on.

Grade 7 student Tayla Bates made specific mention of this exercise, and seeing the pumpkins smash when dropped from great heights without helmets was particularly memorable for her. She continued on to say the course pointed out a few things she was doing in her day-to-day that were not safe, and this course helped her to make sure she’s being more careful.

“I really like AgPro, and I liked this one a lot because we got to learn things like how you always need your harness on when you’re up high, and you always need to wear a proper PPE so you don’t get hurt,” said Bates. “We went to the fire hall one time and we got to spray water. I really like all the hands-on parts.”

The course covered several topics, from the importance of PPE to the realities of grain entrapment.

One very important lesson, said Amy Zuk-Olsen, owner of Safety Buzz Campus, was a lesson in chemical look-alikes, because the reality is it’s often in farm environments that chemicals can end up in on-hand receptacles.

“There’s an empty Gatorade container sitting around, and it can be notorious that they end up filled with antifreeze or gasoline or, you know, any solution you can imagine can end up without a label,” said Zuk-Olsen. “So we were just drawing the attention to the students that some things can look the same and not be, not be the same at all.”

Students were taught the importance of properly fitting fall protection gear, fire safety and many skills they will need, regardless of whether they’re from agricultural backgrounds or continue to pursue careers in the field. Many of these students will be working on their own ranches or farms, or visiting those of their friends, and knowing things like the blind spots of a tractor is important information for them.

The students have been enthused and taking it seriously, said Neubauer, even so much as to spot potential hazards during their own assessments that the teachers hadn’t thought of right away.

“They pointed out that, with the new phone policy, they weren’t allowed to have their phones on their person, and they asked what they would do if something happened to the adult in the room and they couldn’t guess their password, for example,” said Yeast. “So now we’re looking to get a landline put into the ADC area, so they have a way to call someone.”

Shortly after this, they will be proceeding on to their next AgPro course with Western Tractor, where Neubauer is excited to see how they build on and apply their new safety knowledge to the industrial context.