Eight fire departments from three counties arrived at his dairy farm after a barn collapsed, but Marty Young said it was his friends and neighbors who came to lend support that overwhelmed him.
Young knew some of the roughly 100 people who came to Whey Street Dairy, a dairy farm on West Keeley Road that Young’s family has owned since 1959, but others were simply those wanting to lend a hand to a neighbor in need.
The firefighters have since left, but about a dozen neighbors, friends and fellow farmers remain at the farm this afternoon, clearing out debris and heavy, wet snow.
About a third of the 500-cow barn collapsed. Many of the 200 cows in the collapsed section were safe because they were in their stalls, where the metal bars from the pen protected them from the falling roof.
Others were not as lucky. Five cows died and 12 others were injured. Veterinary crews are at the farm to tend to the injured animals.
When asked what the barn looked like early this morning, Douglas Potter, who got there around 1:30 a.m., simply reached his hand over his head. Potter, himself about six feet tall, said the broken wood beams, metal roofing and wet snow filling the barn and covering the cows was taller than him.
Potter works for Dairy Support Services Company, hired by Young to handle crop production at the farm. Four or five employees were called to the farm, of whom more than half are also volunteer firefighters with the Cuyler Fire Department, Potter said.
Potter was among four crews working in the early morning to move the snow and debris to the feed rail in the middle of the barn, where heavy machinery could access and remove it. Others worked to clear the mess off the cows.
In one case, an injured cow was scooped up in a payloader.
“They showed up and did what they could to make sure the cows were safe,” he said.
Around midnight, Young heard a loud knock on his door. Young and his family live about three-quarters of a mile down the road from the barn, so when he saw it was Jorge Sanchez, an employee at the farm, he knew something was wrong.
“Usually it’s not good news at that time of night,” Young said.
Sanchez, who had just finished milking the cows in the milking parlor, a separate building, ran to Young’s house to let him know the barn collapsed. Young jumped out of bed, got dressed and ran to his neighbor Doug Randall’s house. Randall, fire commissioner for the Cuyler Fire Department and fellow dairy farmer, then called the rest of the department.
Sanchez and one other employee were working at the time, but three or four others arrived at the farm as soon as they knew what happened, Young said. The farm has 14 employees, including nine full-time workers.
John Rapp, of Rapp Dairy Nutrition in Fabius, is usually at Whey Street Farm to handle the nutritional plans for the herds of cattle. He uses computer programs to analyze the nutritional needs for the cows and then builds special diets to ensure the health of the cattle.
But on this day, after receiving a text message from a farmer and seeing coverage on TV, Rapp exchanged his computer for a pair of work gloves to help move the injured cows and clear debris.
“We’re helping, we’re doing what we can,” he said.
A combination of snow that wasn’t allowed to thaw and a bout of rain Tuesday made the snow on the roof extremely heavy and caused the collapse, Young said, a problem he said is on the rise this winter.
Farmers can usually plan on two or three warm days each winter to help thaw the snow on their barns’ roofs, Young said, but with temperatures below freezing since late January, there haven’t been any chances for the snow to melt. The snow on the roof of the collapsed barn hadn’t thawed since Christmas.
Firefighters used hoses to clear the snow off the roof of another section of the barn, which also suffered some structural damage, in order to prevent another collapse.
Young knew of about a dozen farmers in the state who’ve had barns collapse this winter. He couldn’t put a number on last winter’s figure, but knew there were many more this year than in past years.
This was Potter’s second barn collapse he’s helped at this winter. He wasn’t called to any last winter. The other was at nearby Barbland Dairy in Fabius, who had a barn roof collapse in late February. Potter, who also does work at that farm with Dairy Support Services Company, said he was out snowmobiling with the farm’s owner, a friend, when the roof collapsed.
While Rapp was helping this morning, he received a phone call from the owner of another farm he does work for, asking for someone to come over and shovel the snow off the roof of his barn.
Whey Street Dairy sells milk to the Cortland Bulk Milk Producers Co-op and Dairy Farmers of America, who in turn sell the milk to be turned into yogurt at Chobani and Fage, into mozzarella cheese at Leprino Foods and into pasteurized milk sold as far away as New York City and Massachusetts.
Despite the collapsed barn, the milking operation will continue. The farm was insured, Young said, which he hopes will cover much of the reconstruction expenses. He expects a full recovery for the farm he took over from his father Ernest in 1989, but knows it will take money and hard work.
“The moral support has been very gratifying,” Young said.
Source: Syracuse.com
