Two weeks after a devastating barn fire at the Titus Dairy Farm on Gorhams Bluff, people are still stopping by to help.
Jeff Titus estimates about at least 100 people have passed through his farm on the Kingston Peninsula in southwestern New Brunswick since a fire on Jan. 23 burned down most of his barn, killing 43 cows and 10 barn cats.
“The food started coming, the neighbours started dropping by, we started with the cleanup right away. It really hasn’t stopped since,” Titus told Information Morning Saint John.
Titus, who runs the dairy farm with his father, was in Saint John when he heard about the fire on Jan. 23.
He said he felt helpless during the drive home, telling himself to stay calm and not speed or run any lights. As he was driving along the Mackay Highway, he could see the smoke rolling up over the hills.
When he got to the farm, the road was packed with fire trucks, neighbours and people everywhere.
“I saw cows out all over the field and hay bales scattered around. It’s just such a crazy sight to walk into,” he said.
The firefighters finally left after midnight. The next morning, Titus said, the whole community showed up again.
Picnic tables with food and coffee were set up, a plumber arrived to restore the water, which connected to the house from the barn, and neighbours helped clean up the debris.
Two weeks later, dozens of people still stop by every day to help in some way, he said.
Four different farms took in the cows that survived the blaze, including two calves with little burns on their ears.
They had originally been meant to be beef cows, Titus said.
But the fire changed that plan.
“I’m going to have to keep them for the rest of my life now,” he said. “They’re going to be like the farm pets.”
He’s hoping to get the calves back to his farm by early summer and keep them outside with a little shed, but his cows, most of which are pregnant, will have to wait until he rebuilds his barn, likely by the fall.
In the meantime, they’ll stay with the farmers who took them in.
“The farming community is so generous,” Titus said. “They didn’t even blink an eye about where these cows were going.”
Ten of the cows are staying with Ron Wesselius at his Milkstream Holsteins farm, about 45 minutes from the Titus farm.
Wesselius was acquainted with Titus before the fire broke out, but he said he would have done the same for any dairy farmer. He said he’s prepared to take care of the cows until Titus rebuilds his barn.
He doesn’t remember a barn fire happening in the community in his three decades of farming, but he has taken in cows during other incidents, including some cows from Fredericton when farmers got flooded out by the Saint John River four years ago.
“First of all, it’s the right thing to do,” Wesselius said.
“Dairy farmers, it’s a tight-knit group of people. We like to help each other out when needed.”
Source: CBC
