A dozen years ago, Walnutdale Farms experienced something a farm never wishes to happen. The Wayland, Mich. dairy lost its milking parlor in a fire in 2010. Since then, the fourth-generation family dairy has grown in more ways than one.
What started as a 70-cow tie-stall dairy, has grown today to 2,600 mature cows on multiple sites despite facing adversity.
In-between nursing school, fourth-generation dairy farmer, Aubrey Lettinga-VanLaan, spent her summer helping out on the family farm. She says her father never pushed her and her siblings to come back to the family farm, but when she returned to school in the fall, she began questioning her life. Soon after, she transferred to Michigan State University to study in the ag dairy management program.
“After I graduated, I came back home and then stepped right into the management role and overseeing our lactating herds at the time,” Lettinga-VanLaan says.
July 9, 2010
In 2010, the family was milking 2,300 cows on three different locations, including the home farm that was started by Lettinga-VanLaan’s great-grandfather. Like many dairies, Walnutdale had come off a rough 2008 and 2009 and was looking to heal and recover. Fate wouldn’t give them a break.
All dressed up, Lettinga-VanLaan left after a long day’s work at the farm to head out to a rehearsal dinner on July 9th. She recalls being dressed in white pants and white slip-on shoes that soon would turn black, matching the color of the smoke coming from her farm.
“I received a call a little before midnight from my mom, saying there was a fire and it was really bad,” Lettinga-VanLaan says. “My father was out of town, nearly three hours away and I drove as fast as I could.”
As she inched closer to the farm, Lettinga-VanLaan saw an orange glow in the sky and knew that the family farm she was raised on was in tough shape.
“The whole milking parlor, the holding pen area and one of our freestall barns were completely engulfed in flames,” she shared. “Thankfully, my uncle, who lived across the street, was able to quickly get here and pry the crowd gate open and run the cows that were in the back of the holding pen out. And, then he let the cows out of the freestall barn.”
What the Lettinga family soon would learn is old electrical wiring started the fire. Their employees had no idea of any problem, until all of a sudden their 24-cow rotary parlor wouldn’t turn, making the employees question something was wrong.
“It was in the ceiling of our employee break room,” Lettinga-VanLaan says. “It was around the corner, behind another wall, so by the time anyone realized there was a problem, the fire had gotten so big, the guys just got out of there. Thankfully no people were hurt.”
Unfortunately, 20 cows were stuck on the parlor and died that traumatic evening.
“Of course, it was heart-wrenching to see 20 cows die, but during the chaos that was going on, the good news is that everybody was fine,” she says.
Lettinga-VanLaan says she remembers calling her father, in hysterics.
“I told him, ‘It’s gone. It’s all gone,’” she says choked up.
“He just told me to take a deep breath and we will figure this out, but we have to find places for the cows to go,” she says.
In the midst of chaos, Lettinga-VanLaan says it dawned on her how special farmers are.
“It was a true testimony how calm my father was when I hung up the phone, and said, ‘Okay, I’m okay,’ and went back to the dairy and realized I have to make some decisions,” she says.
Before Lettinga-VanLaan could make any decisions, trailers were coming down the driveway. Farmers from all over were coming to pick up cows to relocate them to temporary housing.
“Before the flames were even put out, trailers just kept rolling in and I kept putting cows on and writing numbers down to know that we were sending x amount of cows to this farm,” she says.
While the majority of the cows were able to go to a nearby farm that had just completed a freestall barn, other cows went as far as two and a half hours away. The last load was put on the trailer just in time for Lettinga-VanLaan to leave the next morning to have her hair done for the wedding she was to be in.
“I was a bridesmaid for one of my friends,” she says. “Meanwhile I’m covered head-to-toe in manure and just went through a night of hell.”
Decision Time
Nearly 90 days later, the family began rebuilding what was destroyed by the fire. The days before that were spent with an insurance agent to assess damages and traveling to the farms where the cows were re-housed to check in on them.
“Thank the Lord that there were places that could take them and feed them and house them and all that,” she says.
After the fire, Walnutdale continued to bucket milk from fresh cows to get colostrum to feed their baby calves.
“We would keep bringing dry cows home and then eventually take other farms the fresh cows,” Lettinga-VanLaan says. “Lots and lots of transporting of cows unfolded after the fire.”
Some of the farms that offered to milk Walnutdale’s cows also offered jobs to their employees.
“We kept our good core group of people to help us out and tried to keep our workforce semi-intact, because that’s also a super hard thing to have to replace if you lose really good people,” she says.
Losing your milking hub, also means you lose your monthly milk checks and the Lettinga family had some hard conversations about the future of their dairy.
“We just came out of 2009 with really bad prices,” Lettinga-VanLaan says. “I wondered if it was preparing us for what was to come.”
Reflecting on what the future should be, Lettinga-VanLaan wonders if she hadn’t decided to come back to the family farm, would there even be a conversation to have had.
“I do wonder if we would have rebuilt if the next generation wasn’t part of the equation,” she says.
Today, the Lettinga family milks 2,600 Holstein and Jersey cows. They rebuilt with a new 50-stall rotary parlor and added new freestall barns the following January.
Advice to Others
The Lettinga family is very thankful for the businesses and farms that helped their dairy get by after the fire.
“Some businesses went out on a limb for us,” she says. “And some dairies put their dry cows out on pasture, well into the winter months, just so our milk cows had a place to stay. We truly will never forget what others did for us.”
While Lettinga-VanLaan doesn’t wish a fire on anyone, she strongly encourages farmers to prepare for a crisis. The National FARM program has a template for farmers to fill out their emergency plans.
“One of the questions was what do you do in case of a fire,” Lettinga-VanLaan says. “I know some people overlook that area, but I’m telling you it’s pretty important that you have a plan that hopefully you never have to use.”
