Jumping from silo to silo

In our celebration of National Ag Week - here's my dad, Jack Anderson! We bought the farm from my parents, and my dad has helped us every single step of the way. I can't emphasize enough how we value his support, knowledge, and dedication. 

I don't remember when I took this picture, but I do know I took it to mark that dad jumped in between these silos - twice. 

In his own words:

Al and I were up on top of one of the silos one day working on some of the machinery up there that needed fixing. We had to next close the hatch on top of the silo right beside it. We looked over at that silo and speculated "rather than climb all the way down the silo we were on (80 feet in the air) and then climb 80 feet up the other silo, wouldn't it be easier and faster to just jump across?" 

We looked at the gap between the two silos (about 8 feet we guessed) and decided maybe that wasn't the smartest thing to do without taking some precautions, because you would only get one chance to complete the jump once you started. So we climbed down to the bottom of the silo we were on and measured the distance the silos were apart and tried to jump that distance on the ground. We both were able to do it but not with much distance to spare. So we climbed back up the silo and looked over the situation from up there. We dared each other to try it but were both too scared to "take the leap". So we climbed back down and dismissed it as foolishness--which it was.  

However----I was back up on that same silo a couple of days later by myself and looked over at the other silo and thought what the heck. I took off without any preparation and cleared the gap by maybe a foot or so. It was perhaps the stupidest thing I'd done at that point in my life, but I was glad I did it. Unfortunately, no one saw me do it, so what was the point? I, of course, told everyone about the jump but that's not the same.  

I did make that same jump about two weeks later when I climbed to the top again but with Patrick Fitzpatrick following close behind. While he was still on the ladder coming up, I jumped over to the other silo again, so although he didn't actually see me jump, he knew that I'd done it because when he got to the top, there I was on top of the other silo. I never did it again.  

Surprisingly, that was not even close to a lot more dangerous things I was involved in while I was farming, but it was the most dramatic.