Severe weather swept through Indiana Tuesday providing plenty of flooding and wind damage in its wake. Southern Indiana and Kentucky received the brunt of the severe weather activity, with multiple tornadoes touching down.
“It pretty much destroyed absolutely everything we had,” says Ben Kron. A tornado ripped through their farm in Evansville where he farms with his mom, Joyce, and dad, Randy. “Four barns are gone. Four grain bins gone, you know, our grain leg got torn down in it too and even the house shifted a little bit and the garage. There’s pretty much nothing left from the whole thing.”
Kron says, thankfully, no one was injured on their farm. He was in the house with his family when the tornado came through, but they made it to the basement in time.
Now, they’re in clean up mode. Kron says the community is coming together to help.
“It’s been really great honestly. Even guys from our local co-op, they’re all down here today helping us get stuff cleaned up. We’ve got three or four different neighbors here helping us. Farm Credit and AgriGold brought us out some lunch and cleaning supplies yesterday. It’s a really great site to see.”
Kron says you see this kind of thing on the news, but you may not truly understand how hard an event like this hits until it happens to you.
When asked what’s next, Kron said, “Just pick everything back up. We’re always optimistic, so just keep going. That’s the only thing we can do is keep going, fix what we can fix, and deal with what we can’t. Just keep going and don’t stop.”
Both of their planters and a sprayer were in one of the barns that’s now pretty much scrap metal, but they sustained what Kron says is relatively minor damage.
Items from Kron’s farm ended up in neighboring fields, and unfortunately some of those neighbors suffered damage as well.
Kron believes the rain will keep farmers out of the field for at least the next week. While he hates to see that for others, it’s not necessarily a bad thing for Kron Farms as they continue to clean up.
