Farm safety: 'My passion is going out there and talking to farmers'
And Farm Rohan Brian Of Embrace Norma
Ever since his life-changing accident, Peter Gohery's passion is "going out there and talking to farmers", making them aware of farm dangers, and being a voice for the community.
Mr Gohery, who is from Eyrecourt in Co Galway, experienced the loss of one leg and serious injury of the other in 2009.
Since then, he has told his story to many farmers across the country, and advocated for better farm safety practices.
Mr Gohery, who now works in health and safety, said he believes that farm accident survivors "get the message across better", in the sense that farmers can better "relate to you".
One Saturday morning in October of 2009, Mr Gohery and his son headed to the farm.
"I put on overalls, I also had a pair of steel toe-capped wellingtons on," Mr Gohery.
"Just before lunchtime, my knee came out through the waterproof section, and it was annoying me. I took the scissors and cut the overalls, I left a tail of about four inches long on the side of it, and I went back up farming."
Mr Gohery said it was a "nice, fine Saturday", so he decided to pull out the diet feeder after he was done working with the cattle "and see what upgrades I needed to do for the year ahead".
"When I pulled it out of the shed and I spun the diet feeder, I could hear a knock coming from inside it. I said I’ll get down now and I’ll investigate, see what’s knocking. I left the PTO on, and as I walked around the back of the tractor, I decided I’d change the hydraulic lines, put them in the correct sequence," Mr Gohery continued.
When he went to stand back, he realised he was caught in the power shaft. There was no cover on the shaft, and the tail piece left on the overalls wrapped around the shaft.
He lost one leg, suffered serious injury to the other, and broken bones in his arms.
His son turned off the machinery and got Mr Gohery's wife, who was in "huge shock". A nurse, "she had to stop the bleeding" while they waited for the paramedics to arrive.
At that stage, Mr Gohery said, as he lay on the ground having been thrown over by the machine, he "wasn't in pain, I was probably shocked".
He spent a number of the following months in hospital, during which "all I could do was lie in the bed, I couldn’t go out, the leg that was missing wasn’t really giving me bother, it was the right leg that was giving me the bother".
His wish for Christmas was to come home, which he did, and a ramp was put in place at the back door of the house for it to be accessible for his wheelchair.
"It took me a long time to get the strength to go up the stairs and it was like a child going up on your backside," he said.
He said he was told by doctors not to revisit the scene of the accident, for fear he would get flashbacks.
"But I did go back into the farm yard; being a farmer I wanted to see the farm. If I could have got out of the car and walked around on crutches I would have, but I wasn’t able to."
Since he found one that was comfortable and suited him in the months that followed, a prosthetic leg gave Mr Gohery "huge freedom".
"I tried to go back farming, I was farming to a certain extent." He switched from sucklers to tillage.
Around 2019, Mr Gohery said he was getting the tractor plough ready in the spring to go start the tillage.
"Ended up that I put so much pressure on me that the leg got sore, swelled up and I had to go into bed and lie down for a week and a half to two weeks," he said.
He is now leasing out the land.
"It took a long time to get into that mentality as well. What you do feel is you failed. But I couldn't do it."
Mr Gohery was 42 at the time of the accident.
He was in his mid-40s when he decided to go back to college in Athlone to study health and safety.
He works in this area now, and his passion remains "going out there and talking to farmers" about safety.
Also, in June, he went before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Disability Matters as the national chairperson of Physical Impairment Ireland, where he said that the State "has failed in listening to disabled people explaining to it what is needed here".
"This shows how flawed the system is in a country that is supposedly awash with money. It is spent everywhere but where it is needed the most, from a disabled person's perspective," Mr Gohery told the committee.
Mr Gohery has spoken of the financial challenges that came for him in the years after his accident. For 10 years, he said he was refused a disability allowance and could not receive the invalidity pension.
Angela Hogan from Nenagh, Co Tipperary lost her partner Brendan Kelly, an agri-contractor, in an accident in July 2011.
Ms Hogan said that Mr Kelly had a strong passion for agriculture, "his grandfather and his father would have been contracting as well and he grew up on a farm".
"The day of the accident was a Thursday and Ronan, our son, was off school in July. I had dropped Ronan over to him in the morning and he went off with him for the day and I was at work.
"We lived in the town of Nenagh and it was a central point for him because he had diesel tanks there, so he would do contracting for farmers in the parishes all around Nenagh.
"He would come in whenever he needed to fill up to move on to the next farmer. I would have gone home at lunchtime because I’m only a couple minutes’ walk from work and I would have been talking to him that day at lunchtime, we were planning our annual getaway at Christmas. We could never go anywhere during the summer because it’s so busy."
The pair had been "to all the Canary Islands" - except Fuerteventura.
"I asked him that day, 'are we going to go to Fuerteventura or do you want to go back to Tenerife?' - he loved Tenerife," Ms Hogan said.
"He said 'we’ll go back to Tenerife', and I said ok, 'I’ll book the flights' because there was a sale on. That’s what I was doing that evening."
Then, Mr Kelly's brother drove into the yard and said the accident had happened, involving a baler. Mr Kelly's son Ronan, who was 11 at the time, was with him when it occurred.
"I can still remember it vividly," Ms Hogan said, of being informed the accident occurred.
Mr Kelly knew machinery "inside out", according to Ms Hogan, and he "would never be a man to rush, he was noted for being a little bit laid-back, he never seemed under pressure".
But, "if he said he was going to be somewhere at a certain time, he would always be there".
Ms Hogan said she hadn’t been working on the farm, and when her partner died, "suddenly now I have to deal with the farm I know nothing about and it just gets overwhelming", along with parenting the two children, who were three and 11 at the time of the accident.
"We didn’t have a will, it made it hard to know what to do, and he had a lot of machinery being a contractor. We didn’t have any animals so I didn’t have to worry about milking or anything like that, it was all machinery-based.
"You’re reaching out to see what is the best thing to do and try and make the best decision you can. Family is great at helping and sometimes you need to get outside help as well, independent advice."
Ms Hogan said she has the farm now leased out, and "that has taken the pressure off" in some ways.
She has added that there are "always never-ending jobs to be done on a farm".
However: "Farm safety needs to be foremost in your mind in order to continue those never-ending jobs and come home safe to your family every night."
Peter Gohery and Angela Hogan are both involved with Embrace FARM, a support network.
Embrace FARM was established by Brian and Norma Rohan, a farming family from Shanahoe, Co Laois, in 2014, following the loss of Mr Rohan's father Liam in a farm accident the year before.
The organisation supports the farming community and families who have experienced the impact of not only farm accidents, but also other sudden deaths.
Ms Rohan said that for families, the cause of death "isn’t the defining factor for us, it’s what’s left behind afterwards".
While coping with an unimaginable loss, the partners, parents, and others connected to the deceased can be left trying to look after the farm and support the family, Ms Rohan said.
The impact of a death on a family is "individual", but there are significant emotional and often financial consequences, "with so many decisions to make" about the future of a farm.
Ms Rohan highlighted that on farms, there is "constant rushing and racing", and she is encouraging farmers to take "downtime" and moments to "stop and reflect".
Embrace FARM has expanded its support over the last year, to help families affected by all types of sudden death or trauma on-farm, including suicide, through its Encircle Programme.
In one year, almost 20% of Embrace FARM’s supports are now directed to sudden deaths other than farm accidents, which shows the demand for these kind of services, Ms Rohan added.
Earlier this year, Embrace FARM called for "more accurate recording" of sudden death and injury of farmers.
