‘Like a freight train’: Salem Township farm damaged in Wednesday’s storms

SALEM TOWNSHIP, Pa. — The Kepple family has run the Kepple Brothers Farm through five generations.

So, dealing with storm damage isn’t something new.

“Yeah, I mean we’ve had storms before. Barns ripped off, barn roofs ripped off,” said Mike Kepple, one of the owners. “This is probably one of the more significant ones, if not the most significant one.”

Kepple was sitting on his porch, which is just up the hill from his family’s farm, when the storm started to roll in Wednesday.

“A complete wall of water came in, and then just an absolute whirlwind sound of, just like they always say, like a freight train coming through,” he told Channel 11′s Andrew Havranek.

The high winds from the storm ripped the roof off of the barn where the cows sleep and eat. The animals are fine, but one side of the building did collapse.

Meanwhile just across the street  – the storm took the roof right off of one of the farm’s silos.

Kepple said luckily that silo wasn’t in use.

But, they still have to fix it, which is a lot of work.

“They’re bringing a crane in, then they’re going to drop a guy down and somehow rig that up and do their best to put it back in place I guess,” Kepple explained.

Those men worked much of the day Friday on that silo.

Kepple Brothers Farm is a local milk supplier for United Dairy. Kepple said along with the cows, all of their milking equipment and the building where they milk are fine.  He said the biggest disruption will be the clean-up, and trying to get the barn rebuilt.

“It’s just going to add a few hours a day, it’s going to make it harder to feed the cows and take care of the cows where the barn got damaged, but we will figure something out and get them fed one way or another and keep things moving,” he said.

Kepple said it’ll take at least a few months to get completely back to normal.

“Yeah, things won’t be back to normal until all that stuff is done I guess,” he said.

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