State program promotes farm safety and health

With agricultural occupations being among the most hazardous, constant awareness of safety risks and prevention of problems should be on everybody's mind.

As fall harvest winds down, with some combining of corn and soybeans left to finish, emptying manure lagoons before winter, and fall plowing going strong while weather and soils permit, equipment is being put in storage and barns prepared for winter.

Now is the time to make sure that equipment is repaired, serviced and ready for next year, and shields are on and in working order. If the cost of repairs is an issue, at least make a list of what needs to be done, with part numbers and costs included, and mark on next year's calendar when it needs to be done.

Fall weather brings mud and slippery conditions that require extra caution when working around tractors and other equipment. With this being a disastrous year economically for dairy and livestock farmers, thoughts are on getting fall tasks completed before fields get too wet to get equipment on, and snow arrives to stay. This is on top of the constant worry of how to pay the bills that keep coming and uncertainty about when prices will start to improve.

The point of this article is to promote services offered by New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health.

NYCAMH was established in 1988 by the state Legislature to research causes and prevention of accidents and illnesses on farms. NYCAMH, a program of Bassett Healthcare, educates farmers and helps prevent these occurrences. Cornell Cooperative Extension helps farms connect with NYCAMH and set up training, both on farm and at our office.

Services include general farm safety and health training, youth safety and health training, and bilingual worker safety training.

A current program available is the Roll-Over Protection System retrofit rebate program that will pay 70 percent of the cost of retrofitting an older tractor, up to $750.

Call 1 (877) ROPS-R4U or visit www.ropsr4u.com. Personnel will also come to your farm and conduct a survey of electrical, animal, equipment, environmental, and operational safety hazards and offer suggestions to lessen the chance of an accident.

If there is enough interest, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Jefferson County can offer training at our offices, 203 N. Hamilton St., on breathing hazards, skin cancer, hearing loss prevention, stress management, personal protection equipment, on- road slow-moving-vehicle markings and lighting, and other on-farm health and safety issues.

Most of the services offered by NYCAMH are free and most of its information is available online or in print.

Farm owners and operators may want to consider a farm blueprint that includes electrical service entrances and shutoffs, wells, lagoons, septic tanks, low-hanging wires, narrow or weak driveways and lanes, buildings with chemicals, location of animals (including bulls), and other special areas on the farm that fire, rescue, and law enforcement personnel should be aware of.

This information, if available to the local fire department, can save precious time when responding to an emergency.

I have made up farm accident emergency calling cards that can be placed near your phones. They have a place for information and special considerations to tell dispatchers when calling that will save time and make sure the right agencies respond.

If you would like one of these cards or more information about on farm safety, call Cornell Cooperative Extension of Jefferson County at 788-8450.

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Gratitude: a health-enhancing attitude

Next Thursday we, as a nation, will devote an entire day to expressing thankfulness (and eating turkey).

This holiday was originally devoted to give thanks and show gratitude for a harvest that ensured basic needs of life were met. Until recently, gratitude was considered a polite behavior but not necessarily a vital component of mental health.

Research is suggesting, however, that gratitude may be an important factor in the burgeoning research on happiness.

Gratitude research, well documented on the Internet, is beginning to suggest that feelings of thankfulness have tremendous positive value in helping people cope with problems, especially stress, and to achieve a positive perspective.

Maybe the Pilgrims, faced with tremendous unknowns and stressors knew something we should learn.

According to some studies, grateful people are not necessarily ones whom the world has showered with gifts; people of little financial means and who have suffered personal tragedies may report themselves as grateful, while the well-to-do and comfortable may exhibit little gratitude.

In an experimental comparison conducted in 2003 by Robert A. Emmons of the University of California, Davis and Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami, those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole and were more optimistic compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events .

Participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal and health-based) over a two-month period compared to subjects in the other experimental conditions.

A daily gratitude intervention with young adults resulted in higher reported levels of the positive states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy compared to a focus on hassles or a downward social comparison (ways in which participants thought they were better off than others).

In a study published in 2008 by Jeffrey Froh of Hofstra University, William J. Sefick of the National center for Crisis Management in Commack, and Emmons in the Journal of School Psychology, children who practice grateful thinking have more positive attitudes toward school and their families

Grateful people report higher levels of positive emotions, life satisfaction, vitality, optimism and lower levels of depression and stress, researchers say. They say the disposition toward gratitude appears to enhance pleasant feelings more than it diminishes unpleasant emotions. Grateful people do not deny or ignore the negative aspects of life.

People with a strong disposition toward gratitude have the capacity to be empathic and to take the perspective of others. They are rated as more generous and more helpful (McCullough, Emmons and Baylor University psychologist JoAnn C. Tsang, 2002).

Grateful individuals place less importance on material goods; they are less likely to judge their own and others success in terms of possessions accumulated; they are less envious of others; and are more likely to share their possessions with others relative to less grateful persons.

Maybe Thanksgiving is a holiday we should celebrate more than once a year!