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Fire Breaks Out Overnight at Illinois Pig Farm

A fire broke out at Cedar Ridge Farms, a seedstock swine operation owned and operated by the six sons of the late Fred and Betty Grohmann near Red Bud, Ill., early on April 14. 

Multiple area fire departments from Red Bud, Hecker, New Athens, Baldwin and Waterloo responded to the blaze in a hog building that caught fire shortly after midnight, the Republic-Times reports. The fire resulted in substantial damage to the structure as well as the loss of several pigs.

The Grohmanns told local reporters that the cause of the fire and the cost of damages and losses are not yet known. However, they said things could have been worse. One of the barns was completely empty and the other had hogs they were getting ready to send to market, many of which had recently been shipped. 

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There’s a Whole Barn Buried Under This Field Now

Video: There’s a Whole Barn Buried Under This Field Now

There's old hog barns under that field now. The old hog barn site on the farm has been sitting there for decades, and this is the week it finally came out: concrete pad, burn pile, charred lumber, all of it loaded into a CAT 725C rock truck and buried in a pit we dug back in the timber.

Tork's been waiting his whole life to drive one of these, so he gets the keys to a 50,000 pound rock truck and I ride shotgun. The excavator loads, the dozer clears the timber, the drone shows the whole site from above, and by sundown there's nothing left of the old place but a smooth patch of dirt. It's a weird feeling erasing something that was here before either of us, but the farm has to keep moving.