Coming home to destruction

WEST UNION, Minn. — When Bruce Asfeld and his wife, Rose, left for vacation June 18 their corn was almost knee high. When they returned home, it was only 2-4 inches.

In the early hours of June 20, a severe storm made its way across North Dakota and central Minnesota stirring up tornados, hail and straight-line winds, leaving a path of destruction in its wake.

“I have 131 tillable acres and 40 acres is good yet, but the rest is destroyed,” Bruce said. “I don’t know what to do. (This is the) first time I will have to claim anything on crop insurance in 31 years.”

Bruce, a first-generation dairy farmer, owns and operates a 100-cow dairy farm near West Union which took a direct hit from straight-line winds, hail and heavy rain.

“This corn was looking really nice, just beautiful, but not anymore,” Bruce said. “I even made a comment to my wife before we left that the corn is looking really good.”

While there was no confirmed tornado in his area from the storm, Bruce said they are still cleaning up the trees that came down, part of the roof on the freestall barn was blown off, a calf hutch was destroyed and the corn out in the fields was stripped down to the core. Bruce and Rose were on vacation, leaving their son, Jonathon, and their employee, Taylor Young to take care of farm chores. Jonathon was at home when the storm hit.

“All I could see outside was white for about 15 minutes and then just as soon as it came, it was gone,” Jonathon said. “I thought the windows on the house were going to break. The house has a tin roof and tin siding so it was very loud.” 

Jonathon, who farms with his dad as well as working at a full-time job in town, said they received five inches of rain from the storm and that estimated wind speeds reached 80 mph.

“The storm woke me up at 2:15 a.m. and I was up until 4,” Jonathon said. “I couldn’t fall back asleep even after the storm quieted down because I was so alert from the storm. I noticed a calf run right in front of the house so I went to put him away only to learn the calf hutch had blown away.”

Meanwhile, Bruce and Rose had rode motorcycles out to Colorado for a family wedding and had made the trip a vacation with a group of motorcycling friends. Due to the lack of cell phone and internet service in the Rocky Mountains, the Asfelds never received weather notifications or alerts that anything was awry.

“All day Friday I had people texting and calling me asking, ‘How is your farm, do you need help?’’’ Bruce said. “We had no idea what happened, so once we had cell service, we called home to my son and all he said was ‘It’s a mess.’ That’s not what I wanted to hear.”

The Asfelds, along with some motorcyclist friends, had been planning the trip for months in advance and were set to be gone for seven days to see the Rocky Mountains and the Denver area.

“We were already there and the damage was done, there was nothing we could do so we decided to stick with our vacation plans and stay in Colorado,” Bruce said.

The Asfelds have multiple cameras set up on their farm that they can view from an app on their phones, however the storm knocked out service to the cameras for a couple of days. Once it was back up, Bruce was able to see the full extent of the damage to the farm.

“We are going to replant with an 85-day corn,” Bruce said. “But with more rain in the forecast, if we can’t get in the fields by July 1, we won’t be able to do anything.”

The already wet start to summer in their area had caused slow-downs for the Asfelds as they had not got a first cutting of grass hay off a section of land that is peat ground. They did manage to get the rest of first crop hay put up.

“Usually, you want to be done in the fields by now, but that will not be the case this year,” Bruce said. “I know of farmers nearby that had soybeans that are replanting and I know a guy that lost his shed.”

Although Asfelds had many areas of their farm affected by the storm Bruce said he is thankful his farm and family made it through.

“The cows are all okay and nobody got hurt and that’s all that matters,” Bruce said. “We put 2,300 miles on the bikes, but it was one for the memory book. We planned this trip back in January; we never expected this to happen while we were gone.”