Life on the farm got too exciting for us this week. Tuesday morning I went to help R get a cow and calf into the
barn. The calf was small and slow, and we were afraid it wasn’t
eating. I tried to give it a bottle, but it couldn’t quite figure out how
to suck so I was going to try again later. When I left R was
getting the net wrap out of the bale processor and was going to go fencing and
then to his roller over by Glentana.
I got home just in time to run a lunch to J and had just
gotten back home when M called and said “what’s wrong?” and I didn’t know
what he was talking about. He said J said there was a fire at the
farm. I ran out and saw thick black smoke over that way so I headed
over. R had been out fencing when our hired man called him and asked what was
burning. He didn’t know there was a fire and by the time he got home the
shop was pretty much gone. He was trying to get hoses hooked up, and I ran to get another hose off of a pump behind the house. I couldn't get it off so I ran back to the front to handle the hose we had while R went to get the hose off the pump. Our goal was to keep the fire out of the grass and trees between the shop and the house. I'm trying to spray water but nothing was happening. We
had no water because there was no power at the house. The fire melted the
line between the quonset and the shop and shorted out the line to the house.
Talk about a helpless feeling. I was worried about the fire getting to a propane tank and didn't think about the gas tank and diesel tanks beside the shop. We were trying to beat and stamp the fire
out and keep it from getting in to the trees when R said he thought the gas
tank was going to go and we should back up. Soon there was an explosion
and a huge fireball. It was probably the most awesome and scary thing I've ever seen. J was seeding by the highway
near Glentana and must have seen it blow from there because he called and said
“did the gas tank just blow up?” A neighbor to the north was out checking his cows and saw it from his place, too,
and headed our way. We've heard that it was visible at Opheim....30 miles away! At that point I thought the trees were going to be
gone. I didn't think about where the tank might have gone. Later I noticed the front part of the tank near the trees,
and we eventually found the major part of the tank up in the bull pasture. Thank God it
went west instead of east or it would probably have ended up in R living
room or hitting us. The fire trucks arrived shortly after and tried to
get the diesel tanks cooled down. The fire was in the grass heading up
the hill to the north and I pretty much beat that all out by myself. One of the diesel tanks coughed out some flames but didn't blow.
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| From the back side of the shop. The skid steer was in the shop. |
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| Diesel tanks and the stand where the gas tank used to be. |
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| The front of the shop |
It was just so weird how some stuff that was right in the
path of the fire was fine. It burnt the pile of net wrap and went all the
way around the quonset and back to the shop. There was a payloader
sitting there with a burned area underneath and no damage to the payloader. It melted a tire on our grader and damaged tires on our two stock trailers and burned out the wooden floor in one of them. The skid steer was in the shop so it’s
toast….literally. There was lots of old hay that smoldered for awhile,
but thank God there were no hay bales. Usually we have a huge stack
there. It burned some posts but didn’t get to the big wood pile and the
junk pile. I think every day about how it really
could have been so much worse. We’re really lucky. Thank goodness
R was close to home and I wasn’t the only one there. He should have been on his tractor 20 miles away but got hung up fencing. Thankfully someone saw the smoke and made a call. And thank God for the great neighbors and volunteer firefighters who came to help.
We had to call the power company to get the power back on at the house. That pump feeds the waterer for the cows also. We had no power to the quonset and barn until someone could get that wired back up. That was a bit of a problem since we still have heifers to calve, but nothing happened there during the night.
M wasn't there to fight the fire, and that's probably just as well. It would have taken him 30 minutes just to get to a pickup with his tractor and and another 20 minutes to get home. He didn't even go check the damage until the next day when he and C got the power back on. J didn't make it to the fire either but called and gave us orders. It was comforting that he was thinking more straight than we were while in the thick of things.
The next day was a bit too exciting, too. I was exhausted and wanted to sleep in a bit but I had to make lunch for M, and he had some crop insurance stuff to look up
that I had to find for him. R was going to take M's service truck to him
and I had to go bring him home. So I quickly made a taco salad
for J's and our hired man's lunches in case I wouldn’t have time later. Good
thing I did.
When I took R home it looked like there were cows in a
pasture they weren’t supposed to be in so we grabbed the 4-wheeler and went to
check. Sure enough they had broken down a gate and went south.
There was a broken wire on the gate into another pasture that we don’t want
them in yet so we had to fix that and run 3 cows out of there. We were
going to move them south in a couple of days so it wasn’t a big deal
really. R decided to feed and try to lure the rest so I went to give
them a little nudge in the right direction. The majority of them went,
but we didn’t want to push them too hard so that they took off without their
babies. By the time we got done with that it was after 1:00 and I still
had to make sandwiches and throw the lunches together. J didn’t get his
lunch until after 2, but it worked out because he needed me to help him move a
truck.
I was just eating my lunch at 3 when J called and asked
where the smoke was this time. I panicked thinking something had started
up at the farm again, but I looked out the window and couldn’t see anything so
I told J I’d drive up the road and investigate and found some grass and brush
on fire at the neighbor’s field. When I got there they were just headed
to their yard to get their water truck. I talked to J again and he said
R was coming with the fire truck that had been left at the farm in case
something flared during the night. R had just taken the fire truck back to town when J called him. He had a sickening feeling also when he saw smoke again but quickly realized it wasn't at his place this time. I was stomping fire out with my feet as
much as I could until R got there. He just about got stuck because the
ground is really boggy. The neighbors got back and promptly got their
water truck stuck. There was fire heading up the field so they made a
round around it with their tractor to stop that. Another fire truck was
there shortly after and the fire worked itself to water so it wasn’t long
before it was under control. It was stupid of them to not have their
water truck there if they were going to start a fire.
It’s funny because someone commented yesterday that they
never show up to help with a fire. There are two brothers and aren’t very
neighborly except when they want to borrow something from us. I beat out
a lot of fire today and they watched me more than they helped. I was a
little fired up after I got home. Not how I want to spend my afternoons.
We did not, however, lose anything that can't be replaced, and it could have been so much worse. I just don't want that excitement ever again!
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