A Significant Setback Strikes - Fire

This has been a sad week. On wednesday we experienced a small taste of realization of one of the worst fears of rural life.

Fire.

The heater inside the farm kitchen/fermenting/storage room caught fire. No one was hurt, and the building itself is fine, but lot of cleanup and repairs are needed before it can be usable again.

Best we can tell, some sort of debris got inside the heater unit. It is an electric heating element inside a window air conditioning unit. We had not run the heater yet this winter. We were not actively using the farm kitchen for anything during the off season, and the same unit handles the storage area for winter feed, so we let it drift down to almost freezing.  Then, this week, flipped the heater on to start making soap.

Well, several hours later I noticed water running out the floor at the end. Not good. What we found inside was the front cover of the heater / air unit had burned off from the inside, dripped burning plastic on the water pipes below which burst and thereby put out the fire. It is obvious from the areas burned that the fire started inside the heater unit and flames were actually blown out the vents. Most likely, some sort of debris accumulated inside or perhaps some sort of critter built a nest. Hard to say until we dismantle it all to see whats inside.

Nevertheless, we are heartbroken. The building is fine and no one was hurt, so that is worth celebrating. Yet we have a pretty massive cleanup to do, then some wiring, plumbing, and fixture repairs.

This is going to put a pause on the new products planned for February. We will do our best to stick to the plan, but life just got significantly more busy.

Thank you for your prayers and support.