From North Shore to Southern MN, community is important

This is a letter from Nikki Meyer. My husband, Neal – whom many of you may know from his time at the Credit Union or Bluefin Bay, and I moved our family from the North Shore two years ago. We headed for Truman, a little town in southern Minnesota. Most people have never heard of Truman, except perhaps recently if the news of a recent hog barn fire has reached that far north.

It’s funny how perceptions change. While I still have tons to learn about farming, here’s what I know about the farms around us – there are a lot of them! They are not “factory farms.” They are owned by local families—our neighbors and the people we see at the post office. Some of the farms here do get pretty big, but they’re in the hands of people who care for them personally.

In regards to the hog barn fire last weekend, I’ve seen a lot of negative things in social media. Here’s what I can tell you. My husband Neal is one of the hundreds of volunteer firefighters and other emergency personnel who responded to the fire on Saturday; the barn that burned is just four miles from our house.

People are saying that this was negligence on the part of big farming corporations, and what do they care since they’ve got insurance? The barn that burned was a sow barn, which means their job was birthing and raising piglets. Insurance doesn’t replace the hundreds of hours they spent caring for their animals. Insurance doesn’t find new jobs for employees while they rebuild, or take care of all the famers who were depending on those pigs to fill their barns as they got older. Those barns, which still need to be heated and taken care of, suddenly don’t have occupants waiting for them. All of those farmers and families are now going to be scrambling to find the animals they need to keep up their livelihood.

Whatever you see on social media, and whatever your feelings may be toward agricultural America, I hope you remember this: this is a tragedy for our community, and no one is more saddened by it than the farmers it happened to.

For a link to this week’s story on the hog barn fire, you can visit the E-Tribune tab at www.TheTrumanTribune.com (October 29 edition). Another excellent blog I would recommend is www.mnfarmliving.com, written by an acquaintance of ours.

Nikki Meyer
Truman, Minnesota