Children from Thatcher Brook donated to Wallace Farm
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Young learners from a Vermont elementary school are helping a farm family rebuild after a devastating fire earlier this year.
Students from Thatcher Brook Elementary raised more than US$500 through a penny drop to donate to Rosina Wallace, a fifth-generation dairy farmer whose family has owned Wallace Face in Waterbury, Vt. for more than 150 years.
“I have utilized the money that they raised to buy the materials to build the barn that’s going up now,” Wallace told Local 22 News on Monday.
Others within Vermont and outside the state has also helped the family move forward, she said.
These fundraisers collected a total of US$80,000 for the family.
“I don’t know if there’s anybody else that’s been through this kind of a loss that’s been supported as well as my brother and I have been,” Wallace said.
The barn will be completed before the snow arrives, she hopes. It will measure 26 feet by 36 feet and will be used to store equipment and her new calf, Ferdinand.
An electrical issue in the milk house caused the fire on Easter weekend.
Wallace was eating dinner with a neighbor when she received word of the blaze.
“The first thing I had to deal with emotionally was losing my herd,” she told Local 22 News. “I had 23 bovine in the barn. I was really attached to my animals.”
The fire destroyed a barn and two farmhouses.
“The whole barn was so engulfed in flames – you couldn’t even tell what the structure was,” she said.
MyChamplainValley photo