Burnt to the ground

UTICA, Minn. — Henry Yoder was about to pass the milk house on his way to the house after chores July 15 when something caught his eye.

“As I got lined up with the milk house door, I saw an orange reflection,” Yoder said.

That reflection was a fire that would level his Utica-area barn, force him to rebuild and cause him, his wife, Annie, and their 12 children to temporarily relocate their dairy herd.

“(Having a fire) it’s kind of indescribable,” Yoder said. “Your body goes through a lot of shocks in a short time.”

The day had been going normally. About 10 minutes earlier, Yoder, who is an Amish dairy farmer, had put in a new battery for his chart recorder outside his milkhouse. After checking on his cows and seeing a heifer that looked almost fresh, Yoder discovered the fire.

“I grabbed a bag of salt, and threw salt on the battery, and kind of got it down, but by that time (the fire) was burning up in the ceiling,” Yoder said.

Looking towards the milk house, he saw smoke coming out of the roof.

“I almost lost it (when I realized) … it’s out of my control,” Yoder said. “I ran out through the yard. … Everybody was going wild about it, and (Annie) just told us to stay calm and run in the barn and get everything out.”

The milking herd of 13 at the time had already been let out of the barn after milking. However, Yoder and his children began bringing out the horses, bull and tackle. Yoder did not retrieve anything from the milkhouse.

“(I) opened the door and it was full of smoke, and I just shut the door,” he said.

One of his children ran to a neighbor to call for help. The 911 call went through around 8 p.m.

Meanwhile, Yoder and the assembling crew of community members began to empty the shop about 20 feet from the burning barn.

However, soon an even more serious risk became apparent: the possibility of losing the house.

“The siding was melting,” Yoder said. “There was steam coming off of it.”

The sight of his house heating up was Yoder’s breaking point.

“I just felt like giving up,” Yoder said. “I went in the house and got the billfold and the checkbook and the check blanks and walked out. I felt like a poor man.”

As Yoder finished stowing his financials, the first fire truck entered the yard at about 8:25 or 8:30 p.m.

As the fire department arrived, they sprang into action, first spraying the house to cool the siding.

“One of the guys said, ‘We need water now,’” Yoder said. “The second one jumped out with speed behind him. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Adam Franzen, the fire chief for Lewiston, was one of the firefighters who responded that night.

“(I) knew right away that there was no saving anything,” Franzen said. “We put some water on the fire to keep it calm and protect all the other enclosures. … Basically, ‘defensive fire’ is what we call it in firefighting. (It means) there’s nothing to save other than to make sure that people stay out of there and the other buildings on the property don’t become on fire.”

Two other fire departments, Altura and St. Charles, responded as well. By around midnight, the last fire truck left.

Meanwhile, Yoder was figuring out what to do with his herd. Since there was a large group of community members gathered in his yard, Yoder seized on the extra help to load his cattle onto a neighbor’s trailer to transport them to temporary homes.

“A lot of the community was here that evening,” Yoder said. “It put a comfort in you that people care.”

In the days that followed, Yoder said they were showered with food and never had to worry about feeding the crews who volunteered to help them rebuild.

The fire had occurred on a Tuesday evening, and by Thursday, a backhoe arrived for debris, but part of the remains was still too hot. By Friday afternoon, however, they were starting on footings.

Yoder had loads of fill brought in and the new barn is built 3-4 feet higher than the old facility, which would get water in it during a rain.

On Saturday and Monday, a crew of 40 was laying blocks, and on Monday, they put in the pillars for the posts. On the following Tuesday, a week after the fire, the beams went up and they started with the pavement. By Wednesday, the hay mow floor was finished and the walls were up. On Thursday, July 31, the Yoders had a barn raising with 130 men working.

The completed barn has 22 stalls for their current 17 milking cows. There are also 20 stalls for their 12-13 horses and seven box stalls. The main area of the barn measures 36 feet by 92 feet. The barn is in an “L” shape, so the short end is an additional 40- by 40-foot area. They also have a 12-foot lean-to.

To this day, Yoder is not entirely sure of the cause of the fire. At first, he thought it was the battery he installed earlier that evening, but now he wonders whether it started through a short in the electric wire in the milk house.

“By the time we discovered (the fire), there was smoke coming out of the milk house,” Yoder said. “It could have been burning by the short on the wire (and) come back to the battery.”

On Aug. 12, three weeks to the day after the fire, the Yoders’ dairy herd returned.

“There’s still stuff to do, but it takes a lot of patience and time,” Yoder said.