#dairy farm barn fire

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“HUGE ILLICIT STILL SEIZED AT WEST ST. PAUL,” Winnipeg Tribune. December 29, 1932. Page 1. ---- TWO ARRESTED FOLLOWING RAID ON DAIRY FARM --- Plant Has Capacity of Gallons of Alcohol Daily ---- Believed To Have Been Operating For One Year --- Raid and Arrests Made by Mr. Stubbs of Federal Excise Department ---- One of the largest illicit distilling plants ever seen in Manitoba was seized by William Stubbs of the federal excise department and a squad of R. C. M. P. on Wednesday at Lot 121, W St. Paul, one mile west of McPhillips St., and 10 miles from the city limit. Charles Pichurski and his son Mike, in whose barn the plant was found, were arrested.

Both appeared in provincial police court today when Magistrate Welsford allowed them out on ball of $2,000 each.

The still has a capacity of 1,0000 gallons of mash and running at full capacity would produce gallons of alcohol each. At the time of the seizure there were found 3,000 gallons of mash in barrels and a very large quantity of alcohol. These will be destroyed.

Cleverly Concealed Officer Stubbs says that, from appearance and from information he received since the arrests, it would appear that the huge still has been in operation for upwards of one year. During that time, many thousands of gallons of Illicit liquor must have been dispensed.

The ‘private distillery’ was cleverly concealed and hundreds of persons must have walked under it without being aware of its existence. It was situated in the hay loft of a large bam in which 20 head of milk cows were stabled.

The still room was separated from the hay loft in a room spotlessly clean and papered. The pipe from the boiler fire found its outlet through the barn ventilators in the roof while the steam exhaust went through the wall to a manure pile.

Deserves Great Credit Great credit is due officials for the seizure. Although it was known very large quantities of liquor were being distributed from the part of the country for a long time no clue could be obtained regarding the point of origin.

Two days ago, however, there was a ‘leak’ and as a result suspicion was directed against Pichurski and his son. The farm premises were carefully inspected on three occasions before the still was discovered.

When the premises were raided, it is that the two arrested were preparing to go to work on the job of turning out a liquor shipment.

Besides the liquor and plant there was also seized during the raid a very large quantity of sugar and other materials for the manufacture of alcohol.

Such was the weight of the equipment and mash, that the floor of the hay loft was badly sagged.

Photo caption: MONSTER ILLICIT STILL SEIZED One of the largest illicit distilleries ever found in Manitoba was seized Wednesday by William Stubbs, of the federal excise department, and a squad of R.C.M.P. at West St. ten miles from the city. The arrests were made at the time of the seizure. The plant was found in a hay loft over a barn. It had a capacity of 1,000 gallons of mash and could produce 175 gallons of alcohol daily. Much liquor and equipment were also taken during the raid.

[oneheadtoanother]

Apparently poorly-vented methane was the accelerant for the fire. Of course lots of news coverage of this is "bunch of cows killed by their own FARTS XD" but idk it seems pretty fucking horrific to me.

[eternal-pseud]

Fires on large-scale animal farms, or factory farms, are surprisingly common. Over the last decade, at least 6.5 million farmed animals, mostly chickens, perished in barn fires in the US, according to Washington, DC-based nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute (AWI). The fires are part of a broader pattern of mass casualty events on factory farms, where 99 percent of America's meat, dairy, and eggs are produced. Some are the result of human or mechanical error, but many stem from natural disasters, such as hurricanes, blizzards, and extreme temperatures, like last summer's scorching heat wave in Kansas that killed thousands of cows who were subsequently dumped in a landfill. Disease outbreaks, too, result in mass death or culling on farms.

- Kenny Torrella, Marina Bolotnikova, and Julieta Cardenas, "A fire killed 18,000 cows in Texas. It's a horrifyingly normal disaster."

Torrella, Kenny, Marina Bolotnikova, and Julieta Cardenas. "A fire killed 18,000 cows in Texas. It's a horrifyingly normal disaster." Vox, April 14, 2023. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23683141/texas-farm-fire-explosion-dimmitt-cows-factory-dairy.

[karagin22]

This doesn't sound odd at all...no way nope, nothing suspicious at all.

[aurorawest]

Me: Ah yes, I will now read the next book on my TBR pile, this sure-to-be lighthearted, dairy-farm-set, enemies-to-lovers romance.

Cattle Stop, by Kit Oliver, page 2: And there's the sharp taste of beer and the fire-warmed skin of Whit's cheek and the smell of him, all woodsmoke and clean sweat.

Whit pulls back, and Cooper chases after him. Slumps with the motion, into the curve of Whit's shoulder.

"You've had enough to drink," Whit says. His hand is nice on Cooper's chest. Firm as it braces him. Warm, too. And big.

"M'fine," Cooper mumbles.

"You won't remember this."

Cooper's mouth is wet. His hand is too. But cold, unlike his lips.

"I will," he says and come dawn, and the dew wetting his clothes and glittering on the grass, and the smolder of embers, Cooper rolls over, a throb going through his temples with the glare of sunshine and the thought, I did.

Whit's already tossing hay bales down from the loft of the barn and the cows are milling around their pen and the pigs are kicking up a ruckus. Cooper presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. I did remember, he thinks. I did.

[justbeingnamaste]

It is the biggest single-incident death of cattle in the country since the Animal Welfare Institute, a Washington-based animal advocacy group, began tracking barn and farm fires in 2013. The previous high was a 2020 fire that killed about 400 cows in upstate New York, according to Allie Granger, a policy associate with the organization.

Video shared on TikTok earlier this week showed plumes of smoke rising from the farm as the sounds of cows mooing could be heard. As of this writing, it has surpassed 1.5 million views on the platform and has been reposted by others across social media.

Similar video posted by ABC 7 Amarillo on Facebook credited "Bowie" with footage they shared.

Some viewers may find this video distressing. Viewer discretion advised.

[lethalice]

Megafarms need to die holy fuck

[lucky-strike-14]

I grew up one generation removed from, but effectively on, a small dairy farm. It was evident pretty early on that I wasn't farmer material, but I also experienced & observed a lot of things that a lot of kids probably don't, & I'm grateful for that. Anyway my uncles & grandparents spoke a not-100%-mutually-intelligible dialect of English other than my own, one I wished I'd learned to heart more, so I could speak more phrases of it, & that I'd recorded them speaking. When I moved 15 miles away to a city of 30,000, it might as well have been to Fairbanks, Nauru, or the Moon in terms of how our lives were signified & ordered, however deep the family ties may be, & those go back to the early 17th Century on this continent.

I remember my uncles & my grandfather arguing a helluva lot of the time, so one thing I guess I understand about farming is there's a right way to do things & either nobody around here fucking knows it, or somebody's too goddam proud to admit they were wrong about it.

I also remember the night the New Barn (built c. 1940) roof caved in under snow, & a couple of fire calls, & thunderstorms bad enough to make the cows decide to run. I remember counting how many times they could get in hay over the right summer against how many times they were getting it in that summer, & the price of feed against what they were getting for the milk. All set to the endless routine of daily & seasonal chores. I guess what I learned from all of that was that the best thing a farmer can hope for is a good, steady sameness, never getting ahead, but never falling (too far) behind, either, & for the unexpected to strike as rarely & gently as God, fate, or probability will allow. I got to enjoy a lot of that sameness, without having to pay any pipers for it.

I don't know that I actually ever had a point to all this. I mainly just wanted to agree & explain why. But yeah; farming. You really gotta be there before you get it.

Look, I don't know how prevalent the idea that farmers are dumb and uneducated still is, but to be clear, farming is fucking difficult as shit. You can get advanced degrees in specific areas of farming, and you might be surprised how many farmers DO have degrees. Trying to learn farming without a family background or direct experience does often feel like trying to do graduate level coursework if you skipped high school. Being a first generation farmer is just continually fucking embarrassing, because you're basically always gonna look like an ignorant idiot to a generational farmer. Even if--especially if--you think you've read all the research and you know better than him.

[ledenews]

Ohio County Public Library Releases Programming Schedule

PRESS RELEASE: September and October 2024 Lunch With Books Programs at the Ohio County Public Library Sept. 3 at Noon: Frances Perkins: History Alive As the first female Cabinet member and U.S. Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins had a far-reaching, lasting impact on American workers’ lives, and helped pave the way for women to enter the male-dominated world of national politics. Perkins started out as a young social reformer in New York City, but embarked on a more ambitious quest for change after witnessing the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911, which killed nearly 150 workers. As a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Cabinet in the 1930s and 1940s, Perkins relentlessly fought for and facilitated many of the New Deal programs which helped the nation weather the Great Depression. Known as the “Mother of Social Security,” Perkins’ legacy lives on through child labor laws, unemployment insurance, minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, worker’s compensation, and workplace safety laws. Brought to you by the WV Humanities Council's History Alive program for Reuther-Pollack Labor Heritage Week. Frances Perkins is portrayed by JoAnn Peterson of Fort Ashby, WV. Facebook Event Library Calendar Sept. 10 at Noon: Benwood Memories Larry Freeland, along with Nick Sparchane and Joey Tellitocci, will take us on a trip down memory lane in that beloved old mill town of Benwood, WV, Wheeling's Ohio River Valley neighbor. Bring your memories, photos, and artifacts, and be prepared to share.  Facebook Event Library Calendar Sept. 17 at Noon: Commemorating Simon & Garfunkel's Concert in Central Park On September 19, 1981, folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel held a free benefit concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park, New York City, performing in front of 500,000 people. Proceeds went toward the restoration of the park, which had deteriorated due to lack of municipal funding. The concert marked the start of a three-year reunion of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. The concert was filmed by HBO and an album of the live performance was released in February 1982. The set list included classics like "The Sound of Silence", "Mrs. Robinson", "The Boxer" and Simon's "Late in the Evening." Now, 43 years later, join our friend The Troubadour, Bob Gaudio, as he returns to LWB perform many of these songs in commemoration of the Concert in Central Park. Original Concert. Facebook Event Library Calendar Sept. 24 at Noon: Writer Annette Dashofy USA Today best-selling author Annette Dashofy has spent her entire life in rural Pennsylvania surrounded by cattle and horses. When she wasn’t roaming the family’s farm or playing in the barn, she could be found reading or writing. After high school, she spent five years as an EMT on the local ambulance service, dealing with everything from drunks passing out on the sidewalk to mangled bodies in car accidents. These days, she, her husband, and their spoiled cat, Kensi, live on property that was once part of her grandfather’s dairy. Annette's standalone, Death by Equine, a traditional mystery set in the world of Thoroughbred racing, was the 2021 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award winner. Her Zoe Chambers mysteries include six past Agatha Award finalists, plus the 12th in the series, HELPLESS, has been nominated for the Agatha for Best Contemporary Novel of 2023! Where The Guilty Hide was released in January 2023 and is the first of her new Detective Honeywell mysteries. The second in the series, Keep Your Family Close, was released December 8, 2023, in digital format and in early January in paperback in the UK from One More Chapter/HarperCollins. It will coming to the US in paperback soon. Her short fiction, including a 2007 Derringer finalist, has appeared in Mysterical-e, Spinetingler, Fish Tales: the Guppy Anthology, and Lucky Charms: 12 Crime Tales. She has also released Crime in the Country: A Zoe Chambers Anthology which includes six short stories featuring the characters from the series.  Facebook Event Library Calendar Oct. 1 at Noon: Matthew Ferrence: I Hate It Here, Please Vote For Me When a progressive college professor runs for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in a deeply conservative rural district, he loses. That’s no surprise. But the story of how Ferrence loses and, more importantly, how American political narratives refuse to recognize the existence and value of nonconservative rural Americans offers insight into the political morass of our nation. In essays focused on showing goats at the county fair, planting native grasses in the front lawn, the political power of poetry, and getting wiped out in an election, Ferrence offers a counter-narrative to stereotypes of monolithic rural American voters and emphasizes the way stories told about rural America are a source for the bitter divide between Red America and Blue America. Matthew Ferrence lives and writes at the confluence of Appalachia and the Rust Belt. With I Hate It Here, Please Vote For Me, he has completed a trilogy (of sorts) focused on rural Appalachian identity and political narrative. He teaches creative writing at Allegheny College. Facebook Event Library Calendar Oct. 8 at Noon: Pulling the Thread: Untangling Wheeling History Pulling the Thread: Untangling Wheeling History is a new collection of thirty-three essays by Dr. Christina Fisanick, an English professor with a passion for historical storytelling. From her childhood beginnings in Moundsville, West Virginia, to her return to Wheeling after earning a PhD, Fisanick's journey through local, state, and national archives unfolds a tapestry of Wheeling's rich past. Each essay is a thread pulled, leading to unexpected connections and revelations. From Indigenous peoples to contemporary Juneteenth celebrations, Fisanick weaves a narrative that transcends time, bringing to light forgotten stories and hidden ties. Through meticulous research, she uncovers Mark Twain's unexpected links to Wheeling, the birth of the town of Power spurred by a Parisian exhibition, and even the connection between Oglebay Park and the tragic wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Fisanick's prose is as engaging as it is informative, blending the rigor of historical research with the flair of a novelist. Readers will learn about Wheeling's Jewish heritage, the city's role in the film industry, and stories such as the Black Panther demonstration at Wheeling High School. Facebook Event Library Calendar Oct. 15 at Noon: The Meteor of War - The Upper Ohio Valley Responds to John Brown’s Raid John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry is considered a cataclysmic event that catapulted the United States towards civil war. Though situated more than 200 miles from Harpers Ferry, Brown’s raid reverberated deeply across the Upper Ohio Valley, where Brown and several of his raiders were personally known, and their cause championed or condemned. Jon-Erik Gilot, author of John Brown's Raid: Harpers Ferry and the Coming of the Civil War, October 16-18, 1859 (Emerging Civil War Series), will examine local connections to the raid, as well as reactions and fallout on both sides of the Ohio River, from the Wheeling militia companies who were present at Brown’s execution to the arms race along Virginia’s western border. Facebook Event Library Calendar Oct. 22 at Noon: Wheeling Poetry Series Presents: Raechel Peckham & Sara Henning Rachael Peckham is the author of Alight: Flights of Prose (UnCollected Press) and Muck Fire: Prose Poems (Spring Garden Press). Her essays and prose poems appeared most recently in Blood Tree Literature, Cloudbank, Club Plum, and Still: The Journal. Rachael is a professor of English at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, where she lives and teaches alongside her husband, poet and essayist Joel Peckham. Sara Henning is the author of the poetry collections Burn (Southern Illinois University Press, 2024), a 2022 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Editor’s Selection; Terra Incognita (Ohio University Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize; and View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the 2019 High Plains Book Award. She was awarded the 2015 Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize and the 2019 Poetry Society of America's George Bogin Memorial Award. She’s a recipient of scholarships from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Marshall University, where she coordinates the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series. The Wheeling Poetry Series is curated and hosted by WV Poet Laureate Marc Harshman.  Facebook Event Library Calendar Oct. 29 at Noon: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner- a Shadow Play The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a 1798 poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In it, the Mariner delays a young man on his way to a wedding in order to share a bizarre story of a long sea voyage. The Wedding Guest is mesmerized, then terrified by what he hears. But what is the meaning of Coleridge's potent and perplexing poem, with its archaic language, judgmental Christianity, hellish scenery, and deranged but irresistible narrative drive? In this re-telling, the Mariner’s Rime will be interpreted through shadow play--an Asian style of storytelling, wherein flat images are manipulated by puppeteers between a bright light and a translucent screen, on the other side of which sits the audience. The poem has been adapted for shadow play by Jamie Hamilton. Facebook Event Library Calendar Oct. 31: (Thurs. at Noon) Ghastly GHOST STORIES! For Halloween, join the OCPL Players as we share some of Wheeling’s most infamously spine-tingling, bloodcurdling classic Ghost Stories, as well as a few we totally made up ourselves! Join storytellers Laura Jackson, Christina Fisanick, Ellery McGregor, and Sean Duffy. Festivities will commence with the world premiere of “America’s Most Haunted Library!” a found-footage, ghost-hunting nightmare. Read the full article

[raleigh-in-the-garden]

Over 18,000 cows die in Texas dairy farm blaze

[brandedcities]

18K cattle killed in Texas dairy farm explosion, one of deadliest fires involving animals

An explosion at a dairy farm in the Texas Panhandle that critically injured one person and killed an estimated 18,000 head of cattle is the deadliest barn fire recorded in more than a decade.

[qudachuk]

Animal welfare activists say the incident is "by far" the deadliest barn fire in recent memory.