Saying Goodbye to the Family's Farmhouse

This past Sunday brought the end of a piece of my family history. Ancestors from my mom's side were some of the first settlers in our area and our family has remained here, farming on the family farm, for over 170 years. While I was in college the old farmhouse was moved from it's original location to the neighboring hayfield, so that my aunt (who had been living in the old farmhouse) could put a new house in it's old location. My grandfather didn't want the farmhouse to be destroyed at the time. (I cannot blame him-he grew up there and he was attached to the old place.) Grandpa passed away last year and, after considering several options for the old farmhouse, my family made the decision to donate it to the fire department to use for a practice burn and ultimately have it burned down.

The fire department happened to invite my husband's fire department to join them, so Rich was able to get a little practice in as well. I had every intention on taking pictures throughout the whole process, but when I arrived, I realized that I had left the camera's memory stick in the printer. Anyhow, the only documentation I personally got was video footage and haven't figured out how to get it all in one video AND be able to post it on my blog, so I'm just going to show a few of the 20 clips of video that I took. You probably didn't want to watch 10 minutes of a house burning anyway, right? ;-)

This first video is shortly after they started the fire and Rich was getting ready to go in for some practice.


This next video is after all the firefighters left the house and it was at the point where they were going to just allow it to burn. They decided to get a group picture and if course I had to videotape it with having no camera! ;-)


This last video is when most of the house had collapsed. The kids were getting too cold being outside, so we were in my parents' house for this clip.