At the end of summer, we had a string of bad weather come through the farm. As farmers who work outside, we’re always keeping an eye on the weather, but we didn’t know these storms were going to get as bad as they did! When the storms came through, the wind was so strong that it the roof came off of our milk room barn.
The storms came through on a Tuesday afternoon, and by Tuesday night our builder was out on the farm taking a look at the damage that was done. Before he was even at the farm, he looked at the blueprint of our barn, so he had a very good idea of what had to be fixed. It was amazing how quickly we could get going on the repairs. We also worked with our electrician and the plumbing company right away to get things going.
The next day we started with the cleanup. We tore down the damaged parts and by the end of the day the builders were already putting the roof back on. The rest of the work is cosmetic – getting the trim put back up and things like that. We are incredibly lucky that the damage was as minimal as it was. We could have lost everything, but it was just the milk room that was damaged.
Damage to the roof
When the storm hit, the farm’s parlor went out; we were running on generator power for about 18 hours. The cows were in the holding area. When the milkers noticed the walls of the milking parlor pushing in, the cows were moved back to their stalls in the barn and the milkers went down to the basement. At that point they didn’t know what was going to happen. Everyone’s safety is our number one priority. Our employees were smart and didn’t try to wait out the storm in the parlor when they noticed the walls pushing in, and we’re very thankful for that. No one was hurt when the milk room’s roof blew off.
As farmers, we have to keep a close eye on the weather. As always with Mother Nature, we can’t predict how bad a storm will be when it hits. This storm got worse quicker than anyone thought it would. We didn’t anticipate it to be as bad as it was. We had very little damage to the rest of the farm. Thank you to everyone who helped us get “back to normal” so quickly!