Making your lifestyle block safe for children

One of the most popular choices for retiring baby boomers is a lifestyle block of land. Baby boomers may have had enough of the city ratrace and be seeking some peace and quiet.
One of the biggest problems for new lifestyle block owners is educating their children or grandchildren to the dangers that exist in their new environment. The kids may be used to dodging the cars as they cross Remuera Road but they will not be so adept at riding a farm bike. It is no use telling your kids that riding a motorcycle is too dangerous and they are not permitted to do so until they are 15. They will immediately point out that Johnny, the ten year old kid down the road, was allowed to ride a farm bike at the tender age of eight. Unless you want to be constantly nagged for the next five years, you need to work out how you can safely train your children to ride a motorcycle.
First you have to decide what is a safe age, considering their physical strength and whether they have that immeasurable factor – common sense. If you feel their personality is such that they are likely to hoon around the paddocks showing off to their friends, then the time may not be right. Or you will need a more intensive training programme.

The Dangers

• incidents involving motorcycles and All Terrain Vehicles (ATVs) resulted in around 6% of all fatalities on farms.
• about 20% of all non-fatal injuries requiring hospitalisation.
• the fracture of a lower limb occurred in 30% of all on-farm motorbike
accidents.
(source ACC)

Hopefully those chilling figures have scared you into preparing a training programme to ensure your child does not become one of those statistics. First step is the equipment – if your child is not the same size as you, don’t put them on your bike. Buy a motorbike (or ATV) that is the right size for your child. They will have the physical strength to handle this smaller and lighter bike. While they are growing, they will be gaining expertise on the smaller version and be ready to move up when they are the right size.

Ensure your kids wear the right protective clothing when riding. The first essential is for them to always wear a helmet. Children not wearing helmets have a head-injury rate double the rate of those wearing helmets. If the helmet does not have a visor, then goggles are a good addition. Don’t let them go riding wearing their Barefoot Nikes – a sturdy pair of boots is much safer. If you can, get them to wear long pants and long-sleeved shirts as these will cut down on the severity of cuts and grazes. You can be sure that your child will fall off the bike at some stage and so you need to reduce the chance of a nasty injury occurring.
The best way to do that is to train them properly. Teach them how to handle the bike on a variety of terrain. You should start them on a smooth, flat chunk of paddock with a nice sole of grass to cushion any fall. Set out some cones or other markers and get them riding around those. Then change the markers to an S course. When they can negotiate that with ease – change to a slalom course with tighter turns. At this stage you should get them in the habit of looking ahead for obstacles they need to avoid.

Once they have become proficient on the flat, you can move onto a gentle slope and have them practise riding up, down, and across the slope. They need to learn how to change gears to suit the steepness of the slope. And how to adjust their body position to align the bike correctly going across the slope. The advanced training comes when they learn how to stand on the footrests when going up or coming down a hill. This technique will give better balance and the bike will have better traction. Learning how to start and stop on the hill will complete their initial training and allow you some confidence to let them toddle off on their own.
There should also be some training on the mechanical side – what to check on the bike before they take it out of the shed and some basic maintenance procedures. Your local motorcycle dealer can help with those two issues. No doubt you will want to establish a set of rules regarding bike safety and any transgression would see the bike locked away while they dwell on their mistake.

Tractors

After mastering the farm bike, the next likely demand from the junior lifestyleblocker is to drive the tractor – if you have one. Be aware that it is illegal for a child under 12 years of age to drive a tractor or ride on one when it is towing any implement, unless it is a trailer designed to carry passengers. Training a child to drive a tractor is a much more extensive exercise than teaching them how to handle a farm bike. This is a seriously big chunk of farm machinery and it can cause seriously big chunks of damage when it runs amuck! You can train your kids to drive the tractor in much the same way as outlined for the bike training exercise. But even when they have learned to drive the machine, there are a lot of safety measures that need to be taken – ones that you should be undertaking if you have small children with access to the tractor.
One of the very first should be: when starting and reversing machinery, always check - where are the children? It even pays to get down and walk around the tractor before reversing out of the implement shed as that is a favourite place for kids to play ‘hide and seek’ – they may just be hiding under the tractor tray.

Other safety measures include:

1. When the tractor is parked, lock the brakes and remove the keys from the ignition.
2. Leave any equipment that might fall, such as a front-end loader, in the down position, with the blade resting on the ground.
3. Keep the tractor properly maintained with regular checks of brakes, tyres, steering, hydraulics as well as seat belts, safety shields and guards.
4. Always leave a tractor Power Take Off (PTO) in neutral or locked

Power-take-off driven implements, such as hay balers and mowers, are particularly dangerous when children are around. Again it pays to walk around the tractor to check that no-one is likely to be hurt when the PTO equipment is started up. And before engaging the PTO lever, make sure that there is no object in the path of the blades or other moving parts of the equipment. Engage the PTO only from the tractor seat and if you leave, disengage the PTO lever and completely stop the tractor. Shafts on all PTO-driven equipment should be guarded at all times as this is a regular cause of injury to children.

Other Common Lifestyle Block Dangers

Water

One of the biggest dangers is water – a child can drown in just a few centimetres of water. Children used to playing on a section in Riccarton may be unaware of the risks that bodies of water can provide. It is a given that you supervised them very carefully on the excursions to Sumner Beach but that may not always be possible when you are busy on the farmlet. You need to identify risk areas and train your children to respect the danger that those bodies of water represent. For toddlers, these may be as small a body of water as a water trough. It does not take very long for a toddler to climb into a water trough.)


More obvious hazards are farm ponds which should always be fenced as should manure pits.

Animals

The city-raised child is also unlikely to be used to being around anything more dangerous than the family Labrador. Fully-grown beef cattle can weigh several hundred kg and can inflict serious injuries to children not experienced with animals. Some points to look out for:
• Never get between a baby animal and its mother – they are very protective of their young and may become quite aggressive.
• Stockyards are not a safe place for children as animals in stockyards are more likely to be nervous or stressed and this can make them dangerous.
• Always try to keep animals calm, especially when children are present. Problems can occur when animals are alarmed or annoyed and children are inadvertently likely to do make them so.
• If your children are working with animals make sure they wear sturdy footwear to avoid crushed or bruised feet. Barefoot Nikes are no protection against a rock hard hoof!
• The same applies for horse riding with strong, heeled boots recommended and of course an approved riding helmet.

Children should also be taught to always wash their hands after handling animals.

Miscellaneous Dangers

Electric fences, especially cattle fences, can be dangerous for younger children.
Chemicals, poisons, pesticides and animal pharmaceuticals should be stored in a locked area which is out of sight and reach of children.
Dangerous machinery and equipment should be locked away in a secure facility.
Electrical switchboxes and wiring should be kept out of reach of children.

It is a good idea to walk around your lifestyle block and make a list of the possible dangers to your children. Tackle each issue by providing training or warning your children of the dangers. You cannot trust them to just learn by themselves - that is a risk you should not take.

An article commissioned by good.ground.com from author Ron Giles.
If you would like to see more of Ron's articles go to his website www.website-consultant.co.nz