The Rural Voice, 2004-05, Page 16cker- havefouaht
>elo barn fires with the
1enerous friends, neighbours
and suppliers
Jf being tested by fire makes you
stronger, Gary and Nancy Becker
should be tough as steel by now.
They not only survived a fire that
destroyed their barn in 1983, but
they've now bounced back from a
second barn fire in 2002.
A young couple just starting out
back in 1983, they were farming beef
and pigs in an old-style bank barn
when fire broke out in March 1983,
destroying the barn.
Gary grew up on a dairy farm and
had been working for a neighbouring
dairy farmer so they decided they
wanted to go into dairy. In that high
interest rate period it was a nerve-
wracking move. They built a new
dairy barn, which in turn, burned in
the most recent fire.
The Becker family had gone off to
church on November 24, 2002,
blissfully unaware there was a
problem in the barn. "We were just
nicely seated in church -and we heard
a few beepers go off and the firemen
left," Gary recalls. A few minutes
later an usher arrived break the news
that a neighbour had phoned to tell
them their barn was on fire.
"From the time we left here to the
time their beepers went off it
couldn't have been 15 minutes,"
Gary recalls. "It's unbelievable that it
could happen that quickly."
The cause of .the fire was never
identified. Though it started in the
12 THE RURAL VOICE
feed room, none of the motors should
have been running at that time except
the washer for their milking system.
The Beckers consider themselves
lucky, despite their difficult times.
Just 30 feet from the barn that burned
they had built a newer heifer barn,
but because the wind was blowing in
just the right direction, the paint
wasn't even scorched on that
building.
Another tarp -covered machinery
shed near the barn also survived
without the plastic tarp being
damaged.
"We were in church that
morning," said Nancy of their good
fortune. "I'm sure it helped. It was a
bad day but it could have been
worse:"
By the time the family arrived
home the firemen had moved all the
cattle from the burning barn into the
heifer barn.
"By the afternoon there would
easily be 100 people here helping,"
Gary remembers. At lurch time there
were women providing coffee and
lunch to the firemen and other
volunteers.
The barn had hay storage above
the stable and the hay fuelled the fire.
A high -hoe was brought in to knock
down the structure of the barn and
scoop out the metal and straw so the
fire wouldn't smoulder for days.
When a shovelful of the smouldering
debris would be deposited on the
ground, about 10 people would
descend to sort out the steel or
concrete, Gary says. Neighbours
arrived with three manure spreaders
to take the straw out on the fields and
spread it.
"All these people dropped what
they had planned for the day." Gary
recalls. "They had a lot better things
to do than a dirty job and putting
their equipment through abuse. And
the next day people were here again.
Three days after the fire it was all
cleaned up."
"We live in a good spot here,"
adds Nancy. "We've got a lot of
really supportive neighbours."
The amount of food delivered by
wellwishers was overwhelming, she
remembers.
By shortly after lunch the cows
had been transported to three
nearby dairy farms. Gary's
brother Warren. took a third of the
'herd, Nancy's brother Lorne
Underwood took a third and the other
third went to their neighbours, and
Gary's former employers, Roy and
Agnes Diemen (who, ironically, had
suffered their own barn fire years
earlier).
"They were all well looked after,'
Gary says of his cows.
He helped out with milking from
time to time on their relatives' farms
but with the cattle off in other barns