The Changelog

Whew. Lots has been going on the past couple of days.

First, many thanks to all that sent us e-mails, comments, and notes. We appreciate it! It's nice to have people the care.

Next, in addition to the first set of fire photos I posted, I have now added more photos: a second set of fire photos. Note that there are two pages to that as well.

I've also added some photos to the Grandpa's Farm set -- this shows what things looked like back in April, before the fire. The buildings that burned are the barn, calf barn, and chicken house.

On to the updates...

Monday I went out to the farm first thing in the morning. Some areas were still smoldering -- basically wherever there was hay. It was a bit concerning. I went up to the 2nd floor in the house and took some photos of the yard.

I headed on in to work. Later in the evening, I went back out to check on things. Two fire fighters were back out there with a fire truck dousing the remaining smoldering areas. Apparently the fire fighters had been checking on the place intermittently all day and had been out there with water earlier as well.

The Goessel Fire Dept. is an all-volunteer department. These people aren't getting paid for this, and they do an EXCELLENT job. Someone was out at 1AM Monday, again at 10AM Monday, then twice more with the truck. They did all this on their own -- I hadn't asked them to. It is amazing how much these people care about the community and taking care of fires.

I also never knew how long bales of hay burn.

Here's one of the new photos:

I never thought I'd be writing a post like this today.

As Terah mentioned already, there was a fire out at our farm today. We lost both barns and the chicken house. Several acres of mostly grass burned in all.

It's hard to see those buildings gone. There was so much history and so many memories in them. And that loss isn't just ours; so many people have fond memories from out there.

Before I go on, I've posted a few very preliminary photos. I haven't even downloaded all of them from the camera yet. Here's how our yard looks:



We're sad about this, but there's a lot to be thankful for. There are so many ways that this could have been worse. If the firefighters had been a few minutes later to the scene, we probably would have lost the only remaining buildings -- house, wash house, and elevator -- as well. The fire was starting to burn a hedge row from two sides. It got within a few feet of the house.

Somebody driving through the country noticed the fire and called it in. That in itself is fortunate, because people don't just drive through this part of the country all that often.

We're very fortunate to have such a wonderful and loving family. The people from the Goessel Volunteer Fire Department spent 7 hours of their evening out there, part of it in 100-degree heat. (The Walton Fire Dept. also responded -- I don't know how long they were there). Even our insurance agent (one of the barns was insured) came out -- and he didn't have to.

We hope that we'll get enough insurance money to let us rebuild something in the same style as the original barn.

And, most importantly, nobody got hurt.

But somehow, despite all these things, it still feels like we lost a little bit of Grandpa today.