Peterborough’s Ruth and Dan Holmes of Four Winds Farm are scrambling to finish haying after they lost their tractor in a fire Saturday afternoon.
A passing motorist alerted emergency personnel to the flaming vehicle in a hayfield on Route 136 at 3:48 p.m, Fire Chief Ed Walker said, just half an hour after Dan Holmes had shut it off. The fire had spread to the surrounding grass and the tractor was fully engulfed when emergency personnel arrived, Walker said, but there were no injuries. The tractor was too destroyed to determine what caused the fire, Ruth Holmes said on Monday, but said that it had been a very hot day.
“It’s a horrible time to have it happen, we’re really scrambling,” she said.
Without the tractor, they couldn’t bring their hay home before it got rained on, and she hasn’t been able to find another appropriately-sized tractor to rent or lease. The hay feeds the farm’s cows, goats, and sheep through the winter, she said, and they make hay on somewhere between 80 and 100 acres. They have been haying that particular field for 12 years, she said.
Peterborough’s Overlook Farm immediately offered to help load hay, Holmes said, despite the limited window of appropriate conditions for haying. “We don’t want to delay somebody else’s haying,” she said. Lots of people have called to check in and offer condolences since Saturday, she said, and her daughter in law is working on a GoFundMe for the costs not covered by insurance.
“On top of everything, we have a drought going on. It’s frustrating being a farmer,” Holmes said. One silver lining has been the uptick in sales at their farm store due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, a “wonderful response from local people,” she said. Holmes said she hopes locals will continue to support the farm after the pandemic is over. “And pray for rain,” she said.