Ed Mower has been through this once before and the second time is no easier.
“I never really got over that other fire,” Mower said while firefighters tended the smoldering remains of his barn on Jordanville Road Friday morning. “I don’t know what this will do to me.”
The Mower Farm lost a 12,000-square-foot barn to a fire that started at about 10 p.m. Thursday. Lost in the fire were two horses, a dog and about 12,000 bales of hay, along with most of the farm’s horsing equipment. Mower and a hired hand, James Dunbar, were able to usher eight other yearlings out of the barn.
“I’m thankful that it was summer,” said Mower, whose horses were mostly outdoors when the fire started. “If this was winter it would have been a tragedy.”
Mower’s previous fire was just such a tragedy. The farm lost a dairy barn just up the road from Thursday’s fire in January 1986.
“I lost a lot of cattle,” Mower said of the fire a quarter of a century ago. “It almost put me out of business, but I hung in there.”
The Mower Farm got out of the dairy business and sold off the cows about five years ago. Mower has since turned his attention to raising race horses on 600 acres, a vast expanse extending almost as far as the eye can see from his back porch.
Losses in the fire have been estimated at approximately half a million dollars and will take time to be replaced — “Now I don’t even have a lead rope,” Mower said — but after farming in the area for more than 50 years, more than money was at stake.
“That barn was more than just a barn,” Mower said. “I lived there. I looked forward every day to going to that barn and working on this new venture.”
The barn housing his horses and his hay stood a few steps from Mower’s home. A tool shed flanks the lost barn’s other side and was also spared.
“Even though this was bad luck, the Lord was looking out for us,” he said, “because the wind was blowing in the right direction.”
The mutual aid call went out at 10:10 p.m. Thursday and drew response from at least five departments, a “Ye All Come” call, as one veteran Van Hornesville firefighter described it.
Mower and Dunbar rushed to the barn after the fire call was made. They saved which animals they could then began moving equipment away from the flames to salvage that, as well. The burned-up remains of a $7,000 generator sits at the edge of Mower’s lawn, a reminder of the materials that must now be replaced.
“Every farmer’s nightmare is a barn fire,” he said. “As long as you’re farming, you live with this nightmare.”
Mower has now lived through the nightmare twice. His eyes teared as he talked Friday, reflecting on what was lost while considering the work that lies ahead.
“I’ve been here over 50 years,” Mower said, “and in five minutes ...”
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Ed Mower has been through this once before and the second time is no easier.
“I never really got over that other fire,” Mower said while firefighters tended the smoldering remains of his barn on Jordanville Road Friday morning. “I don’t know what this will do to me.”
The Mower Farm lost a 12,000-square-foot barn to a fire that started at about 10 p.m. Thursday. Lost in the fire were two horses, a dog and about 12,000 bales of hay, along with most of the farm’s horsing equipment. Mower and a hired hand, James Dunbar, were able to usher eight other yearlings out of the barn.
“I’m thankful that it was summer,” said Mower, whose horses were mostly outdoors when the fire started. “If this was winter it would have been a tragedy.”
Mower’s previous fire was just such a tragedy. The farm lost a dairy barn just up the road from Thursday’s fire in January 1986.
“I lost a lot of cattle,” Mower said of the fire a quarter of a century ago. “It almost put me out of business, but I hung in there.”
The Mower Farm got out of the dairy business and sold off the cows about five years ago. Mower has since turned his attention to raising race horses on 600 acres, a vast expanse extending almost as far as the eye can see from his back porch.
Losses in the fire have been estimated at approximately half a million dollars and will take time to be replaced — “Now I don’t even have a lead rope,” Mower said — but after farming in the area for more than 50 years, more than money was at stake.
“That barn was more than just a barn,” Mower said. “I lived there. I looked forward every day to going to that barn and working on this new venture.”
The barn housing his horses and his hay stood a few steps from Mower’s home. A tool shed flanks the lost barn’s other side and was also spared.
“Even though this was bad luck, the Lord was looking out for us,” he said, “because the wind was blowing in the right direction.”
The mutual aid call went out at 10:10 p.m. Thursday and drew response from at least five departments, a “Ye All Come” call, as one veteran Van Hornesville firefighter described it.
Mower and Dunbar rushed to the barn after the fire call was made. They saved which animals they could then began moving equipment away from the flames to salvage that, as well. The burned-up remains of a $7,000 generator sits at the edge of Mower’s lawn, a reminder of the materials that must now be replaced.
“Every farmer’s nightmare is a barn fire,” he said. “As long as you’re farming, you live with this nightmare.”
Mower has now lived through the nightmare twice. His eyes teared as he talked Friday, reflecting on what was lost while considering the work that lies ahead.
“I’ve been here over 50 years,” Mower said, “and in five minutes ...”
