Shelby County Farmers Picking Up the Pieces from Dec. 10 Tornado

(BEFORE AND AFTER PHOTOS OF THE DOERHING FARM, SUPPLIED TO FARMWEEK BY DARIN DOEHRING)

BY TAMMY SLOUP, FARMWEEK

Nearly two weeks after an EF2 tornado cut through Shelby, Moultrie and Coles counties, Darin Doehring is still stunned when he walks onto his family's Windsor farm.

"This is the first time in 90-plus years there's no livestock on the farm," he said.

The tornado destroyed three cattle barns and part of the feed system, as well as the machine shop and much of their farm equipment."Half the farm is gone," said Doehring, who was in Springfield when the storm hit his family's farm. His parents, Don and Linda, were at home, and fortunately, weren't injured and their home on the property is still habitable.

"The windows blew out in the living room and they were hunkered down in the bathroom as the storm went through," Doehring said.

The next morning, Doehring said they rounded up the cows, but sadly six were lost in the storm, and two more died afterward.

They were faced with a difficult decision about their herd.

"We decided to go ahead and just liquidate everything because our feed system was destroyed, we couldn't get any silage out of the silo, there's no fences, no gates really anywhere," he said.

When Doehring arrived that morning at 8 a.m., more than a dozen neighbors and friends were already at the farm, armed with trucks and trailers. The group rounded up the cows, came up with a plan for temporary housing and helped haul the livestock off the property.

"The calves were stressed out. We've got a pasture at my house but it's more for summertime and we just moved the cows back from there a couple of weeks prior to this winter time," he said.

Rather than spread the herd across multiple barns during the rebuild and cleanup, Doehring said liquidation was their best option, so they sold the remainder of the herd at a barn sale in Shelbyville Dec. 14.

Aside from neighbors, friends and legislators stopping by the farm to help or check in on the family, Doehring added working with COUNTRY has been "pretty handy," with an adjuster coming out almost immediately to work with the family on the semis and trailers that were also totaled by the tornado.

Others brought skid steers to the farm to help pick metal out of the fields.

"We've got debris in two to three miles of field that we've been picking up, and just around the homestead itself," Doehring said.

Doehring said while his parents are holding up pretty good, he's not sure if everything has sunk in yet.

"Dad's going to be 82 next Monday, and he's been at this place since he was 8 or 9," Doehring said. "So he's been here the majority of his life and we're just still in shock.

"We were talking here a few days ago and said we can maybe understand losing part of the shop or one or two cow barns but not everything. If you walk up our driveway and draw a line in the center of it everything north is destroyed and everything south is pretty well OK."

As for bringing livestock back to the farm, Doehring said that's likely in the future.

"It's kind of in our blood," he said. "It's an odd feeling right now not going out at seven o'clock in the morning, hearing the cows bellowing, seeing baby calves on the ground running around. But at some point we're going to get back into it, just not sure when."

The same tornado also leveled the South Central FS facility near Gays, and Doehring said a neighbor about two miles southwest of his family's farm also sustained damage. The twister also cut through Shelby County Farm Bureau Vice President Dennis Wirth's farm property just west of South Central.Piles of metal and wood litter the Doehrings' farm near Windsor after a Dec. 10 tornado. (Photo courtesy of Darin Doehring)

Shelby County Farm Bureau Manager Madison Bruns said damage was also reported in the Cowden and Herrick area of the county, and she's amazed at how many residents have been looking for ways to help those who sustained damage. 

While much of the media attention has been focused on tornado devastation in Kentucky, Bruns said it's also important to share the stories of damage and loss in Shelby County and throughout Illinois.

"A lot of help needs to be sent down to Kentucky, but a lot of help is also needed in Shelby County and Illinois," she said.

The Doehrings are appreciative of all the support from neighbors.

"People have been bringing us food and stuff. The people we see in town, one group buys us lunch one day, we don't even know who that was," Doehring said. "It's nice to see with what the country's been going through the last few years, there's still good people out there. We can't pay people back for what they've done for us already."

The Community Banks of Shelby County in Herrick is accepting donations for some families in need in the Cowden-Herrick community. They can be contacted for donations and additional information at 618-428-5228.