MOFB’s "Cut to the Chase" by Denny Banister
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Most people I talk to don’t like winter. They don’t mind some snowfall, as long as it falls on the lawns only and not streets, sidewalks and porches; and they don’t mind some cold, as long as it doesn’t get below 50 degrees. That, of course, is not winter.
I am a strange duck, and slightly warped. I actually look forward to winter. I love the cold, crisp air that seems to make it to the bottom lobes of the lungs; I love the snow; I love the night winter sky; I love getting outside in winter.
I do not view winter through rose-colored glasses, however. The recent sleet followed by heavy snow blanketing much of Missouri caused considerable damage to trees, and the falling limbs left nearly a half-million homes in metropolitan St. Louis without power – perhaps some face this calamity still.
The winter storm did damage in the country as well. A fellow Farm Bureau employee and her husband live on a turkey farm southwest of Jefferson City, and the snow and ice caused both of their huge turkey barns to collapse, killing thousands of the birds.
While thousands more survived, many were trapped. As you might expect, family and friends went to the farm to help save the surviving turkeys, but the unexpected help brought tears to the eyes of the tough, but tired, farmer and his wife.
A convoy of trucks carrying more than a hundred members of the Mennonite community converged. They off-loaded and went right to work. Soon more trucks arrived – the women of the Mennonite community bringing food to feed all the volunteers working so hard to save the turkeys.
When the labor intensive effort was finished, the Mennonite volunteers drove away, heading for other farms where barns had collapsed to continue giving a hand to those in need of help – more than 25 turkey barns and hundreds of thousands of turkeys in their immediate area were victim to the storm.
The surviving turkeys were transported from the farm, but the cleanup remaining is massive. It will require heavy bulldozers to remove the destroyed steel buildings. My friend sadly related her husband, a turkey farmer for nearly 25 years, would not get back into the business.
As devastating as the storm was and as sad the resulting losses were, there is a bright light to the story. I write about the events that occurred, but the Mennonites’ response was in deeds, not words. Their response is the essence of the true spirit of Christmas. That is the bright light.
(Denny Banister, of Jefferson City, is the assistant director of public affairs for the Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization.)