A Devastating Fire

Last Thursday my very, very, good friend's house burned to the ground. She and her husband had sent all the kids to bed and checked the house before going to bed themselves at around 11:oo pm. Here is an excerpt from the local paper:

Dan and Gay Snyder and seven of their eight children were displaced after their home at 2041 Alliance Road burned to the ground shortly after they went to bed.
Family friend Pat Allen said the Snyders and seven of their children went to bed at around 11 p.m. An adult daughter, who is a college student, was not home at the time of the blaze.
By 11:22 p.m. the family was standing in the driveway, wearing pajamas and watching their home go up in flames.

A family spokesman said Gay Snyder was awakened by the family dog, and when she went to investigate, she found the home filling with smoke. The Snyders roused their children and all evacuated the home.

Firefighting operations were hampered by extreme cold and a moderate wind fanning the fire.

Dry hydrants at area ponds were tapped for tanker filling, and the cold caused one of the fill pipes to snap under pressure. There was not enough manpower to cut through ice to access water, so tankers were shuttled to the Deerfield fire station, where there is a 35,000-gallon cistern with a fill pipe accessible for tankers.

The Edinburg Fire Department set up a second fill site at a pond in the area of Giddings Road and S.R. 14, and quickly assembled an alternative fill pipe. The Atwater Fire Department was able to continue to access the fill site with a broken line at Fewtown Road.

A faulty valve on a heating gas line allowed natural gas to feed the fire for almost an hour before the supply was finally stopped at the gas well.

About 20 firefighters assisted 12 responders from Deerfield. The Portage County Sheriff’s Department assisted with traffic control.

Deerfield Fire Chief Miles Felmly said the residence was a two-story home. The floor in the front of the home collapsed early in the fire, giving the impression that the fire may have burned under the floor for some time before being detected. Damage figures are still being determined, but the home is a total loss. Cause of the fire has not yet been determined but the faulty gas valve had nothing to do with the origin of the fire.

The Portage County Chapter of the American Red Cross assisted the family.
Allen said the family is temporarily staying at the home of an adult daughter, but her home is too small to comfortably accommodate so many people. However, the family needs to stay close by because they need to care for livestock.

She said there has already been an “overwhelming” response by churches, family, friends and contacts through the 4-H club in which the Snyder family is involved.

“This family has been so giving and does so much for others,” she said. “We just tell them that it’s our turn now to help them.”

Record Courier Newspaper

My friend Gay Snyder (on the left) and her daughter.

Here is a link to a video from a local TV station that came out and interviewed my friend and her husband.

http://www.wfmj.com/Global/story.asp?S=11800150

Gay told me that her son, Daniel, is being awarded for his action with getting all the kids out of their rooms and outside. She said that one of their family dogs came downstairs with the kids but they lost one, a lab named Brandy, in the fire. Her son had to be treated with oxygen by the paramedics after they arrived.

Daniel Snyder


This is Gay's son who was able to get all the family out. He is a really wonderful, hardworking young man who is starting his own construction company.



Everybody piled into her daughter's house, finding room to sleep on the floor, it looks like Oscar takes up a lotta room.

They were looking desperately for a house nearby to rent but there was nothing close enough to their farm. They have horses and cattle that need daily care. Right now they are hauling water in for them but they hope to get their electricity hooked back up soon so they can get the well working again. She and her husband think that they may try to have a house trailer moved onto their property so that they can stay there while re-building.

A welcome sign that one of the kids painted.

It may be hard to find a trailer for their large family but I think it's the best thing for them. She will be close enough to get her garden going this spring. She lost hundreds of jars of food that she had canned last summer and she had two freezers in her basement that were lost too.

Her husband had recently finished the front porch.

She mentioned that even though they will get insurance money for their things it can never replace all the handmade things that she and her kids have made over the years. Most of the gifts that they exchanged over the years were homemade.

Just before Christmas she had shown me the dresses that she had made for the younger girls for church. They were beautiful and looked like they were right out of a Mary Jane Butters Farm Magazine.

Gay's youngest daughter and Oscar.

She said that she was so thankful to the Red Cross because right away they gave each child money to replace their glasses that they had lost and a little money for some groceries. Her first priority along with the glasses was to get all their birth certificates replaced. She needed them in order to replace her drivers license plus she had three adopted kids, one from Liberia and two from Haiti, that she lost all their paper work and needs to replace.

She mentioned that one thing that she is sad about is that she lost all of her cookbooks and recipes that she had been collecting over the years. She is an amazing cook, making everything from scratch. Her cinnamon rolls are fantastic! Her husband built most of the house himself, adding on to an old farmhouse over the years. He had even made their living room floor out of cherry wood that he had made himself.

She's very sad about losing all their pictures and videos too. Even through all of this she has not lost her sense of humor. She said that as long as they are together they will be happy and they will laugh together.

The Snyder Family

Update: I was asked in a comment if there was a fund set up for the family. There is, this is taken from the paper "Donations may be made to the Snyder Benefit Fund at any branch of Huntington Bank. "

Plus one more thing...If anyone out there has back issues of Mary Jane's Farm Magazine and doesn't need them she would love, love, love to have them. She lost all of hers and they are her most favorite thing. If you would consider sending them I would be more than happy to send you the money for postage. I went to the website to see about getting them but they don't have a lot of them. Just leave a comment and I'll get in touch with you or send me an email.

Beth

December 2009 and Deer

Here's the rundown of December 2009, mostly Christmas happenings.


We tried making Clothespin Cookies for the first time this year. My sisters came down to help and they turned out pretty good in spite of us.

Sprinkled with powdered sugar after they were filled.

Plus we made my Aunt Shirley's famous Oatmeal Candy Cane Cookies.

They are really delicious!

Of course we made cutouts too.

My grandma's old biscuit cutter is my favorite cookie cutter.

Diane's husband wanted oatmeal cookies. These weren't too pretty but they were really good!

Me and Amy filling the clothepin cookies. Diane hid from the camera.





But I found this one, she may not like it because she was talking and it doesn't look like her.

Here's where I found the recipe in an old Amish cookbook, one of my most favorite cookbooks. I had written "good" next to the recipe when I had made it years ago.

I found these curtains at the dollar store. I used jute for tiebacks cause they didn't come with any.

Then, Amy's husband needed a haircut. I worked as a hairdresser for a long time, don't miss it at all.

Bosco was hiding in the presents and I just realized that this is the only picture I have of our Christmas tree.

Buster, our other kitty, left this for us. This is where I found it. He laid it ever so nicely on this Santa hat with it's little head resting on the fluffy white brim. It's fitting I guess.

What was weird was that it was a mole not a mouse. Where did he find a mole, that's crazy. I don't think he brought it in from outside but maybe he did. Do moles live in houses? I don't think so unless they have a dirt floor.

We had visitors on our back deck. Bosco didn't like them one bit.

Mr. Tom came to visit too. It's freezing out right now and I have to go out and feed and water them...and the chickens are not laying much right now. I'm having trouble seeing the rewards.




Our Game Cam

Kevin bought an outdoor camera for me way back in 2005 and we've never really used it much but he really wanted to see who was eating the corn he was setting out for the deer.

Cute huh?

Maybe a button buck or a little doe? See how big the ears look compared to it's head, must be young.

We never fixed the date on the camera, it still says 2005 I think.

He's checking to see who else has been there.

This is a bigger bodied deer.

Oooooo, look. A ten point.

A little small but still a ten point.

They don't seem to be at all afraid of the camera.

Or are they?

They sure do love that corn!

Til next time,

Beth

Turkey Butchering Day, Thanksgiving and Remodeling!

This is a very long post with lots of pictures so if you're just interested in the turkey butchering go straight to the bottom.

And we absolutely did not butcher the tom you see here, even though his whole goal in life is to attack me. At least he has something to live for.

Thanksgiving was really nice this year. Actually it's been nice every year of my life except maybe last year wasn't so nice what with my mom just getting out of the hospital the night before and my sister, Amy living in Georgia (she is home now).

I used this bottle of $3.98 wine for basting my turkey, the bottle was the prettiest of all the wines.

I cleaned a couple of pie pumpkins and roasted the seeds. I found a recipe that calls for you to boil them for 15 minutes before you bake them with a little oil and salt, very good! Usually I don't like roasted pumpkin seeds but it seems that boiling them first causes the shell to soften slightly making them much crunchier after baking.

I ended up giving these to my chickens to eat. As I was taking them out of the oven my sister told me that my mom bought pies and I was so busy with everything else that I figured the chickens and turkeys would love them. I have another one that I'll cook up maybe for Christmas.

I had no twine to tie up my turkey and after searching all over the house I finally found this light pull string, I cut off the metal tab things and it worked just fine.

I figured it was a much better choice than this stuff, it might have weird stuff in it.

My turkey basting supplies, butter and the wine in the other picture. I always roast my turkeys the Martha Stewart's Turkey 101 way. Always delicious, never dry. Covering it with cheesecloth and basting every half hour with the wine and butter is the best.

All stuffed up and ready for the cheesecloth. Check out my helper in the background.





Complete and ready for the oven. It was still dark outside when I took these pictures because I had a 27 pound turkey that had to be ready by 3:00 pm.




This is about four hours into it. The cheesecloth really protects the skin from over browning before the rest gets done.

Time to remove the cheese cloth and look how nice it is.

Another hour in the oven and it was perfect.

Yummy! Do you think my plate's full enough? I ate it all too.

He waited patiently for a bite, he got one too.

Kevin got an early Christmas gift from Tom. An awesome knife engraved with his initials.
Unfortunately, he didn't get a deer yet so he hasn't tried it out.

I collected dill that was growing at my back door and decided to dry it in case I need it for early pickles. I'm going to try to get some started early enough this spring so I will have fresh though. I couldn't find any last year until later in the summer. I'm going to try and grow some in a hoop house or something, maybe even a cold frame?

This was the motivation for my week of remodeling. I had scheduled half a week off after Thanksgiving when Kevin is off for gun week. He spent most of the week down south in a cabin so with the house empty I seem to get a lot done.

First, I painted the doors for my lower cupboards and hung them up.

I also laid down some tiles that were needed because when we took out the pantry there were spots that had the old tile under it. Plus I put down a wood border that replaced the old silver border that you can see in the picture above.

Here's the floor with the new tile and border. It still needs some finishing work but it looks way better that before. (Amy, call me and let me know how you think it looks. )

Now, back to the reason for some of my work. All of the walls in the living area used to be this awful paneling. We eventually want to drywall but I had nowhere to hang my new decoration so I convinced Kevin to let me paint. He wanted me to wait until we drywalled but who knows when that will be and I needed to hang up my new decoration. It could be years.

Everything was so dark and dreary and dirty looking.

First I primed. (Actually, first I filled all the holes and sanded and sanded!)

There was a really high spot and I had no ladder.

So I improvised and stood on this stool on top of another stool, very lucky I didn't fall. When I put on the paint I taped a paint brush onto a extension pole and used that, it worked but if you get up close it might look bad.

Lookin' better!

Much better.

Then I decided to go after the wall on the other side of the house.

I want to get new curtains now. Maybe just plain ones like you'll see in the picture of the sliding glass door. Soon I'll trim around the windows.

I also put down this carpet in the laundry room. The floor was terrible with mismatched tiles.

I then trimmed out the area over the sliding glass door and hung the curtains, not perfect but so much better!

This picture looks a little better. I really like these simple tab curtains and will hopefully get some for the other side of the room.


Turkey Butchering

Yep, it's you!


We normally use killing cones but they were not big enough so Kevin resorted to using feed sacks, worked pretty good too. You can see him in the background, he hung the bag with the turkey in it, cut them and they stayed really calm, slowly going to sleep. That's me and my MIL Kaye in the foreground.

Then the birds went into the scalder, they barely fit they were so huge.

That's Kevin and his dad, Mike running the plucker. It was so nice to have their help for the day.

The plucker was the best investment we ever made.

More scalding.

More plucking.

Kaye and I working on getting the guts out. First getting the crop loose.

Then getting the back end loose and ready to slide out.

All out and trimming the gallbladder from the liver.

Kaye's removing the lungs and I'm trimming the heart maybe or something.

There's the gizzard.

Cutting it open to clean all the stuff out and remove the lining.

All done, this one weighed 27 pounds and it was the one we had for our Thanksgiving dinner.



Our photographer for the day was my niece Stephanie. It was her first butchering experience and she took lots of pictures. The next picture that she took was a little unusual but I thought I'd include it as a fitting ending to the day. It was how we all felt after lugging around 27 pound turkeys.

Til next time,

Beth