Support for Honey's New Shelter and Home

On June 14, 2025, our neighbors woke us at 1AM to tell us our barn had burned to the ground. Sometime after 10PM, the barn caught fire and is a total loss. We had 16 chicks in the brooder that were getting ready to move to the coop this week. Thankfully, our horse, Honey, had been in the pasture and was not harmed.

When we moved here, our home was undergoing renovations and improvements, so anything we owned went into the barn for storage. Irreplaceable items went in there including our son's first Christmas ornaments, my childhood ornaments, the quilt I made when I was 9 years old, our wedding album and all of the cards gifted to us, etc.

Our insurance will likely cover all of the personal items that we lost that can be replaced or assigned a monetary value. However, the coverage on the structure itself was wholly inadequate to rebuild. At the time we moved in, I didn't think we would have Honey come to live with us, but she's been here less than a year and I cannot imagine our son not being able to see her every day.

We're being faced with the heartbreaking decision to either board Honey back at her last barn in Waterford, where she will be well loved, but won't be around her people as much. Or, we can try to rebuild. The cost of materials alone will be more than double what our insurance will cover, not including any labor.

Our hope is to fundraise enough to purchase materials and do the work ourselves, with the help of our family and friends. The first priority will be to make her a run-in shelter, and then erect a structure for hay storage, tack, etc.

We are usually the people to donate to others' fundraisers, and are not ones to ask for help. However, several friends and family members have pushed us to do this to help with our recovery and take some of the emotional and financial strain off of this loss.