Both my husband (OH) and I (MS) remember this day from the fifth grade.
In my case, we took a field trip to the local Boy Scouts facility/place/camp/whatever, and they taught us all about safety around a farm and on a tractor and whatnot.
What remember most is how to properly use the seatbelt on a tractor– don’t strap yourself in if you don’t have the safety bars/railing attached! Otherwise you will not be able to get off of the tractor in time and will absolutely be crushed if it were to flip over.
I wonder if kids in other states attended a day like this as well, or if it really only happens in more rural/agricultural areas?
Comments
Never heard of such a thing.
I didn’t have a farm anywhere remotely near me. I might has well have attended a space ship safety training.
no but I grew up in a big city
Never heard of this or a local boy scouts facility
Certainly doesn’t happen in California. I never did anything like this, and neither did my kids.
No, didn’t know that was a thing
Grew up in the Appalachians. Plenty rural with small farms. Never did this at my school. Some kids brought their livestock for show and tell a few times though
SLC, Utah. We had a few field trips to a local historical farm and all classes went to the State Fair every year, but we never had any “farm safety” beyond, “don’t touch that.”
Nope. Never had a farm safety day. SW Washington, PDX suburb.
Not a thing in the NYC area
I grew up in New York City. Nope.
I grew up in Ohio and have never heard of this. I grew up in the suburbs but didn’t know anyone that had or worked on a farm.
No but the vast majority of the kids in my elementary school grew up on farms so we’d generally learned all that already.
We took a field trip to a farm but they didn’t really go over farm safety like that.
Farm…safety? Blink, blink.
Where would one find a farm? 😜
We had bicycle safety day (Helmets!) and fire safety day (“Stop, drop and roll!) No heavy machinery for kids in my suburb.
I cannot fathom such a field trip unless it’s a club thing, like for 4H. This is the type of shit I’d expect from a Midwest sitcom lol
I live in rural Illinois and my kids haven’t done this. (I was homeschooled, so no help there). The only farm visit they’ve done was part of 4H.
In AZ. No.
No, that’s definitely not something we did in my area.
There was a field trip to a farm to pick berries for fun, but not really any safety lessons besides stuff like “not all berries you find in the woods are safe”
No and I grew up in the heart of farm country. We did have a walking talking reminder about farm safety though. On of my classmates accidentally put his hand in a ln auger as a little boy. He kept his hand fortunately, but the scars were impressive.
No.
That would have been a complete and utter waste of time in New York City.
I grew up on a farm, so no specific day for learning safety.
Nope.
I live near farms and we never had this.
I didn’t see a cow until I went to college. So no.
Grew up in Iowa surrounded by farms and have never heard of such a thing. Most people in my school grew up on farms and around farm equipment. Many were doing farm chores before and after school with a lot of that farm equipment. I think it was assumed that their parents were teaching them to be safe. Though I did know of a couple of kids who got into bad accidents on their family farms, so maybe some extra safety training would have been a good idea.
In Maine (80s) in second or third grade we took a field trip to a local truck farm but never had a farm safety day. This is the first I’ve ever heard of such a thing.
That must be a Midwest thing.
Nope. I went to school in Texas.
I’d love to know what part of Ohio because I’ve never heard of this before lol. My guess would be eastern Ohio somewhere
No. But we did have gator safety day.
Nope, we had a safety day near the start of the year where we would go over various drills.
Fire, tornado, intruder, and when you’re older you might have a lab safety session if your class needs to use the lab.
Northern IL/Chicagoland. Nope.
Massachusetts/never heard of this in my life.
Middle class houses are now $800k to $1.2M and you are lucky to get more than a quarter acre. I am not sure if Virginia wine country does this but I would imagine collectives have a day on the weekend for kids to learn about it.
Definitely not, but I went to Catholic school in a city. We made fun of people who went to schools with FFA and 4-H chapters (not really sure why, except ignorance).
I live in Oklahoma but we didn’t have it
Not at my LAUSD elementary school
Grew up in a rural-ish area so we visited farms more than once for school.
Never heard of such a thing. From Michigan, a big agriculture state (though not the immediate area where I grew up).
Being that I grew up in the NYC suburbs, no.
I grew up in suburban Ohio and we did not have farm safety day.
We did have fire safety day where the local fire department would bring their burn trailer (it was made up to look like a mini house). They would have us practice escaping from a smoke filled bedroom.
No. Don’t know where that occurs, but I’ve always loved in a city. Interesting question.
No, that is not a particularly relevant area of education where I grew up.
Grew up in rural Michigan, plenty of farm and non farm kids in my school and I’ve never heard of something like this. My Mom who grew up on a farm (in Michigan) and was a teacher in an even more rural farming school district than the one I attended also has never heard of something like this.
The high school my parents taught at (again rural with many farms) had an agricultural-science program at the high school. It was an academic department that included classes for credit (not FFA). It may have covered farm safety as part of a class, but certainly not a safety day.
Sort of but it was through Girl Scouts (1990s in AR) not school. The only reason brownie troops in my area got to do a day like that was because my Dad volunteered our farm and taught the lessons. I imagine it’s nearly impossible to find a land owner willing to allow children near any type of equipment in today’s society.
We took field trips to farms, but never had a “farm safety day” as such. 5th grade did have ag history focus in social studies tho.
I grew up and went to school in rural Ohio, and was in 5th grade in 1989. I never did this and never heard about it being a thing.
Nope. Grew up in the burbs. We had traffic safety and DARE.
Never heard of it
This is wild. I live in a farming community and we never had this.
We had farm and ag classes you could take, especially in high school. Some kids took a lot of those classes, and probably actually used what they learned.
But in fourth or fifth grade, we had firearms training, complete with a teacher bringing rifles into the classroom. Several hours of book instruction, safety, laws, etc. and we handled the guns. Did not fire them. Took a test and got a FOID (firearm owner’s ID) card.
We also had an outdoors training thing about the same age. Learned some basic survival info, made ‘buddy burners’, started fires, set up tents, so forth. Then we had an overnight camping trip at some wooded property that the school owned (and maintained with child labor during said ‘class’).
The first day of rifle deer hunting season was always a school holiday, for some reason.
Illinois, public school, in the 90s.
I grew up in the south, and I’ve never heard of anything like that.
I didn’t and it would really shock me if it was common outside of rural areas. There were certainly farms close enough that we could have made the trip, but it was pretty obvious few students would end up being farmers. Even the terrible students who would go blue collar would be in other industries like HVAC or something like that. Farming was such an uncommon profession in my area that it wouldn’t make sense to teach everyone the details of farm safety.
East Coast. No.
Grew up in the middle of dairy country and I have never heard of this
I remember taking a field trip to a farm at some point during Junior high or high school but it was four of just showing what they do on a farm and most of us didn’t give a flying fuck because if we didn’t plan on being farmers.
That’s not a thing I did growing up in Dallas.
No. We did go on at least one field trip to a farm though.
Ours was connected to a 4H program, not scouting, but I remember learning how not to die in a grain silo, and I remember a classmate asking the police officer who was teaching one mini lesson how many miles over the speed limit a driver could get away with (we were literally in elementary school — like 11 or younger), and I remember they had the burning house simulation trailer, where you have to get low and crawl and roll under the “smoke”.
I remember we got samples of dog and cat food and kids ate them on the bus on the way home, and we all took home a big bag of brochures for all kinds of farm and garden products and gods know what all else
I’ve never heard of such a thing and have never been close to a tractor. Only see farms close up at Halloween when I go to a corn maze or to get a pumpkin
No we did have hay day where they would take us to see horses and ride on a hay ride
I grew up in a very ranch-y area. We had some farm safety stuff as part of 4-H and FFA field days, but never as part of school that I remember.
No. My school did own .22lr rifles and archery equipment, though it was never used.
From MA. Never heard of it.
I grew up in an agrarian county in California and do not recall this happening. Sounds more like a 4H or FFA type thing.
I’m from rural PA, we definitely went to a farm in 1st grade but I don’t remember anything about it.
Not where I lived (Los Angeles/Orange County- California).
I grew up on a farm in a very rural area, and we did not have this.
But I was also a girl so my dad didn’t let me anywhere near the equipment. Yay.
But I do know that you *really really really* do not want to fall in the pit (the area below the pigs in a hog house. It’s full of feces/urine, and you WILL suffocate. Also a useful place if you need to dispose of a gun after a murder.)
I lived in a suburb on Long Island..I would have loved this, but..no.
I grew up in a rural area and had friends who did 4H, but I’ve never heard of this farm day thing.
No, I live in a city. We had a field trip where we learned to milk a cow, though. I couldn’t get any milk out. Apparently, I wasn’t squeezing and twisting the udders hard enough.
Boston. Nope. Lol farming.
We go see Plymouth Rock.
It’s a rock.
Never did this in Texas. My school district owned a farm that the FFA kids used and we had a trip out there to collect bugs and pet goats but nothing about farm equipment or safety.
Nope.
In my area we went to Overton farm in 3rd grade and saw piglets and stuff. No safety course, though.
Kinda. I grew up in a rural agricultural area so field trips were often going to farms or local college’s agriculture programs. We did that in elementary and maybe jr high.
Girl, I grew up in the middle of San Francisco, we had JJ Bittenbinder-esque school days where they taught us to throw our wallets and disrupt a mugger’s rhythm
But we did go to the original Wells Fargo and learned about the gold rush. That was fun 🙂
Nope, never heard of it (public school kid in Northern VA)
No.
I moved around a lot as a kid between several states, and none of the places I lived had that (even if I wasn’t in 5th grade at the time). Neither of my kids, and none of my grandkids have had that, either.
I suspect you two have an experience that might be more common in very rural areas? Because it’s certainly not a thing in cities or even small towns, in my experience.
They took us to a cotton processing place.
No. But we did do a Bob Evans Farms tour and in a different grade, a Malabar Farms tour, where they talked about farming and we got to see all the animals and feed some, plus take tractor rides.
Nope!
No, but then again, when would I ever need to know that?
Yes, in Wisconsin in the 1990s, except someone brought a tractor to school. No field trip. I feel like we did it multiple years in the spring. There was a big movement for PTO education since people kept getting eaten by them. I remember the county extension office doing education with adults, too. I remember my parents lining my siblings and me up and giving us the safety talk. We also weren’t allowed to have strings in our hoodies, and I had to keep my braid down the back of my shirt.
You know, my anxiety makes a lot more sense every time I remember my childhood.
I wish, but I did get to go to a cow festival in the third grade. Went to the local university and it was all about cows and what they do and what they contribute. Even got to milk one. It was awesome.
Id much rather have done this. 5th grade, a day was spent (girls) learning about our period. Boys got to go swimming. I wonder if my cousins in Kansas got to do farm safety.
I can say, with absolute certainty, that I never went on a field trip and learned how to use a seatbelt on a tractor…
I would bet money that no one from my fifth grade class has gone on to drive or own a tractor in their lives. My hometown was 1.8 square miles, and housed 10k people.
I was in boy scouts until I was 14. We went camping, we went swimming, we went ice skating, and we went to the shooting range. We did volunteer work and occasionally went to a baseball or basketball game. But I don’t think we ever went to a farm and learned about farm safety.
Yep! Kansas here! We had several farm kids in our class. I had a ranching family, we had a cotton farm, a camel farm and even an emu one. We visited all (including mine) and each owner would teach us stuff about what they did each day ect. Talk about safety. 2 different mem showed us their missing toes or fingers and talked about what happened.
The emu one was my favorite!
My great grandfather actually died from pneumonia in the late 30s trying to keep things going during the dustbowl and my grandma shared that with the class. Talked about what to do, why we plant tree lines now because of it.
It was my favorite school year.
From rural Missouri, prime farmland and beef country – no, we never had a day like this, lol.
Sadly, we probably needed one. A kid my age got trapped in a combine once and his cousin had to pull him out. Thankfully, other than needing crazy skin grafts on his arm and side, he was okay. Broke some bones, too. He made it through that but tragically still ended up dying young.
We did have a school bus safety day where we got to climb out the hatch onto the roof (the installed a platform with railings on the roof). We got to open the exit windows and jump out the back door too. Pretty fun.
Wait… tractors have seatbelts? I don’t remember that when I was driving my grandfather’s tractor around the yard, or when we were sitting on the wheel fenders while he drove. (Not a “working” farm—my grandfather was retired and had some acreage, using an old tractor to clear brush, drive us up to the big hill for fun, etc.)
I actually lived in a rural small town in MI in 5th grade (as opposed to the urban metropolis of Phoenix AZ in younger grades and the suburban Jr/Sr high school I attended later), and I have no memory of a farm safety day.
Nope nothing like this at all. But in 5th grade New Mexico Army National Guard bright one of their new medical evacuation Blackhawks to our elementary school which was one of the coolest days in school ever.
My area was done by the local 4-H group. Also at the fair they’d have a safety example of a pig carcass being dropped on an active PTO shaft.
Wow, no, but that’s awesome.
Yes , we also had a “drive your tractor to school day”
Also an Ohioan
How funny! My son (4th grade) went to an ag safety day on Wednesday of last week. However, we live in rural Kansas, so… it’s not NOT necessary. lol
My son did this when he was about 14 or 15 prior to working on a neighbors farm. This is in Northern Lower Michigan
I grew up in rural Wisconsin. We had a pretty robust AG program and 4H organization. I don’t remember a specific day, but I remember various field trips to different kinds of farms (honey, dairy, trees, etc) and safety was usually touched on. We all had a required ag class in junior high that went over the different types of ag industries in the state, general education about livestock, crops, and equipment, and some safety stuff. A lot of kids in the area grew up on farms and went into some kind of ag careers themselves, so I guess the school district thought it was a good investment. I wasn’t a farm kid, nor was I interested in an ag career. But the classes were interesting and the teacher who ran those classes was an absolute gem of a man. Everyone loved his class whether they were into the farm stuff or not.
No. I lived in a pretty small rural area too. My hometown had about 3,000 but it was by far the biggest town in the whole county. More than half my friends were farmers.
No, and I grew up on a farm. My farm safety lesson was listening to my uncle tell the story of how he lost his finger to a hay bailer.
In my school in 4th grade they taught you how to safely eat a blue crab.
No farm safety, but we had hunter’s safety in fifth grade
Yep. Ohio here. We had “ag day” in school, run by the high school FFA program. I went as a little kid, and then participated in organizing and running the program as an older teenager.
My kids have all done the same, attending as a youth and then working it as FFA members.
We hold it at the high school (which is the same “campus” as the middle and elementary school – all contained in two buildings).
Wow! I actually hadn’t even thought about this in years!! For me i can say it was a small enough hodunk school that farm safety makes sense but I do remember being taught to feed a baby cow, how to load haybales, a bunch of cool stuff I’ll probably never get to actually put to use haha. But it was so fun, I wonder if Its just like a ‘small town farm state’ thing
I did! My school district does this every year with 5th graders sponsored by the local 4H club
New England — The only hands-on safety things I did were a fire safety course in 3rd grade that included simulated building escape and a first aid & cpr course in high school.
Plus, obviously, lab & shop safety explainers in science & shop classes and some basics of stranger danger, fire drills, and who to call in an emergency in the early grades.
We didn’t, but we did have boating safety. I’m still scarred seeing the photos of a guy torn up by a propeller. Don’t drink and boat.
Nope but we did do a boat safety course in 8th
Yes, I grew up in a small agricultural town in NW OK and we attended a Farm Safety Day Camp. I think it was maybe put on by OK Farm Bureau. I’m not sure if it’s something they still do or not. I don’t remember many specifics of it but I think it was just teaching us about basic safety concepts.
Not in elementary. But we did have ag day in high school, where the FFA would bring the elementary kids over and go over all about farms at different stations (must have started after I left elem). They’d have ducklings and chicks, people would bring their horses and cows (we were rural and suburban). Then they’d sell the ducklings and chicks….to high school students…..which was not smart. I vividly remember someone on my bus riding home with a duckling in a shoebox.
Nowadays they just do plant sales I think, or take out the selling of ducklings and chicks. I hope anyway.
I’m from southwest Indiana and when I was in grade school, they put on an event at the fairgrounds called the farm fair. It was a field trip opportunity where we got to learn about all things farm related. I remember at one exhibit, there was a farmer showing the kids how to shear sheep. The farmer was explaining how at certain angles he was shearing blind, as in he couldn’t see what he was doing. One of the kids in the group didn’t get what he was saying and exclaimed, “You’re blind?!?”
30 years later and I still laugh when I think about it.
If you live in a big city; chances are you have never experienced this. If you grew up in an agricultural community, you most likely did. Many American children have a farm safety day. I went to one as an adult because I grew up in the burbs and had no clue that working with farm equipment could be so dangerous.