December 19, 2007

• Fire

  

  As we approach the first anniversary of our fire I thought it was time for me to look at these pictures and begin to really face what has happened to our lives and to take some stock of the changes that have occurred.

  The above photo was taken by someone who drove down the road during the fire. It shows the cow barn gone and the heifer barn fully involved.  You can see my daughter and a friends son running behind the horse barn.  During the fire the heifers that were saved ran wild for awhile and they worked to round them up so they could be loaded into cattle trucks and taken to other area farms to be housed in friends and neighbors barns.

  

   The man driving the cat loader worked into the night and the next day putting out hot spots and then burying the cows that perished in the fire.  Then he pushed the debris into a pile over the hill that sits behind where the barn was.

  

  Piles and piles of hay smoldered for two weeks while the insurance company twiddled their thumbs deciding what they were going to do.  The town, which in almost three miles away suffered the effects of the smoke while this was going on.  All the neighbors were suffering the most.

  

   This ’53 Chevy Belair was housed in the side of the heifer barn.  Jason had bought it the summer before for $300.  He was going to restore it little by little.  It was in remarkable shape.  It was totally destroyed by the fire.  The next day he took the backhoe and demolished it and took out his anger and frustration out on the car.  How I wish I could have done the same thing.  But an 18 year-old can do that and get away with it but a 45 year-old mother has to be strong and not show so much negative emotion. 

  

  Now there will be no more cows milked on this farm, at least not by this generation.  Things cost too much.  My husband is very upbeat and his faith is such that I don’t think that it lets him face anything but optimism over this whole happening.  Unfortunately I have always been the practical one in the family.  Although I am now optimistic since he has finally gotten a job, I can’t help but let myself now mourn over what was lost.  Not the material, but the way of life.  It was a good way.  It was how we raised our children.  Always having their father available to them.  Having many if not most of the lessons of life constantly available to them at all times.  We were here and able to raise most of what we needed to live.  When things got tough we could just produce a little more food, cut a little more wood for the furnace, make more of our clothing, do whatever we needed to save some money and we got by.  Now that is changed.  Now we have to worry about how we are going to make this land pay for itself so that we can keep it for the generation to come. 

  Prayers that we find a way. 

   

  • 2:44 pm
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