No ‘kid’ding: Tornado hits Bixby farm

When Anna Gardner looks at the big picture, she’s thankful.
The tornado that ripped through their hobby farm two miles east of Bixby on Dec. 15 left her family unhurt, their home mostly undamaged and all of their animals alive.
Closer up, though, it’s a mess.
“We’d heard there was a tornado watch,” Gardner said last week, “but they happen so frequently in southern Minnesota, we were just chilling inside, watching TV.”
About 7 p.m., the power went out, but it was back on within 15 minutes.
“When it came up, we said, ‘OK, we’ll just keep an eye on the news,’ but five minutes later, it was out again,” she said, “so I went upstairs and grabbed the kids out of bed to go to the basement, just to be on the safe side.”
About halfway down, “we heard it hit. It was just super, super loud, like a train.”
But less than 90 seconds later, Gardner estimated, it was over. She settled her children down, and sent them back to bed.
“My son’s bedroom looks out on the barn, and he said, ‘Mom, the barn’s down.’ I didn’t believe him at first,” Gardner said.
But when she and her husband Jim went outside with flashlights, they found the mess.
The hoop barn where Gardner kept her female dairy goats and their babies was destroyed. The foundation of wood and steel on top of a pony wall was there, but the roof had collapsed, “almost trapping” the animals inside.
“I shined my flashlight in there and saw some heads and eyes, so I knew we had some alive,” she said.
There wasn’t much they could do in the dark – and with an electric pole snapped in half and power lines down in the yard – so it was morning before they could take stock.
“All the goats are fine; it’s miraculous, really,” Gardner said of the 18 does in the 30-by-30-foot hoop barn.
In addition, about half of those females are pregnant, due to deliver in March.
The 100-year-old granary on the site was also destroyed; it was home to her two male goats, 25 rabbits and the hay used for food and bedding. Those animals also survived.
More than two dozen mature trees, 30- to 40-feet tall, were snapped in half or uprooted. They lost all of the shingles on about half of their garage roof. They found pieces of their barn a mile and a half up the road.
The National Weather Service last week classified the event as an EF0 tornado, with winds of up to 80 mph.
But the first order of business was to get power for the humans; Jim Gardner worked all day Thursday on restoring the electricity, but the cold front had moved in. The family spent Thursday night in a hotel when the temperature in the house hit 40 degrees.
Anna Gardner strung a tarp over the remains of the hoop barn to provide a little shelter for the animals, then started looking for solutions.
“Our neighbor has property with a pasture and a shed on it,” she said. “He rents it out for cattle (grazing) in the spring.”
That neighbor, Kasey Kruckeberg, is letting Gardner use the land and building for the time being, but the clock is running.
The out buildings weren’t insured; because “we’re not a business, or a real farm,” there is no help available through agricultural disaster relief, Gardner said.
A friend started a GoFundMe for the family to help defray the cost of replacing the out buildings.
“We’re extremely grateful for what we’ve gotten,” Gardner said. “The goat community is close-knit, but it’s spread throughout the country.”
The ideal solution would be to put up a pole barn where the granary stood, so all of the animals and the hay storage are in one building. That would cost about $50,000; a barn kit is far less expensive – about $14,000 – but “we still need all of the heavy equipment to do the construction. We don’t even have a tractor or skid loader,” she said.
Gardner’s mother lives in Isanti County; she has a sister in Ohio. Her husband is from Ely. The couple both have full time jobs off their 5-acre hobby farm.
“We both come from small families, and we didn’t go to school around here, so we just don’t have the generational community” that could provide the help.
“I stress about it every night,” Gardner said. “It’s not a good time of year to sell animals, either. We’d have to take out a personal loan, but I don’t want to have what’s practically a second mortgage. I don’t want to be irresponsible, but it would break my heart to bring them to auction or see them go for meat.
“We bottle-raise these goats, we’re there the day they’re born; they’re just so sweet. When you walk out to feed them, they follow you along the fence-line. They’re like dogs.”
In addition to the personal connection, she has a scientific one.
“I’ve had goats since the ‘90s,” she said. “There are genetics involved, pedigrees; there’s a history. I’ve been doing it since I was 12 years old, and it’s almost become an identity. When I go to town, people say, ‘oh, there’s the Goat Lady.’”
The family drinks the milk and makes cheese for their own use; Gardner also sells soap she makes.
“It’s a true hobby farm, meaning we don’t make a profit. We do it because we love these animals so much,” she said. “We want to help 4-Hers and FFA kids get started, so we sell them very inexpensively.”
Her family shows both the goats and the rabbits at the Olmsted County Fair.
So what now?
“I’m just taking it day by day,” Gardner said, “and hoping for a miracle.”
To donate to the family’s GoFundMe, visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-anna-gardners-dairy-goats.