Soda Fire

the soda fire started august 10th in between marsing and jordan valley from a lightning strike.  it was so close to home!  rumor has it, the locals almost had it put out when the blm showed up.  nevertheless, winds picked it up and brought it across hwy 95 and right up to the edges of homedale and then marsing and out hwy 78, each getting closer by the day.  the night it burned on 78, it was like the lights were still on in the house from all the flames and from all the cars streaming down riverside looking until about midnite.

 luckily, we have the snake river that runs between us and what was going on!  there was a fire camp set up at the fairgrounds in homedale and the homedale building housed the red cross.  a call went out to help all those affected, especially within our stake boundaries up in jordan valley.  the amount of food and supplies that were donated was unbelieveable!  you can see bridon sitting on just a small portion of all the water that was on our stage in the marsing building.  bentley donated some of his corn $ to buy water and we also sent a lot of paper products and dried foods up from our home.

 as you can see from the pictures, the smoke that filled the valley was thick!  here's a picture of the girls at a little kids camp in the thick smoke...and then idaho power's trimming of our trumpeter vine in the thick ash and smoke after our power started surging and it was determined the vine had grown so strong it had unhooked the connection from the pole!  our well house got ran over in the process... anyway, the ash was just falling out of the sky and the hay wasn't drying to well, to say the least.

 a lot of cattle were displaced, which did start hay moving a little bit (last 2 years have a been a slow go with depressed prices).   the fire was put out on august 25th with about 280,000 acres burned.  the wilsey ranch was highly affected and sell most of their beef as certified grass fed. so, they hauled a lot down and we are now custom feeding/grazing for them on the hillside thru spring.  it was a hopefully, once in a lifetime event, not to be repeated anytime soon!  but no one was hurt and only one structure, with no houses being lost.