Read this as a humorous story, not a horror story. It is funny to look back upon now that everyone is fine and the wine is safe...
My girls love to drive my small blue Ford 1215 tractor. It's easy to drive and pretty safe because it stops if you take your foot off the accelerator. If one kid gets to drive, the other will cry non-stop until it's her turn.
So we finished bottling and wanted to bring some of the wine back to our place. I got the little tractor out and hooked up a trailer to it. I thought I'd let Kelsey drive over, but Kelsey bragged to Sophie so now I needed 2 turns. I picked Sophie to drive over and Kelsey to drive back because there would be more care needed on the drive back with the wine load.
Sophie's drive over was ok. We loaded up the trailer, Kelsey fires up the tractor, everyone jumped on the back, and we got under way. As we're heading down the hill, the tractor started slipping on the gravel. It was being pushed down the hill by the overloaded trailer. Kelsey did the intuitive, but wrong thing, which was to turn into the hill and step on the brake. Good idea for a car, bad when you're already sliding and pulling a trailer.
So here we are sliding down a hill, and now jack-knifing. I'm thinking about roll-over at this point. Oddly, it was very quiet in the back, no one is even screaming or yelling foul language. I decided to help Kelsey straighten out and jumped from the trailer to the tractor, but my foot didn't completely make it before the 2 heavy objects crashed together. With my toe pinched between the tractor and trailer, I could not reach the controls, but did have Kelsey's attention. She followed directions very well and turned back to straight downhill and stepped on the gas to run ahead of the trailer. That released my foot and stopped the sliding. No broken bones. Definitely learned to cut back on the children operating heavy equipment except in more controled situations. Kudos to Galo for the excellent triage medical work. -Jon-
