Help Anna Gardner's dairy goats

A tornado watch and a severe storm with winds over 80mph in the middle of December in Minnesota. Sounds like a crazy joke right? Sadly no. On the evening of December 16th a big storm hit Southern Minnesota. Unfortunately, it hit Anna Gardner and her family the hardest. At roughly 8pm Anna grabbed her children out of their beds and dashed to the basement with them because the storm became extremely severe. They had lost power. Anna said, "The second we got downstairs it sounded like a freight train was trying to come through our house." Thankfully Anna, her husband Jim, and their 2 children are fine. Unfortunately, their small hobby farm is not.

 

It was hard to assess the damage after the storm passed, since it happened in the middle of the night, but they took flashlights outside and discovered that they had been hit hard. Power lines were down in their front yard as well as a bunch of trees. "There was shattered glass all over the back yard and to my horror most of the goat barn was just...gone." Anna explained. The following morning the family ventured into the twisted pretzel of metal of what used to be the barn. They expected the worse. Miraculously, the family's heard of show goats were all alive. Unfortunately, the barn is a complete loss. The frame is twisted beyond repair, "We even found a piece of the barn a mile and a half up the road. The first thing I did was call the insurance company but since only the house is insuranced I knew we wouldn't be getting any help. The house did get some very slight water damage but is amazingly okay. Our rabbit building got a lot of damage too. All the windows blew out of the rabbit barn and the glass is all over the yard." Over two dozen mature trees are snapped in half or uprooted. Some trees were 30 to 40 feet tall. Anna explained, "We've spent over $2,000 already, just on a chainsaw and on the wiring, meter, and other parts that the electric company told us we had to replace ourselves. We were out of power for over 24 hours so on the 2nd night we had to get a hotel. However, what really hurts is not knowing what to do with our goats...over 20 years of raising dairy goats...all of the work that goes into it...It really is a labor or love. We're a hobby farm, meaning we don't make a profit, we simply do it because we love these animals so much. Now they're homeless.....I don't know what to do or how we will recover from this. It would break my heart to bring them to auction or see them go for meat. I've been working on these genetics since the 1990s. I delivered and bottle raised most of these animals myself. I spend 365 days a year with them. They really do became like family." The goats will temporarily be housed in a shed on the neighboring land. Please help by donating so a permanent building can be built and they don't lose their beloved herd.