Fire.

Yesterday was not a good day.  My good friend Ken had a fire start on his farm at 4:30am that consumed his hay pile, hay barn, skid steer loader, self propelled bale wagon, and livestock trailer.  I spent the majority of my day over there doing what I could to help.  I returned in the evening with Skyler to show him what had happened and worked on putting out hot spots that were flaring up.  One might look at this fire and think, "it's only some hay" but, that hay was worth $24,000!  The machinery was another $60,000 and the structure probably another $20,000.  In an instant, over $100,000 goes up in smoke.  The farm has insurance and hopefully everything will be rebuilt and or replaced.  The problem now is the 50+ head of cattle need hay to survive this upcoming winter.  Thankfully, several other farmers and ranchers are stepping up and offering hay.  For free.  That's what's so awesome about agriculture, fellow producers going out of their way in a time of need.

This was a New Holland LS190 skid steer.  It was glowing red when it was pulled out of the fire!

City Works donated their backhoe and loader to assist the fire department in tearing  down and removing the hay pile.

Taking temperature readings.  Nothing was hotter than 120 degrees.  Spontaneous combustion starts around 150 degrees.  This wasn't spontaneous combustion.

Big Deere 624H loader.

The bale wagon.

Tires burned off.

The only tire left on the skid steer.  It got so hot, aluminum melted in the engine bay.  That's 1250 degrees!

Loader carrying hay out to the field to be spread to cool.

More temp readings.

Note the bale starting to fall above the fire inspector's head!  He escaped, but just barely.

Ken's brother works for the city and was operating the backhoe.

Flare up.

Dousing with water.

More water.

The loader worked all day removing hay.

Out to the field.  The hay will all be loaded into a manure spreader and spread over the entire field.  Ken will then plow it all under this fall.

We spotted this deer last night.  He wasn't too worried about the fire, he only wanted to eat the delicious corn!

Simon and Skyler sitting on the model 60 Johnny Popper.

Skyler and Simon sitting in the D6 crawler tractor.  The D6 was used to pull the bale wagon and skid steer out of the fire.

The two of them playing on what was left of the gravel pile.  The gravel was used to fill a ditch so the loader and backhoe could cross.