MANTUA, Ohio — Two men and a sledgehammer. That’s all it took to take down the Kotkowskis’ 80-foot concrete silo.
The silo was damaged by a fire last fall that destroyed the Kotkowskis’ barn and killed two-thirds of their goat herd. When its concrete staves hit the ground on May 1, it brought the couple one step closer to closing the final chapter on their farm life in Portage County.
Blair and Karen Kotkowski had been waiting for the silo to come down to build their new modern beef barn. Once the building is started, they will feel good about their plans to retire to Colorado, starting a new chapter out west.
“It’s pure relief after that silo came down,” Blair Kotkowski said.
Fire
The Kotkowskis’ main barn — formerly a tie-stall dairy barn — burned down Oct. 31. They lost 24 goats in the fire, including fall-born kids, some equipment and all of their second- and third-cutting hay.
Nine days after the barn fire, one of their silos caught fire and the remaining silage inside smoldered for weeks. Both the fire department and manufacturer advised the Kotkowskis that letting the silo fire burn out on its own was the safest option. This has been the standard since three firefighters were killed in a massive silo explosion in Marshallville, Ohio in 1985.
While the smoldering silo wasn’t bothering anyone, it was impeding progress to build a new barn to replace the one razed by the fire. The silo was too close for comfort to the proposed site of the new facility.
The Kotkowskis operated a dairy, milking about 45 or 50 cows, until 2018. Then, they got into beef cattle and meat goats, as well as growing hay and crops.
“This farm has always had cattle,” Karen Kotkowski said.
After the fire, though, they were forced to sell off their small cow-calf herd as they lacked the feed to get them through the winter. They retrofitted an open pole barn with walls to give their goats shelter while they kidded through the winter.
They had about a dozen Kiko goats left and got a handful more from a woman who read about their barn fire in the Farm and Dairy. The woman, from Erie, Pennsylvania, needed to downsize her herd of Spanish meat goats due to sudden health issues in her family. She connected with the Kotkowskis and sold them some of her goats for a fair price, Blair said.
Silo demo
Blair said he called four companies before he found the one that would end up demolishing his silo. No one else wanted to take on the job, he said. He finally found Franklin Silo Repair in a classified ad in Farm and Dairy.
Ephraim Renno, owner of Franklin Silo Repair, drove more than five hours from near Lancaster, Pennsylvania to the Kotkowskis’ farm in Mantua, Ohio. He and one employee started by taking down the metal support hoops that wrap around the silo.
Then, Renno calmly took a sledgehammer and began strategically breaking out staves around the base of the silo. A small crowd of friends and family had gathered at the Kotkowskis’ equipment barn to watch the progress. It took less than two hours from the time Renno arrived to the time the silo hit the ground.
It collapsed sideways into the open area where the old barn stood, just as planned. The silage at the bottom of the silo reignited once it was exposed to the fresh air, but the local fire department assessed the situation and found it wasn’t a hazard.
Renno said he’s demolished 300 to 400 silos in Pennsylvania and surrounding states, although he’s gone as far as Colorado for one job. About 90% of his work is repairing silos and 10% is demolition.
“I’m having fun,” he said.
Coda
With the silo down, they can start building for the future, although it’s one they won’t be around for.
Blair and Karen have plans to move to Colorado this summer, taking some of their goats with them. They’ll come back to the area occasionally, but the day-to-day farm operations will be managed by a cousin, David Novak, and their neighbor, Mark Brugmann, owner of the nearby O.K. Brugmann Jr. Ready-Mix Concrete LLC and Brugmann Family Farms.
Brugmann has already been helping Blair with harvesting and will move his cattle onto the farm once the new barn is up.
“Mark and his sons want to stay in farming,” Blair said. “They’ll take care of farming the land and get cattle back out here.”
