ALPINE, Ala. (WIAT) – A farm in Talladega County is working to recover from a fire that happened earlier this week. The cause of that fire still being investigated.
“We’re slowly putting out the fires we can, which is an awful pun-intended situation,” Ireland Farms owner Scott Ireland said. “It’s trying to just keep everything alive and have a fruitful summer is officially a full-time job. Things that used to be little afterthoughts are now like tunnel vision.”
Ireland Farms estimates it would take around hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace everything lost in the fire. Tools needed to run the farm efficiently were kept in the barn that caught fire from a riding mower and golf cart to power tools and refrigerated coolers, even personal items like his wife’s wedding boots and his late father’s golf bag.
“The margins in farming are already not great, and when you throw in this cataclysmic, probably $300,000 ordeal to make it right would probably cost that much, we don’t have the ability to do that, so we’re just going to figure out what is most essential for us and what we cannot do without, and then slowly replenish that,” Ireland said.
Ireland has put his blood, sweat and tears into growing his farm over the last nine years. He says to see that hard work reduced to piles of ash and rubble is demoralizing.
“Each day it’s a little bit more real and while it still feels insurmountable, as you start to make hard line decisions and moves about where you’re going to with it that it gets, you know, a plan of action always helps with emotional stress,” he said.
Another thing helping with Ireland’s emotional stress is the support coming from his customers.
“These people that are customers have become friends and family, and so it’s easy to feel hopeless, but when the community gets behind you and supports you like that, it really is, like it warms the cockles of one’s heart just to be, like, alright there are people that are behind us,” said Ireland. “It’s good inspiration, which is needed in a bleak week like this.”
Ireland says he may have to do things more old school for a while, but he’s not throwing in the towel, though they’re months from being anywhere close to what they’d built up to.
“It’d be easy to just give up, but there’s just too much goodness out in that field to throw in the towel, so we’re going to fight tooth and nail if it means watering by hand, and like I said, not being able to pre-pack orders, stuff like that,” Ireland said. “It’s our intentions to keep it going because we’ve got a lot of goodness to provide to our community still.”
Ireland Farms interacts with the community a lot at the weekly farmers markets it participates in, like the one at Pepper Place in Birmingham on Saturdays. Lisa Beasley, the manager of the Market at Pepper Place, says the best part of a farmers market is getting invested in the farmers and rooting for them to succeed.
“To see this outpouring of love and support from the community, really just reinforced what I know a farmer’s market to be, which is all about community, and it’s all about support, and we saw that in action this week,” Beasley said.
Ireland says he’s walking away from this fire with a lesson. He says going forward, he’ll keep his equipment broken up into different storage containers instead of all in one place.
A GoFundMe has been created for Ireland Farms. You can find that link here.
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