Rising from ashes

DOVER — Having a fire was not the warm welcome back to farming Brian LaBare had been hoping for.

This past fall, LaBare lost nearly half of his harvest to a bin fire that burned for a week. While it did not make for an encouraging start, he and his family are continuing to follow this path, grateful for all of the help and support they have received.

“We’re going to keep going,” LaBare said. “Farming, I don’t know how these guys can do it with all the stuff that’s happening. It’s a learning experience, and luckily, my wife and I have other jobs besides farming, so that’s what’s helping a lot.”

LaBare is the fourth generation to farm his family’s land — in a way. His great-grandfather, John LaBare, initially farmed about 5,000 acres in the early 1900s, and 90% of it was lost during the Great Depression. Then, John’s son, Wesley LaBare, farmed the remaining land, and his son, Terry LaBare, farmed a little after his military service; but he got out of the industry in the 1970s. However, Wesley kept operating the farm until he sold the land in 1980.

As for LaBare, he moved onto the family farm in 2006, but he did not start farming until 2024 when he bought 150 unattached acres closer to Dover. Locally, he said he is known as “the gardener” for his relatively small acreage, but farming is not his main career.

“I grew up milking cows (and) baling hay,” LaBare said. “I got into construction in my 20s, and I’ve been doing that ever since. Now, I have two grandsons and a son who want to go into farming, so I’m trying to get a head start for them.”

However, plans went awry during his second year of harvesting.

On Nov. 2, 2025, LaBare and his cousin, John Allen, started harvesting the LaBare farm’s corn. Allen had been helping LaBare farm by bringing in larger equipment. They started at 11 a.m. on 53 acres, picking all day until they left at 10 p.m.

“The corn was running good,” LaBare said. “Moisture was 20%, and we were putting it in my dryer bin. We had 12,000-plus bushels in the dryer bin; everything was running well.”

The next morning at 7 a.m., LaBare arrived at the bin to find smoke coming out of it, which he initially mistook as steam. Once he realized what it was, though, he shut everything down and tried to get the corn out. As of writing, the investigation into the cause of the fire is ongoing, but LaBare believes it may have been a faulty gearbox in the middle of the grain bin auger that sparked.

“I had put in these used bins in the spring,” LaBare said. “I tried to open my flight up to get the corn out, … but the flight wasn’t hooked up, so I couldn’t get any of the corn to come out of the auger at the bottom, so that was a major problem right there.”

LaBare called in the fire, and the Dover and Eyota fire departments responded and doused the corn as best they could.

“We thought we had it, but … they were back out here seven more times,” LaBare said. “Finally, on the last time, I had my friend, John Shea, come out; he has an excavating business. We cut a hole in the side of the bin, and he just scooped everything out. That was the only way we could get the corn to stop burning.”

LaBare said he is grateful to the Dover and Eyota fire crews, who poured approximately 80,000 gallons of water on the fire over the course of a week. Fortunately, the fire did not pose a threat to any other structures, although it remains a challenge to LaBare’s finances.

“I’m not in it to make money,” LaBare said. “It’d be nice to break even, but the way the commodity prices are, it’s going to be tough.”

The bin itself and its 12,000 bushels were a total loss. Instead of letting the burnt grain go to waste, LaBare put it on Facebook Marketplace for free as animal feed.

“In a half-hour, I probably had 30 calls,” LaBare said. “Two farmers came, one from west of Mankato — he took four semi loads — and another came from the Wisconsin area, and he took another four semi loads. The rest, some local people came and loaded it up. … I had it gone within three days.”

Now, LaBare’s corn harvest totals 18,000 bushels from his remaining tillable 65 acres. He has this grain stored in St. Charles. His final 30 or so acres of his 150 are woods.

With winter settled in, LaBare is purchasing his corn seed for 2026, waiting on fertilizer and other commodities to see what the price does. He also plans to start using a no-till planting system.

“Hopefully, next fall, I’ll have this bin fixed,” LaBare said. “Right now, I’m paying storage fees for my corn, and then, I have a grain bin payment due in March. I’m kind of getting double-billed, so that’s what is really going to hit the pocketbook.”

LaBare said he is glad to have the support of his family and neighbors, who have been checking in to see what he and his family need.

“Someone wanted to start a GoFundMe, and I said no, we’re not going to do that,” LaBare said. “It’s a small-town community, so everyone asks questions and sees how things are going.”

For now, LaBare is keeping his fingers crossed that the market improves and the farm does not have problems like this again. One day, perhaps the bin fire’s only lasting impact will be in the story he tells his grandchildren.

“Hopefully, they can learn from my mistakes and we won’t have them again,” LaBare said. “Farming is not just a small thing; it’s tough. There’s a lot you’ve got to know.”