At 14, Sam Lawrence talks about farming like an old-timer.

The middle school student often works the family farm in Noble County decked out in jeans, plaid shirt, boots with spurs and a baseball cap. Sam can’t imagine any other way of life. Sure, he plays video games, surfs the Internet and totes a cellphone like many kids his age.

But there is a seriousness about him that many might call a sense of purpose. Sam merely calls it “all I know.”

“It would hurt if I couldn’t help out,” he said, during an unseasonably warm weekday this month. “I mean, kids are a big part of what gets done on a farm. I enjoy what I do. It would definitely hurt if it was taken away.”

The U.S. Department of Labor may break Sam’s heart. The agency is seeking to tweak its regulations with a controversial proposal that would include greatly limiting the work children younger than 16 can perform on farms.

Labor officials maintain that young workers are significantly more likely to die or suffer a serious injury doing agricultural work than in any other industry. A spokeswoman for the department said more than 100 youngsters die from farm-related injuries every year.

‘It’s kind of crazy’

Under initially proposed changes, if a parent or guardian is the sole owner of an agricultural operation, their children are exempt. But if the adults are part-owners – like Sam’s parents – youths in some cases can’t even bale hay.

“It’s kind of crazy,” said his mother, Susan, who with her husband, Scott, is raising three children on 10 acres in Avilla.

“I mean, I know what they’re trying to do, but I don’t think they really understand how a family farm works these days with the cost of equipment and other expenses,” she said. “It’s rare that a person starts a farm from scratch.”

That’s one reason the Lawrence family shares 158 acres with Sam’s grandfather, who owns the majority of the property. They grow alfalfa and raise livestock for 4-H shows and freezer beef. The clan also boards horses for themselves and others.

Sam’s horse is Jet. The Labor Department wouldn’t prevent his contact with the animal the teen calls “my brother,” but it would stop him from feeding, cleaning and tending to livestock – something he spends at least 20 hours a week doing.

“I know accidents can happen, but that’s why they call them accidents. Nobody expects it to happen. We try to take the necessary precautions to reduce or avoid accidents,” Susan Lawrence said.

Northeast Indiana has experienced tragedy from farming accidents. In 2010, a 13-year-old boy died when he was apparently struck by a Belgian draft horse in Kosciusko County. Investigators said Wyman Miller was trying to retrieve some horses from the woods to feed them when the accident occurred.

Two years earlier, Nathan Lengacher suffered critical injuries when he got caught in rotating spikes used to grind corn inside a silage wagon near Harlan. Nathan survived but lost his right leg.

His mother, Viola Lengacher, said she blames no one and disagrees with rule changes the Labor Department is proposing. The family runs a dairy farm and also grows corn.

“What are the kids going to be doing while we’re in the fields?” Lengacher asked. She has 11 sons and a daughter. “I consider what happened an act of God because of what we’ve learned from this. We’ve learned patience, how to care for one another and what really matters in life.”

Nathan, now 18, still works on the farm but is limited in what he can do.

Dubious data?

Bill Field is a Purdue University professor working in the Agricultural Safety and Health Program. He said the labor agency’s proposed regulation is “vague and misleading.”

“They’re including anything that happens on a farm,” he said. “That includes a child injured riding an ATV, a gunshot wound from hunting or if a child drowns in a pond.”

Field said he is not minimizing such injuries but said it is not fair to “inflate numbers to create public outrage.”

An outpouring of concern from farmers nationwide and members of Congress prompted the agency to “re-propose” its child labor regulation this month. The department received 10,000 comments nationwide agonizing over the pending changes.

“The Department of Labor appreciates and respects the role of parents in raising their children and assigning tasks and chores to their children on farms and of relatives such as grandparents, aunts and uncles in keeping grandchildren, nieces and nephews out of harm’s way,” Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis said in a Feb. 1 statement.

She said the department will benefit from further comments from the public as it works through the process.

“We will continue to work closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to ensure that our child labor in agriculture rule generally, and the parental exemption specifically, fully reflect input from rural communities,” Solis said.

No date for a decision has been announced.

Cindy Berning runs a family dairy farm in southern Allen County. She said if the rules remain, many children may turn their backs on agriculture.

“You have to start them young or else when they get older they’re not going to be interested,” the Hoagland resident said. “If you don’t raise them on it, when they get out of high school, they won’t want to take over the family farm.”

Echoing others, Roger Hadley, president of the Allen County Farm Bureau, voiced concerns early on. In a December interview, Hadley said the proposed rules regarding children under 16 weren’t “even practical” because they would interfere with even “simple farm work.”

Hadley said the restrictions would result in costly expenses for farmers because they would have to hire workers for everyday jobs.

Rachel Tobin-Smith, executive director of the child abuse and neglect agency SCAN, said she is no expert on farm culture, but children’s safety should always come first.

“A parent should make sure that the jobs are age-appropriate and that they’ve been trained in the safety aspects of the job,” she said.

Sam’s place

For Sam, farming is in his DNA. His family ties to growing date to the late 1800s.

“Up here is where I throw the hay down for the horses,” he said, as his sisters, 12-year-old Sarah and 7-year-old Sage, look on from atop a 10-foot hayloft. “I do this pretty much every day, and it’s safe. I’m not allowed to do everything. My parents tell me what I can and can’t do.”

Sarah says the same.

“I hate lazy days,” she said, grabbing her long red hair as if to put it in a ponytail. “There are some days when there may not be a lot to do. I don’t like those days.”

Hadley recently said the department would be making a big mistake if it limits kids’ exposure to agriculture. The work ethic learned on farms would be lost.

“The (government) is really meddling in something that they don’t know anything about,” Hadley said.

As for those startling statistics about farm deaths, opponents of the Labor Department’s proposed changes point to other figures that are just as stark. For example, motor vehicle crashes remain the leading cause of death for U.S. teens, accounting for more than one in three fatalities, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Just like anything else, you have to be careful on the farm,” Susan Lawrence said. “We don’t let our children run all over unsupervised. We have safety measures in place.”

Sam said he knows his place.

“I want to farm the rest of my life,” he said. “I want to help out as much as I can.”

pwyche@jg.net