"Another time, as a student, I was earning some money chainsawing firewood and the farm manager came by. A few minutes later, he came back with chainsaw chaps for me. There was always someone looking out and prepared to say 'That's not okay'."
Preventing that call
These are lessons around effective communication that David has brought to his own farm management, underpinned by more formal processes such as fortnightly health and safety meetings and his approach to visitors on farm.
"My message to people working for me is 'health and safety is making sure I don't have to call your family and tell them you aren't coming home, and you don't have to do the same for me'. I'll call them out if I see them doing something unsafe and I expect them to call me out if I do.
"There has been a massive cultural shift in my lifetime. Growing up on the farm we didn't think, for instance, to wear safety glasses during fencing, even though there's a risk of staples flying out or a wire snapping back.
"That's a policy here and it's become automatic. The same goes for the farm motorbikes. A helmet is always left sitting on a bike. So no matter which vehicle you get on, a helmet is always there, there's no excuse for forgetting. Before anyone uses a farm vehicle, they are expected to walk around and check it and let me know if any issues need addressing.
"We have beekeepers and people who ride horses on the farm. It's an agreed policy that they always text me to let me know when they are coming on to the land and again when they leave and I can plan around that.
"I expect the big contractors and fertiliser trucks to manage their own health and safety but I will always make them aware of any hazards they need to know about on the farm -- like a slippery hilltop."
Integral role
Health and safety is an integral part of fortnightly farm meetings.
"We talk about things like near-misses. Issues that have come out of that include wheels slipping on a particular track, and getting pushed about on the tractor because the silage wagon was a bit overloaded. We talk about how we can mitigate the hazard and those decisions become farm policy -- so if you are going along that track you have to be in low gear, and you never overload the trailer.
"A lot of it's around stock, like someone saying they had to run for the rails in the cattleyard. So we changed the way we use the yard. We put half the mob in, rather than filling to capacity, giving them a bit more space, and we give them time to calm down. If there's a truck coming in, I make sure there's always someone here to help with unloading."
While David minutes the farm meetings, he is committed to putting policies into written form.
"There's a perception out there that it means a lot of writing but I think the message is starting to get out on the grapevine that it doesn't have to.
"The last thing any farmer wants is an accident on their farm but, if it does happen, you do need to be able to show you've done everything you can to prevent that happening."
