91Èȱ¬

More than £45,000 has been raised for a farmer left paralysed from the waist down after an accident at work.

Tim Parton, who manages a farm on the Staffordshire and Shropshire border, also had a foot amputated after he was injured while a tree was being cut down in March.

Mr Parton said there was "no point in moping" and he hoped to be back on the farm as soon as he could.

Friend and colleague Michael Kavanagh has helped to keep the farm running and set up a Go Fund Me page.

Mr Parton has been on a ward at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham for six-and-a-half weeks.

He said the tree had been damaging sheds on the farm and "we agreed that we'd cut it down".

He said he had started the process of taking the tree down like he had done "100 times before" but the "last limb didn't want to play ball".

"Safety's always top of my agenda," he said. "So I always thought it wouldn't happen to me, because I'm always so particular about what I do and how it's done."

Speaking about the support he had received since he was injured, Mr Parton said he was "just so humble" and could not "put it into words how I feel that people can be bothered with me".

He said: "I've got to gather the pieces I've got left and use what I've got left to play the game.

"It'll be a different game, but there's no point in moping. I can't change it. It's happened."

Although figures suggest fatalities in the industry have fallen in the last 40 years, there were 32 recorded fatalities in the agricultural industry between April 2023 and March this year.

Mr Kavanagh said: "I'm not surprised in a way as to how much support has been given to Tim.

"Tim has given his advice so freely to so many farmers, that so many people know him and so many people [will] have learnt things from Tim and he's just a great guy, so people will want to give back."

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