Ashburnham couple begin rebuilding process after devastating barn fire: what's the plan

Seven weeks after a devastating barn fire, the owners of Amadon Farm in Ashburnham are looking toward the future and thanking the community for their support.

An early-morning, three-alarm blaze on May 16 destroyed the structure on the Old Gardner Road farm that Kendall and Kayla Amadon purchased four years ago. The 10 horses housed in the barn, which doubled as a garage, were able to escape the 36-foot-by-36-foot barn, but several chickens were unable to get out. The blaze also destroyed Kendall’s landscaping equipment and several vehicles.

The barn and its contents, which included lawnmowers, a four-wheeler, leaf-blowers, and generators, were worth about $300,000, according to the couple.

Husband lost nearly everything in the fire

“I tell people my husband in our home owned only the clothes on his back, and that’s about it,” Kayla said. “And in the barn was everything he owned from the past 40 years of his life.”

Kendall, who works as a landscaper, used a garden hose on the night of the fire to keep the flames from spreading to the couple’s house, Kayla said. The couple, along with their three-year-old son, Cohen, were not harmed during the blaze.

“We’re all really grateful that we’re here,” she said.

The night the "world flipped upside down"

Kayla describes the event as the night her “world flipped upside down.”

“The stages of grief, I guess, can be pretty bizarre,” she said. “The first week (after the fire) was terrible and traumatizing – that’s the only way I can put it. We weren’t even able to talk about it much, and now we’re at the point, a month later, where we’re able to talk about it. We’re in the phase of moving forward.”

The couple have spent the past few weeks cleaning up ash and debris from the site, and salvaging any items that made it through the fire relatively unscathed, according to Kayla.

More: Gardner responds to Ashburnham barn fire: What happened to the animals?

“It’s all kind of part of the healing process, I think,” she said.

After pressure-washing the foundation, the Amadons will pull a permit to rebuild a barn on the site.

Outpouring of community support

Meanwhile, the community has responded with an outpouring of donations to the family. A GoFundMe account with a goal of raising $75,000 to help restore the family’s barn had raised over $78,000 at last count. In addition to money, neighbors and fellow farm-owners had been generous in donating supplies and meals to the family, Kayla said. Tractor Supply donated feed for the horses, she added.

“That’s really the only reason we feel better about what happened,” she said. “The GoFundMe, because of insurance issues, is the only reason we can move forward with rebuilding.”

Kayla, who works as a full-time equine dentist, said she was especially grateful to the Whitmore family in Orange for organizing a raffle that raised over $14,000 to go toward a new barn.

“I think after COVID everyone kind of lost faith in humanity a little bit, but for us it’s been totally restored,” she said. “My husband and I both feel like we can’t wait to pay back somebody else.”

Cause of blaze officially unknown, but four-wheeler is suspected

Although the cause of the fire will likely remain unknown, the Amadons and fire officials suspect the blaze originated from the four-wheeler vehicle stored in the barn, according to Kayla.

“It happened to be parked next to all of the other small engines, so it was near the leaf-blowers, the generators, and the lawnmowers, and everything exploded and that’s what cause the entire barn to catch on fire,” she said. “The fire investigator thought the same thing.”

This article originally appeared on Gardner News: Ashburnham couple begin rebuilding process after devastating barn fire: what's the plan