Families get to work rebuilding lives after Golden Gate Estates fire

Shaina Muth and her husband, Jonathan Whitlow, have dreams of starting their own vegetable farm one day.

They want to call it “LazyCow Vegetable Farm,” starting with a variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs — lettuces, potatoes, mangos and lychees.

Their dream started to become a reality a year ago when they bought an overgrown 5-acre property already rigged with an irrigation system in Golden Gate Estates. It was a former tree farm turned dumping ground.

They cleared the brush and trash, put a new roof on the tiny house they now use as storage, restored the old irrigation system and purchased new irrigation equipment.

“Basically we have to start over from scratch, because I don’t know how else we could do this,” Muth said Sunday as she surveyed the charred land after a brush fire tore through the outer edges of the property Friday, taking with it two sheds and the new equipment worth thousands of dollars.

As the rain continued to fall Sunday morning and into the afternoon, families were returning to what was left of their homes and properties after mandatory and voluntary evacuations were lifted. The South Florida Water Management district reported 1.83 inches of rain fell in the area just north of the fire in the last 24 hours.

Fire officials Sunday said three homes were lost in the blaze, which reached 7,034 acres Sunday afternoon, with 50 percent of it contained by fire crews from across the state.

And now the work begins.

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More: Some in Golden Gate Estates return to ruined homes, burned cars, grief over lost animals

Muth and Whitlow, who live in the Isles of Capri in East Naples, will start by getting electricity and water restored to the parcel off Kearney Avenue.

After turning it into a vegetable farm, their long-term goal, they said, is to use the produce to supply a self-sustaining bed and breakfast in the Isles of Capri. And on the farm, Muth hopes to lead cooking lessons and teach at-risk youth, women and children about sustainable food and how to grow it.

"That’s where we’re headed in the future," Muth said. "We just have to start small, and just get one field, so we can start getting produce coming in so we can start taking to the markets and get a little bit of income."

When the fire started Friday, Muth's husband and 80-year-old father were fighting the 20-foot flames with shovels and sand. The two wooden sheds — one of them served as a well house — were engulfed quickly. The reservoir tank exploded, sending shards of the shed's roof across the property. They got out in their cars just in time.

"The woods were on fire all around you," Muth said. "I’d never seen anything like it. It was scary."

Now they're asking for the community's help to replace all the equipment: the reservoir tank, electrical boxes, irrigation timers, valves, piping and filters for the whole property, along with the only spigot they had to access well water. They've started an online campaign on gofundme.com, a popular crowdfunding site, to gather donations. They've set a goal of $8,000.

"It’s a long process because of the amount of time and money that needs to be put into it," Muth said. "That was why this was such a huge setback, because you take so much of your savings to put into starting something like this and your main thing, which is the water as a farmer, you can’t grow without water."

But they also realize they're some of the lucky ones.

"The horrible thing is the people who lost their houses," Whitlow said.

Mustang didn't make it

To the north, Barry Barkman surveyed his 1966 Ford Mustang.

The glass was shattered and blackened from smoke. The rubber tires had melted off the rims, and all that was left of its signature dark blue paint was a charred yellow residue.

He had planned to rebuild the Mustang, the one he’s had since he was 15 years old.

“We’ve been through a lot together,” Barkman said of his “Blue Beast.” “It’s kind of an end of the era, I suppose. I haven’t worked on it in a long time, but it was going to be a retirement project.”

A nurse working the night shift at NCH Baker Hospital Downtown, Barkman had just fallen asleep when he got an alert on his phone around 10:30 a.m. Friday. Outside, it was “raining ash,” he said, and the smoke was quickly encroaching on his 5-acre property off Garland Road in the Estates.

He threw some belongings and the family cat into the truck, and his wife, Ivonne, left work to help get other cars off the property before the flames started to engulf the brush surrounding the house.

When the Barkmans returned Saturday, they found the Mustang, a 1993 Geo Metro, a tarp-covered carport, shed and lawnmower destroyed.

The house, though, was untouched.

“Looking around, it should have been a lot of worse,” Barry Barkman said. “But luckily it wasn’t.”

He doesn't know how much the burned items were worth — he lost tools, a bicycle, a convection oven, paint and hurricane shutters in the shed. But it's the sentimental value, he said, that's most difficult to part with.

He bought the Mustang from his brother for $200 in the 1970s, even before he had his own driver's license. He put 20,000 miles on that car, he said. He drove it around Miami for at least 20 more years after that, rebuilding it twice. He rebuilt the engine — practically the entire car.

"It's kind of heartbreaking," he said, his voice low and soft.

But the survival of their home, Ivonne Barkman said, they have the firefighters to thank for that.

“You have to just be thankful,” she said. “I trust my God. It is well with my soul, as the song goes.”