By Krystal Smalley
ksmalley@wbcowqel.com
The Crawford County agricultural community is banding together to help their counterparts in Kansas.
Rose Hartschuh, who runs Acres of Adventure at Pickwick Place and farms alongside her husband Greg, is organizing a project to donate hay, supplies, and other items to farms and ranches that have been destroyed by wildfires in Kansas.
“Some young farmers from our area began organizing a load of hay to go west, which was an awesome step,” Hartschuh wrote in an email. “However, as I talked with my husband, we wanted to do more.”
The Hartschuhs have gathered together a small group to travel and volunteer in Kansas for a few days. So far, five semi loads of hay have been pledged and 20 people have volunteered to travel out west with donations and to assist in the relief efforts.
“The response we received has blown us away. This project has become a true group effort of famers here in Ohio who want to give of themselves, because we know others would do the same for us.”
The Kansas Livestock Association, an organization that is acting as the main contact for relief efforts in the Sunflower State, is organizing fence building and clean-up projects for an Ohio group to undertake. Hartschuh said they are looking for the following donated items to take with them.
- Fencing supplies such as t-posts and barbed wire;
- Milk replacer for orphaned calves;
- Cash toward the group’s travel expenses; and
- Cash donated directly to farm organizations in the state.
Victoria Carmean, director of the Humane Society Serving Crawford County, has offered the local humane society to be a collection point for donations, which must be made by March 22. The volunteer group will leave Bucyrus on March 24.
More donation information can be found at http://www.beefusa.org/firereliefresources.aspx. To pledge support, visit https://goo.gl/forms/oBeBCVJ1jfCm81K33. Monetary donations for the trip can be made at https://www.paypal.me/KansasWildfires. According to Hartschuh, monetary donations will be used to fund the group’s travel and to pay hauling costs for the Ohio-donated hay. Leftover funds after the trip will be sent to the Kansas Livestock Association.
Kansas Governor Sam Brownback declared a state of emergency on March 5 as wildfires burned more than 600,000 acres in 21 counties across the southwest portion of the state. Wildfires also swept through Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado, totaling 1.5 million acres burned across the four states.