The injured dairy worker had worked on this farm for 26 years. However, the injured dairy worker said that because of his long experience he did not need, and had not received, safety training. The tractor was going to pull the cultivator across a new field of corn to dig shallow irrigation ditches. The cultivator was built on the dairy farm. It consists of a rectangular frame of horizontal bars about 20 feet wide.
Vertical bars attach to the bottom of the frame to form teeth that break up the soil.
Two metal wheels, mounted five feet in from either side, create the irrigation furrows. When the cultivator sits on the two metal wheels it is unstable, and can tip forwards or backwards. This cultivator, built on the farm, had a metal pipe mounted on each side of the frame, projecting down and backwards. The cultivator was propped on these pipes, keeping the frame from hitting the ground. The dairy worker stood behind the cultivator and waited to connect the cultivator to the pull bar of a tractor.