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Northfield farmer loses bin site, other buildings in Sep. 20th storm

A farmer lost his grain bin site and several other buildings when storms blew through southeast Minnesota last week.

Bruce Peterson and his family run a corn, soybean, cattle, and hog operation near Northfield.

“Our grain setup was pretty much leveled, and the hog barn I wanted to open up was pretty much flattened.  our shop was flattened.”

Multiple tornadoes touched down in the Northfield and Faribault areas Thursday night.

Peterson tells Brownfield his house was spared, but the garage was damaged.

“We had a lot of fuel in storage, luckily nothing ignited.  We actually had a grain leg fall on a gas tank, I’m not sure why that didn’t ignite.”

He says one of his harvesters is laying on top of an old dairy barn with harvest about to begin.

“We’re out our grain setup for the fall.  We can handle about 80 percent of our grain here at home, but we’re just going to have to work through our local CFS Coop (which) ordered more trains.”

Peterson says livestock losses were minimal, and they’ve received tremendous help from neighbors.