REWIND WEDNESDAY - You Won't See This on Your Evening News - Original Post of 2011

Looking up from the inside of the silo.

I MUST, I have to, and I can’t take another breath until I write about how good God is to us. How his Word is true, how quickly his presence changes things.


If you ever wondered where I stood on God, satan (I will not give him a capital S) and Spiritual warfare, you will have no doubt.

Regularly, I pray for protection around my family and farm. In fact, sometimes when I walk, I’ll walk a perimeter around sections of the farm praying for God’s angels to protect. My beliefs in God’s protection through his angels come from this verse:

"For God will give his angels charge of you, to guard you in all your ways." - Psalms 91: 11.

I pray because I am well aware that satan will try any tactic to hurt us. This belief is based on:

“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly”. -John 10:10

The cement silo with the platform on top.

Son #4 and Jake were getting a silo ready for harvest. We have the blue Harvestores and a couple of cement silos. This is briefly and simply the way the silo works. There is an unloader made of steel, a motor and some wheels. It sits on top of the feed and a cutter/gathering chain brings the feed to a blower which blows the feed out a side door to fall down a chute into a feed wagon. Very simplistic description. Anyway, this 1500+ pound piece of metal has to be pulled to the top of the silo and anchored there while the silo is being filled with feed during harvest.

The pulley at the bottom of the silo.

That is what Son #4 and Jake were doing. Before the feed is blown into the silo the heavy unloader is hooked to a cable and pulled by a tractor to the top. Using a 130 foot cable, one end is attached to the unloader, fed up through the top of the silo through a pulley, over to the side of the top of the silo through another pulley, straight down the outside of the silo through the last pulley and attached to the tractor. A rope is also attached to the unloader and up through the top of the silo to the small outside platform Son #4 was standing on. He had this rope to help guide the unloader up so it wouldn’t spin around on its way up to its filling position at the very top of the silo.

This has been done 100 times and it becomes common place. Perhaps, too much so.

The frayed cable.

Jake had slowly pulled the unloader just about to the top when the cable snapped and the unloader plummeted to the floor of the empty silo.

The rope that Son #4 was using to keep the unloader from spinning had been somewhat carelessly laid in a pile beside his feet on the small platform as the unloader was rising. Some of it had draped over his foot and he had kicked it to the side a time or two.

The smashed unloader. I could not get a good picture of the whole thing confined in the silo.

When the cable snapped several feet of the rope flew between Son #4’s fingers before he could even react to let go. In a blink of an eye the 1500+ pound unloader, and the 70 feet of rope laid at the bottom of the silo in a heap.

At first Son#4 wasn’t sure or not if he had lost part of his finger or fingers in the process. The speed, the sound of the crash, the expectancy, the dust, and the slowly accumulating realizations of what could have happened hit him all at once. He took stock of his fingers – they were all there with a few tips a bit numb.

Some of you may think, so what, no big deal. This is what you need to know.

1. No one was in the silo. While that is normal practice for us, there is always the possibility of something out of the ordinary happening that might cause someone to be careless.

2. If the rope would have been wrapped around his hand he could have lost fingers, his hand, who knows.

The platform that Son#4 was on.

3. If the rope would have gotten tangled around his feet, it could have knocked him off the platform onto the pavement 60 feet below.

4. The rope could have wrapped around his leg and drug him through the top of the silo and down with the heap of metal.

There are so many possible ways this accident could have been tragic or deadly.

There are no coincidences in our life when we serve God Almighty. Nothing happens by chance.

If for whatever reason things would have gone differently and the awful would have happened there is a good possibility you would be reading or watching on the news about an accident on a local farm that injured/killed a worker.

Well, I am doing my best to broadcast that what satan had planned was ruined again.

This is what God’s Word says:

And the LORD will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them. -Deuteronomy 28:13

The reality of God’s intervention and protection is not lost on any of us.

My indescribable gratitude for God’s grace and protection of my son can not be written. There are not enough letters that could string together into words to begin to show my appreciation.

Life is so precious. There should be no time for cross words, jealousy, strife, or unkindness.

I have another day to love my son. It will not be wasted.

Son #4, my baby with his baby.