A northern Indiana Amish farmer lost 241 of 270 calves in a devastating fire on August 5th. But he is already on the way to getting back on his feet, thanks to help from the community. From WNDU:
While the sadness of the event still lingers, there’s also a sign of a hope.
The rubble has been cleared and the new barn is already standing.
The project manager says construction began on Saturday and will wrap tomorrow, just one week later.
He also says over 30 people have been working around the clock on the barn since they started construction on Saturday.
Fire officials say the cause of the fire was an unsupervised fuel tank that overflowed.
This report is from Friday, and it was scheduled to finish the following day. It looks like it took them about a week or perhaps a bit longer. This is typical of the Amish community with its culture of mutual aid. The response is rapid and contributions come from around the community.
Other examples within Amish communities include 100+ Amish rebuilding a storm-destroyed Missouri homestead, or raising a new barn after one burnt down in Walnut Creek, Ohio.
Similar aid is often extended to non-Amish residents of the local community when tragedy strikes. Examples of that include Minnesota Amish rebuilding an English friend’s buildings, or Amish cleaning up a burnt-down Pennsylvania pizzeria.
And going the other way, you’ve also got examples of English helping Amish – as when the Harmony, MN community helped an Amish family after a tragic fire.
The reporter says that contributions came in from around the Michiana area. I don’t know if that includes English contributions as well, and/or possibly the southern Michigan Amish with ties to northern Indiana such as the Centreville settlement. I wasn’t able to embed it here, but you can view the video at the link at the top of the post.
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Amish helping in times of tragedy
When my hometown of Johnstown, PA suffered yet another devastating flood in 1977, who came in to help dig out the basements and remove tons of mud and muck? Amish men and boys. I am sorry that I cannot post of photo of these hard workers who helped our community get back on its feet. Thank you for your dedications to others. It was greatly appreciated.
Nice to hear a story like that from 40+ years ago. Did you happen to take a photo and not able to post it, or just sorry that one does not exist? If you do have one I’d be happy to see it and perhaps share it here. You can email me at if you like.
Would have been nice if anywhere even near this effort would have been made to save calves
That’s wonderful, and I’m well aware of the Amish culture regarding helping others; especially other Amish. Of course; as with anything, some practice that concept more than others do.
However, IMO it would have been nice if anywhere even near this effort would have been made to save calves during the fire. Of course I wasn’t there; perhaps they did the best that they could.