AgrAbility Support Network Peer Advocates
Take advantage of your opportunities – such as obtaining help from the Oklahoma AgrAbility Project – was the first advice Keith offered people with disabilities who want to continue working in agriculture.
“They need to get a hold of (AgrAbility),” Keith said. “I didn’t have any guidance. I had to do things by trial and error.”
Keith had bilateral upper and lower extremity amputations due to injuries and frostbite he sustained in a plane crash in 1971. After four months in the hospital and intensive physical therapy, Keith returned home.
With deep roots in agriculture, Keith maintained a cow/calf operation until 1998. When his cows became “too tame” to handle properly, Keith and his wife began raising only hay – weather permitting, of course.
Keith was trained in April to be a peer advocate in the Oklahoma AgrAbilty Support Network. Through the network, peers with experience adapting to disabilities will be connected with farmers or ranchers with newly acquired disabilities to support their adaptation to disability issues.
“If someone has a disability and wants to continue farming, they should talk to us, the counselors, and find out how we did it,” Keith said.
In other words, make hay while the sun shines.