At The Farm Gate

January 2010



Farm fire chills the heart



By Joanie Stiers



At a half mile away, I scan our house windows as I return home from errands or a family night out. I wish to find a calm, unoccupied interior by day. I expect headlight reflections by night. But subconsciously, I fear a fire’s glow.

On a January night six years ago, the brightness of my parent’s highest barn window signaled something was wrong. At second glance, I noticed the fog of smoke billowing at the roofline against the darkness on my parents’ farm. I dialed 911 as I relentlessly honked the car horn at my brother’s neighboring house. Four small-town, volunteer fire departments managed the massive, destructive blaze, which was fueled by 80-year-old wood and 750 bales of straw.

Fire on the farm evokes some of the best and worst memories of my rural life. The best remains the barnyard wiener roasts, especially those annual ones that jump-started the new 4-H year. But it was the barn fire that chilled my heart while it warmed the frigid, 10-degree January air to tolerable temperatures. Only when the fire settled to the foundation did I realize the heat it had been emitting to our observation point 100 yards away. The farm’s oldest building cast its final warmth in heat as opposed to companionship. We watched it die from the protection of the farm’s youngest, metal-sided machine shed.

The barn kept part of my brother’s showpig stock, including mother sows and weanling pigs that youth buy to raise and then exhibit at 4-H and county fairs. The stock finally had a respectable home after a major commitment of do-it-yourself labor to repair, paint and re-roof the aging, early 1900s structure three years prior.

Now, images of the fire stay burned in memory, including the silhouette of the barn’s skeleton within a 40-foot box of fire. I remember the barn’s new steel roof as it glowed like the burner on an electric range. I have vivid recollections of the volunteer firefighters’ efforts, my brother and parents’ reactions and the moment that helplessness overwhelmed me.

About 35 hogs died, and no humans were injured in the electrical fire. The farm suffered no other loss because relatives and friends teamed with firefighters to apply water to nearby livestock buildings that ashes could have ignited. My final conversation that night was with my brother, who was in the nearby farrowing house as the old barn smoldered. “Thanks for saving the rest of the farm,” he said. He returned to helping a sow deliver a litter of pigs, an unquestionable indication that life goes on.