Tragic tractor accident didn't stop island farmer

AMHERST ISLAND — Dave Willard was paralyzed from the waist down 19 years ago in a tractor accident at the age of 35. But that didn’t stop him. The former bodybuilder and owner of two fitness centres works full-time on his sheep farm on Amherst Island, in Lake Ontario, southwest of Kingston. He has an elevator in his house. What follows is an interview with Farmers Forum.

I was transporting some 700 lbs. round bales, which I had used just that one winter because my square bale supplier had retired. So I went with round bales, which I never liked because they take the camaraderie out of haying, meaning getting a bunch of guys together and haying, something I had done all my life.

I was coming into my own barnyard and the tractor was starting to get stuck and I accelerated. I had one bale sitting on just the two prongs on the front of the tractor a foot off the ground so that nothing could go wrong and I raised the loader because the tractor started to sink and accelerated and I was watching the debris in front of the front tire and realized that the loader was well up.

Just as I had the thought, ‘Oh, I had better see how high that bale is,’ it hit me. One or two seconds more and I could have saved myself. It’s one of those time and chance incidents. One more second would have been enough and I could have avoided the impact of the bale. But 600 or 700 lbs on top of me and that was it. I went to step on the clutch and I couldn’t. I looked down to see what was going on and that’s when I realized I couldn’t move my leg and I knew right away what had happened.

I was able to reach the toggle switch with my hand and shut the tractor off. About 15 minutes later a township truck went by and he could tell there was something wrong and he stopped.

Yes, interestingly, I had no other injuries. No scraped face. Nothing. All I remember is a huge impact, which knocked me down on the seat. I ended up on my elbows on the seat. But I didn’t hurt my neck, head, no scratches."

Four months. You have to learn to roll over and just get mobile. There was a lot of stuff to go through.

Briefly, I entertained the thought of selling the sheep. My spinal cord wasn’t severed, so in the early days you always maintain hope and the doctors encourage you to keep some hope. You might get some recovery. I had only been here (back on Amherst Island) five years and had retired from the fitness industry two years before. Everything had just started to come together, so I hated to pack it in that soon. As it turned out, sheep are fairly easy to manage.

In terms of farming, the most frustrating thing is trying to explain to someone else how to do something; for example, to tip up a sheep, just to sit it up on its hind end and not to be able to demonstrate it yourself. That is very frustrating. There were a couple of times too when a sheep desperately needed my help because of a lambing situation or whatever and I couldn’t quite get to it and that nearly drove me nuts in the beginning. Over time you learn to accept.

The biggest tool for me is the modified lawn tractor with a hand control and a platform on the back, which allows me to spread square bales in the winter time. I have actually delivered lambs from the tractor seat, just reaching down.

The coping mechanism I’ve used is that I ignore the fact that I am in a wheelchair. I don’t think about it and carry on as if I’m not in a wheelchair. And, if I see someone else in a wheelchair, to me it’s very depressing. I find it hard to believe that that’s what I look like to other people. I guess it’s denial but it works. I remember talking to someone in the hospital a couple of years ago and she said there are a number of people who use that type of coping mechanism to ignore the problem and carry on the best you can. You don’t dwell on it for sure.

It took me nine years, believe it or not, to feel emotionally normal again. Having been raised in the country and very active and working out my whole life and shearing sheep. To be unable to do those things was overwhelming. I was suicidal for a long time but I had two small children and that kept me here. Had it not been for them I probably would have packed it in just out of frustration.

I’m relatively healthy. There’s still joy in life. You can find joy in a number of places.

I felt that I was in paradise when I moved back to the island. My kids were three and one. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Then the accident comes, devastation. It ruined my marriage. We had planned to have four kids… But you carry on. I got remarried and had another child. This is a wonderful place. I honestly wouldn’t want to be anywhere else on earth.