Injured farmer Ryan Fawns is shown with his wife, Casie, and one of their children, in this photo accompanying the GoFundMe fundraiser set up on their behalf by Deanne Sweet and Loretta Fawns. Among other expenses faced by the family, their home will need to be renovated to make it accessible for a man no longer able to walk.
Fundraisers organized for Ryan Fawns and family
UXBRIDGE — A 31-year-old Uxbridge-area farmer is recovering in hospital after being run over by a tractor and paralyzed from the waist down as he baled hay alone on July 23.
The local community has rallied in support of Ryan Fawns, a married father of two young children. As of Aug. 2, a GoFundMe campaign collected 425 donations totalling $80,000 toward a $100,000 goal. A fundraiser auction is also scheduled Sept. 21 at the Uxbridge Sale Barn, which continues to accumulate donated items to go on the auction block.
Family friend Steve den Oude — a local cash-cropper, custom operator and longtime employer of the injured man’s father — said a neighbour found Fawns lying in the field, still conscious, about four hours after the accident. His phone was crushed so he couldn’t summon help himself.
Durham Regional Police responded around 10:10 p.m. to the site north of Uxbridge and south of Udora, in the area of Fowlers Road and Concession Road 7. Fawns was transported by air ambulance to a Toronto trauma centre.
“Ryan’s wife kind of realized he had been gone too long, and I don’t know if he told anybody exactly what he was doing that day. He was kind of a fair ways off the road,” den Ouden explained. Phone calls went out and the 33-year-old neighbour found him with the open-station tractor and round baler nearby, still running.
It’s believed that a bale failed to tie properly, so Fawns ejected it onto a slope, then got off the tractor. “He was going to unroll it and bail it up again,” den Ouden said. “I think he parked the tractor crossways and left the bailer running, and I guess the vibration got the tractor moving again … and it headed down the hill and went over him.”
Ryan Fawn and his wife, Casie, live on a crop and beef farm with his parents. He also works off the family farm as a mechanic servicing excavators and bulldozers with Toromont Cat.
den Ouden reported that Fawn is in “good spirits” while continuing to recover from his spinal injury and a broken arm at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. “He’s got all kinds of plans for the future, and he’s telling people what to do, so that’s all good.”
He also lauded the “tremendous, tremendous response” from the community for the upcoming auction fundraiser at Gary Hill Auctions in Uxbridge.
An organizer of that event, Dick Ott, landlord of the auction building, counted about 20 larger items donated to the auction by Aug. 2, including a used hay elevator, Cockshutt 30 tractor and two new chainsaws. Smaller items deemed to be worth $200 or less will go into a planned online auction, which will be held in the two days leading up to the Sept. 21 live auction — the first in-person event at the auction venue since the pandemic. Potential donors can reach Ott at dick@huntsafe.ca or 416-885-4762.
Ryan Fawns.
