MANTUA, Ohio — Blair and Karen Kotkowski consider themselves lucky, even though a fire just devastated their meat goat operation and destroyed their barn.
It could have been worse. Blair had been in the barn cleaning bins less than an hour before the fire started.
“We were very lucky,” Karen said. “He would have been in there, dragging goats out, getting smoke inhalation and all that.”
The Kotkowskis’ main barn — formerly a dairy barn with 56 tie-stalls — burned down Oct. 31. They lost two-thirds of their Kiko-Savanna goat herd, a skid steer valued at $42,000, a square baler valued over $40,000 and around 300 square bales of second-cutting hay. Their Great Pyrenees, Missy, narrowly escaped with her life.
As if that wasn’t enough, nine days after the barn fire, one of their silos caught fire and is expected to burn for months.
“You know, you put the fire out, it’s a done deal, right? It’s not done. I don’t know. It’s not a done deal,” Blair said.
Fire
The fire broke out around 4 p.m. on Halloween, about 20 minutes after Blair and Karen left to run errands in Kent.
Minutes after the fire started, Mike Jones, the Kotkowskis’ cousin, noticed the smoke from the nearby Lakeside Sand & Gravel Inc, and decided to investigate. When he arrived, the interior of the barn was already engulfed in flames with Missy and 24 goats inside. Jones walked around the side of the barn, shouting to make sure Blair and Karen weren’t inside and then grabbed a piece of lumber to knock the gate trapping Missy down.
Missy burst out of the barn covered in flames and rolled in the mud to extinguish them. She was taken to Lakeside Sand & Gravel to be hosed off, and later VCA Great Lakes Veterinary Specialists to receive emergency treatment. She sustained burns on her face and lost a lot of fur, but was released in less than 24 hours. She’s currently recovering at home with the 12 goats the Kotkowskis had in their pasture the night of the fire.
“When we bought her home the second day or day and a half, I let her out, and every single goat came up to the fence like ‘Missy, are you OK?’ Every one of them,” Blair said.
Fire crews battled the blaze until after midnight on Nov. 1, responding from Mantua Shalersville Fire Department, Russell Township Fire Department, Montville Volunteer Fire Department, Middlefield Fire Department, Garrettsville Freedom Nelson Joint Fire District, Munson Township Fire Department, Streetsboro Fire Department, Newbury Fire Department, Ravenna Fire Department, Auburn Fire Station and Kent Fire Department. At least 15 fire trucks responded to the scene, along with a large water truck from Lakeside Sand & Gravel Inc that carries twice the amount of water the tankers do.
As the fire raged, fueled by 45-mile-an-hour wind gusts, the Kotkowskis were in danger of losing a second barn that housed their cattle and an adjacent woodlot to the north. The tree line and cattle barn blackened in the flames that reached out toward them.
“There was fire just clear up in the top of 60-foot trees. Every time the wind would gust, they would glow bigger,” Blair said.
The firefighters’ hoses didn’t reach the woodline, so they were putting out ground fires with hand tools to keep it from spreading. The Kotkowskis knew they had to figure out how to get larger excavating equipment onto their property without removing any fencing from their pastures, which contained 15 head of cattle — cows and calves — and what remained of their goats.
Despite being made of cinder blocks with a metal roof, the cattle barn had fire coming out of its rafter tails before long. Amid the chaos, the Kotkowskis’ cattle got scared and tried to run into the barn.
“The barn was starting to catch on fire, and they wanted back in their barn,” Blair said.
With help, the 70-year-old farmer managed to chase the cattle into a bigger pasture away from danger. He also found a way for larger equipment from Lakeside Sand & Gravel Inc to come to the farm from Oscar Brugmann Sand & Gravel, Inc., which backs up to the east side of his property.
While some fought to suppress the blaze with water, others cleared leaves and debris away from the barn to create a barrier and keep the fire from spreading. Through the Kotkowskis’ fields, neighbors came in droves bringing supplies and offering to help.
“We’re very happy for our neighbors and the community. We’ve gotten a lot of help,” Karen said.
Although the cause of the barn fire is still officially undetermined, the Kotkowskis believe the fire started in the upper loft and the wind blew it through the rest of the barn. They think it may have been electrical.
The Kotkowskis still haven’t quantified all their losses. The main barn was insured, but the cattle barn that sustained rafter damage was not. Their square baler wasn’t listed on their policy and they don’t plan on replacing the newer skid steer that only had roughly 500 hours on it.
“In this whole wing, we lost over 20 head of kids and goats,” Blair said. “They perished in the fire. Little ones, they were just cremated. There wasn’t anything left of the little ones.”
Silo fire
In the days following the barn fire, the Kotkowskis focused on clearing the debris and getting back to their life. However, on Nov. 9, a couple of hunters they allowed on their property noticed wisps of smoke coming out of the filler pipe attached to their south silo — the further of their two silos from the site of the original fire.
Although the doors of a wood-framed room attached to the silo caught fire during the barn fire, the fire departments that responded extinguished them and cleared the silo after the fire. The Mantua Shalersville Fire Department inspected and monitored the site, stopping back out to the farm three times after the barn fire. Now, officials have been back two more times to consult on the silo.
It’s possible that the heat reached the feed level after the doors caught fire in the original blaze, but the cause of the silo fire is undetermined.
“It’s not really quite over yet,” Blair said.
The Kotkowskis replaced wood silos with the two 80-foot-tall Ribstone silos, constructed by Mason Lawrence Silo Co, in the early 1970s. The north silo is empty, but the one that’s still burning is filled with silage 20 feet from the top. It sits uphill, about 40 feet north of the Kotkowskis’ pole building — a newer structure they built four or five years ago.
Both the fire department and manufacturer advised the Kotkowskis that letting the silo fire burn out on its own is the safest option. This has been the standard since three firefighters were killed in a massive silo explosion in Marshallville, Ohio in 1985.
Fortunately, the fire is contained in the concrete silo that’s reinforced with steel rebar in each stave. When it finally burns out, the Kotkowskis will have to take the silo down. They don’t plan to rebuild it.
Processing their loss
Blair has been on the farm his whole life. The main barn that burnt down was built in 1901, and his father purchased the 108-acre farm in 1952, with the intention of turning it into a dairy.
The barn was roughly 160 feet long by 60 feet wide with various additions made over the last 60 years, including the milking parlor and milk house built in 1965. Blair closed the dairy in 2018 with roughly 45 milking cows.
Today, he farms roughly 300 acres, growing hay, corn, soybeans and speltz, and raises meat goats and beef cattle.
The Kotkowskis have added to their farm, slowly, over the years, building new structures and purchasing equipment every three or four years as they have had the money to do so.
“I’ve read your articles in the Farm and Dairy, and I’ve seen, and it’s like, well, that’s terrible. That’s awful. (But) never me. I was pretty numb at first, and then just kind of slowly — just like death — … you’re in the stages of grief,” Blair said.
The future of the farm
The Kotkowskis will not be able to replace everything they lost. But they are grateful for the support they’ve received from neighbors and neighboring businesses, including Oscar Brugmann Sand & Gravel, Inc., Lakeside Sand and Gravel Inc, O.K. Brugmann Jr. Ready-Mix Concrete LLC and Brugmann Family Farms, who all continue to help with cleanup at the farm. They are also grateful they were done with harvest and weren’t milking cows when the fire broke out.
Specifically, Mark Brugmann, the owner of O.K. Brugmann Jr. Ready-Mix Concrete LLC and Brugmann Family Farms, has been invested in getting the Kotkowskis back up and running. Last year, Brugmann started helping with harvest and became interested in renting the Kotkowskis’ farm to expand his organic farming operation, which includes a cross-bred beef cattle herd and about 400-500 acres of crop production.
Incidentally, Blair sees Brugmann as the future of his farm more and more, and plans to transition things over to him slowly.
“Mark’s quite a bit younger than me, plus three generations to come, and he goes by here every day,” Blair said.
Although seeing their farm additions and investments go up in flames has been unimaginable, the Kotkowskis are focused on rebuilding what they can.
“Every penny I want to put into a building for the cattle,” Blair said.
Planning the future of the farm with Brugmann, the Kotkowskis are hoping to start construction on a new one-story barn about 100 feet long and 60 feet wide where the dairy barn sat as soon as cleanup is complete, hopefully, this winter but potentially in the spring.
They also plan to restore their meat goat operation with the 12 goats they have left. According to Blair, he lost three or four years of work when two-thirds of his herd, including most of the kids from his September kidding, were lost in the barn fire. He plans to kid on schedule in January with only two bucks remaining.
“The farm is gonna stay,” Blair said.
