Volunteers harvest family’s crop after son hurt in grain elevator fire
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/08/2018 (2829 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
DOUGLAS — It’s the heart of harvest season, but local farmers Murray and Sharon Richardson have more important things on their minds.
Their son, Brodie Richardson, was injured in Monday night’s grain elevator fire in Crystal City. He was airlifted to Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg after being burned in the blaze. At latest update, he was in stable condition.
On Tuesday morning, the question of what the Richardson couple would do about harvest came up, and within a few hours friend Don Green said they have already managed to get enough people on board to take it on the following day.
By early Wednesday afternoon, 10 combines and more than 20 people were scattered through the Richardson family’s agricultural land a few kilometres east of Brandon, harvesting their wheat crop.
“Everyone says ‘What can we do to help?’ and this is something tangible that people can do to help,” Green said, in the thick of the harvest action on Wednesday.
Green added that it took a bit of arm-twisting to convince Murray to allow them to take care of their harvest.
“Farmers are very independent, and they don’t want to impose on others,” Green said, adding that he “had to insist” that they accept the help.
“They need to concentrate on their son’s recovery in hospital,” he said. “That’s tough enough.”
As it turns out, Green said they picked a “beautiful harvest day” to undertake the volunteer effort, which included a delegation from Hillside Colony and trucking assistance from Heritage Co-op.
Green said he could have easily enlisted even more farmers to help out, and that he even had to turn some people away, but that too many people involved would have created a mess and made things more difficult.
Rather than have too many cooks in the kitchen situation, so to speak, he said that they managed to gather up a perfect number of farmers — a group that by early afternoon was on track to get the job done by mid-afternoon.
Green said that it would have typically taken approximately three days to get it done.
Convincing people to help out was an easy sell, Green said, adding that it’s in keeping with how the local agricultural community conducts itself on a regular basis.
“It’s kind of a no-brainer to help them out. They’re nice people. They’re good, solid community people,” he said. “They would do the same, and they have done.”
Brodie, whom a STARS spokesperson described as being in his early 30s, is manager of the Paterson Grain elevator that went up in flames in a fire that started at approximately 6 p.m. on Monday.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation by both the Office of the Fire Commissioner and RCMP.
» tclarke@brandonsun.com
» Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB