Volunteers help rescue beef cattle Masardis pair coping after building collapse

MASARDIS – John and Noella Craig have discovered the kindness of friends and strangers in the last 10 days as they have tried to bring a semblance of normalcy to their beef cattle farm. Winds associated with a blizzard on Good Friday ripped apart their animals’ 320-foot-by-46-foot shelter, killing 17 to 20 of the couple’s cows and calves during the night of March 20.

The three-sided shelter protected nearly 100 head of cattle before the accident.

Forty to 50 volunteers showed up Saturday and Sunday to help shore up and make safe the remaining 96 feet of the building still standing after the catastrophe.

“Thank goodness for townspeople and friends and others we didn’t know,” Noella Craig said Monday. “They helped us make a safe place for animals that are close to calving.

“On the morning it happened, we made one telephone call and people came to help get the animals out of the collapsed barn,” she said. “It’s been quite an effort, one that we could not have done alone.”

The Craigs, who both work at full-time jobs away from their own farm operation, don’t know what the future will bring. John Craig works at M and M Farms, an Ashland potato grower; and Noella Craig works at Kelly’s Pine Mill, also in Ashland.

They still were pondering their options Monday. Insurance covered the mortgage they had on the destroyed structure, but rebuilding appears to be a gigantic undertaking.

Noella Craig said she didn’t know what she was looking at in the pre-dawn hours of March 21.

“I was in shock when we went to feed the animals at 5 a.m. that morning,” she remembered Monday. “I could not [fathom] what had happened.

“We had everything set up the way we wanted it after all these years,” she said. “We were hoping that the operation was our retirement.”

Instead, much of the building had collapsed. Animals were stuck inside, some dead from the weight of the collapsed building.

The first day after the wind, friends and neighbors helped the Craigs rescue the animals that were still alive. They used a bulldozer to create huge snowbanks to create enclosures for the animals.

The Craigs, both 59, raised red deer before they went into cattle about 10 years ago. They are left with more than 70 head of beef cattle after the windstorm. Many of the females are pregnant. The couple raises calves to sell to another farmer who raises them to a target weight to be sold in the marketplace.

The Craigs, whose farm is located on Garfield Road not far from the Fraser wood mills on Route 11, hope there won’t be any more repercussions from the collapsed building, such as health problems in the remaining herd.

The Southern Maine Beef Association lent the Craigs some fencing partitions used as enclosures at beef auctions, allowing them to have actual pens for their animals, not just huge snowbanks.

James Hotham, a Presque Isle veterinarian, has been tending to the injured animals, giving them inoculations and caring for wounds caused by the collapse. The Craigs and Hotham are watching quite a few of the animals closely for any other signs of injury.

Noella Craig said animals tend to want to return to their home after they are taken out of harm’s way. “They don’t know better. It’s what they know,” she said.

This past weekend, the 96-foot-long section of the three-sided barn was shored up with lumber, allowing the Craigs to get some of the remaining cattle, especially those close to calving, back under a proper shelter.

The couple will get the rest of their animals inside this week.

“This was quite the active place on Saturday and Sunday,” she said. “Thank goodness for all these people. … We lost quite a few animals, but it could have been a lot worse.”

Noella Craig said there is no question the building was brought down by the wind. They had been watching the accumulation of snow all winter. Northern Maine has been hit by record snowfalls since November.

“Without friends, and even strangers who helped, we could have been in a world of hurt,” the still optimistic woman said Monday. “All the help, most definitely helped us go on.”