Healing after the trauma of losing everything in a fire
Self-reflection, connection to the land, and a supportive community helped one farmer heal
Photo by Laura Hardie.
On April 1, 2018, Rosina Wallace lost nearly everything she owned.
“We had six barns and two houses, and they all went,” 75-year-old Wallace recalled of the day a massive fire ripped through the Waterbury, Vermont farm she shares with her brother Kay “Wally” Wallace.
“The only thing we had left was the mailbox, and that winter when the town crew was plowing, the snow plow hit the mailbox, and it flew down into the lower pasture under the snow. So we had to get a new mailbox too,” Wallace said with the kind of chuckle that only comes from learning to survive the unimaginable.
And so, four years later, Wallace can laugh about the mailbox. At the time, it felt like just another cruel joke. The fire happened on April Fool’s Day, which was also Easter Sunday that year - a day that celebrates the defeat of death. Wallace, a dairy farmer before the fire, says part of her died that day, and she’s still figuring out what the resurrection looks like.
“Losing the business was devastating. It meant that not only did I lose my animals and my means of income, but my contacts. Because of the dairy farm, I got to see and communicate with so many farmers,” Wallace reflected. “And, I lost my identity because I was a dairy farmer. I got up in the morning, I put my boots on, and I took care of my cows. That was who I was. It wasn’t my choice to not be that anymore, and all of a sudden I was forced to not be that anymore.”
Helpfulness From Community Brings Healing
Waterbury is the kind of town where people look out for each other and where community service is the norm. Rosina contributes by teaching kids about agriculture.
“I’m quite sure every child in the Thatcher Brook Elementary School at the time of the fire had been to my farm…lots of them had put a milking machine on a cow,” Wallace said.
She says a big reason she got animals again was for the children in the area.
“Not only for my own benefit, but for them to know there would be animals on the farm. So I got Ferdinand first,” Wallace said.
Ferdinand is a castrated male Jersey bull, known as a steer that Wallace got the summer after the fire. Steers are typically raised for beef, though Wallace says that will never be Ferdinand’s fate. He’s more of a friend than a farm animal. He’s been to the local schools, the Waterbury Not Quite Independence Day parade, and the Stowe Street Art Festival.
Ferdinand, Wallace’s steer, grazes at the farm on Blush Hill in Waterbury. Photo by Laura Hardie.
“I would go down to the elementary school and talk with the kids about how he was growing. He got to interact with kids,” and Wallace added under her breath as if he could hear, “he’s totally spoiled.”
Since then, she’s added another steer to the farm named Mr. Gad.
“It’s just an expression I use and say a lot. It’s like ‘oh Gad, oh pshaw,’ like my grandmother would have said. It’s a comment out of frustration,” Wallace explained.
Mr. Gad is a reminder of how the helpfulness and support from the tight-knit local community pulled Wallace and her brother through their frustration and loss. After the fire, meals were made, an apartment was donated, and over $80,000 in donations rolled in to help Wallace and her brother rebuild.
Rosina looks on as my two children feed Mr. Gad grain at the farm. Photo by Laura Hardie.
In September of 2018, a new house was finished for Wally on their property, and a combined garage-apartment was in progress for Rosina. That fall, family, neighbors, and five contractors from Waterbury pitched in for a barn-raising.
“They came on three different Sundays and put the barn up in three days…that winter Ferdinand had a place to be,” Wallace said.
It wasn’t long before Wallace had more animals and a plan to try something new on the land where her grandfather was born and their family members had farmed for over 150 years. She says without the support from the community, she doesn’t know how she and Wally would have recovered.
“This is still home. We don’t have our houses and barns or the family memorabilia…but we’re still home. We’re here and that was extremely important,” Wallace said.
A patch of irises grows in front of the remnants of one of two houses and seven barns that burned at the Wallace Farm in 2018. Behind the wreckage and out of sight, another plant in the iris family is growing—saffron. Photo by Laura Hardie.
Fiber and Saffron From the Ashes
In addition to her two steers, Wallace also has two alpacas, twenty chickens, two cats, and an energetic one-year-old border collie that she refers to as “an unruly teenager that doesn’t have enough animals to chase to stay busy.”
Wallace gives out the eggs from the chickens to friends and neighbors. As for the alpacas, they’ve produced many bags of fleece, but Wallace is trying to figure out whether to sell the raw product or convert it into something herself.
“I could sell it and let somebody else process it…I could get it all the way to yarn, or I could make it into sweaters or something. I have been taking spinning lessons, and I’ve been trying to spin, and I just haven’t gotten anything completed. I thought there would be all that time on cold winter nights, and it doesn’t happen,” Wallace lamented.
Wallace talks about her two alpacas while they offer puzzled looks. Photo by Laura Hardie.
Since progress with the fleece was slow, Wallace decided to start growing saffron. Saffron is a spice made from the fall-flowering plant Crocus sativus, a member of the iris family, and is commonly known as the saffron crocus. It’s used in food and beverages for its sweet, floral flavor and rich yellow-orange color. Because of the labor involved in harvesting and drying it, saffron is the most expensive spice in the world.
The saffron market in Vermont has been growing over the past decade, thanks in large part to the work of The University of Vermont, home to the North American Center for Saffron Research & Development. Wallace first heard of growing saffron from UVM at the Vermont Farm Show. In 2019, she decided to attend a two-day saffron clinic hosted by UVM to learn the ropes.
The saffron patch at the Wallace Farm looks brown in the spring because unlike most plants it dies down in the spring and then starts the regrowth phase in late summer. Photo by Laura Hardie.
“I partnered with somebody else who was at that conference to buy the corms, the little bulbs, because the more corms you order, the cheaper per corm. Plus, it all had to be done online, and I don’t have a computer,” Wallace said. “I planted 2,000 corms in 2019. It’s a small patch.”
In 2020, she sold her first crop to a wholesale buyer who went on to re-sell it in New York City to restaurants. Wallace says that opportunity has since evaporated, and she’s currently looking for a buyer for her 2021 crop. She says she prefers to sell it all to one buyer. Though, she’s considering selling at farmer’s markets.
“I suppose I have to find my own market, but I’m not good at that. I don’t like going out and talking to people about buying stuff,” Wallace said. “You can keep a crop for two years or so. The harvest is in the fall, late September to November, so we’ll see.“
She says as long as she has to buy feed for her animals, Wallace will also keep her part-time job at the Cabot Cooperative Creamery store in Waterbury. Wallace worked there before the fire and was a dairy farmer member of the co-op, where milk from the farm was made into cheese.
Wallace stopped to think about how she schedules her time at the farm around the job and loudly proclaimed, “I’d rather just be FARMING!”
Though Wallace misses her dairy cows, she says she’s learning to like her new routine with less-demanding chores.
“I like saffron because the animals are work. Every single day regardless of how hot it is, regardless of how cold it is, or how much snow there is…it’s every single day. That saffron just slept under the snow, and I never had to walk to the saffron patch through the snow,” Wallace said.
Photo by Laura Hardie.
Having the Land and Eachother is Enough
As Wallace reflects on what the future holds, she says it’s important to keep their 226 acres on Blush Hill undeveloped and in her family. She has nieces and nephews who she and Wally are hopeful will take an interest in caring for the land.
“I’m just truly grateful that we are still here and that I can enjoy being here, enjoy what I’m doing, and that life is good. As long as I don’t stop and think about what I had and what I lost, I’m okay,” Wallace reflected. “Life is hard, and it’s how you deal with it that is important. The important thing is to keep moving forward; keep looking ahead.”
Wallace says she’s working on being okay with not knowing what comes next.
“I haven’t really come to terms with what I’m supposed to morph into. Maybe, in the long run, I never would have voluntarily given up farming, but maybe it was time for me to be done,” Wallace said.
As we walked on the dirt road in front of her farm, she looked up at the goliath maple trees growing alongside it. Her grandfather planted them over a hundred years ago. They seemed to be watching over her. She pauses to remember making maple syrup with her father from the maple tree grove in the lower field where her alpacas now live. He died in 1995 and so did the tradition.
In 2020, Wallace began collecting sap again from the big maples by the road. She transforms it into syrup over a wood fire in her backyard. A self-replenishing gift from the land and her ancestors.
She says it’s also a good excuse to burn the charred remnants of their barns and houses. A reminder that nothing stays the same, and a lesson in feeling content with what she has.
“I make about six quarts a year. It’s enough for us.”
Rosina wishes to thank everyone who supported her and her brother in their recovery from the fire. If you are interested in a farm visit with children, alpaca wool, or saffron, contact Rosina at 802-244-6954.
Photo by Laura Hardie.
Maple trees, over 100 years old, grow on the right side of the field where Wallace keeps her two alpacas.
Photo by Laura Hardie.
Wallace checks on the saffron she planted in 2019. It grows behind the remnants of the houses and barns that burned at her family farm in 2018.
Photo by Laura Hardie.
