Up in Flames.

Unless you were living under a rock this week, you probably heard about the massive structure fire just north of Monticello last Monday. Unfortunately, that structure was full of virtually all of our hay and some of the equipment we use to bale our hay. We’re so grateful for, and appreciative of, the 30+ first responders that showed up from all over to assist and get the fire under control that morning, and throughout the day on Monday.

This shed was not located at our house so no people or animals were harmed and for that, we’re thankful. One of the neighbors saw the fire around 1:15am that morning and immediately called it in. We received a phone call around 1:30am and Dylan made his way over. The shed is about 15 minutes from our house and by the time he or first responders arrived, it was too late to save anything.

If you’ve been following us at all, you may have noticed the long days we put in during the summer to bale hay. It’s difficult to think about all of those hours and wasted effort, especially when I used about half of my time off from my “real job” to bale all of that hay. I should have just used it on an actual vacation!

We’ve been humbled by the outpouring of generosity and kindness we’ve received over the last week. We’ve had so many people reach out to check on us, bring us delicious meals, and offer help when we’re ready to start cleaning up. We appreciate you!

Some of the hay in this shed was already sold (and paid for!) so we’ve been working with those customers to refund their money and help them make connections with other farmers who can hook them up with high quality hay for their livestock. We only had a couple of bales of hay at home for our own herd and ran out at the end of last week. We bought several semi loads last week and started trucking it in over the weekend. We purchased round bales, which we’re not really set up for, so we’ll have to figure out how to make that work!

We lost the large square baler, but not the small square baler so we’ll be making a lot of small square bales the rest of the summer. We also found and leased a round baler that will get us through the rest of this hay season. We’re going to struggle with storage a little bit but should be able to move some equipment down to our farm in Bement to make room for our 3rd (and hopefully 4th!) cutting(s) of hay in the storage we have at our house. We haven’t had much luck finding a large square baler but hope we’ll snag one in the off-season this winter.

We’re waiting for insurance to give us the “all clear” to go ahead and start cleaning up the site. We hope to start on cleanup this week or next.

We’re hearing that the wait time for a new building is very long…two years or more, depending on what you want. We haven’t looking into this much yet but we’re really hoping to get something in place for next hay season so wish us luck!

If you didn’t know, the farming community ALWAYS comes together to help in situations like this. We’ve had countless local (and not-so-local) farmers reach out and offer us the use of their equipment, help us make connections to find hay for our herd, help with cleanup, etc. Farmers are amazing people and we’re grateful to know some of the best!

Farmers are also some of the most resilient people. That day really sucked but we’re figuring it out and pushing forward because that’s what we do.