John,
This story isn't any great surprise to me.
Farmers (especially dairy farmers and their staff) tend to be rather blas'e about some of their equipment, especially electrical gear.
Over the years, I've seen it all, machinery held together with baling twine or #8 fencing wire, broken flexes "repaired" with strip connectors and a tonne of electrical tape, in some instances, there is more than one of these "field modifications" in the same flex.
Some of these clowns have no respect at all for electricity or other people's safety (let alone their own).
The idea that you can keep a milking machine going by jamming a screwdriver in the vacuum blower contactor, because it keeps going out on the overload, due to lack of maintenance, goes to show a distinct lack of intelligence or any idea how these things are supposed to work.
I could write a book about the dodgy stuff I've seen on farms, not just dairy farms either, there seems to be a part of a farmers psyche that says that the cheaper and the quicker you can do a repair, the better that repair is.
Don't get me started on their lax attitude to HV lines near their properties, that is a whole different kettle of fish.
