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Schieles send hay to help after wildfires
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · March 23, 2017
The Schiele family, who farms off Buckeye Road in between West Branch and West Liberty, on Sunday loaded up 25 bales of hay to send to Kansas following wildfires there.
According to CNN, a storm system in the first week of March produced up to 32 tornadoes in several states, and those tornadoes then led to wildfires in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas and even Florida.
The fires killed five people and burned more than 1 million acres and several homes.
The Schieles sent the hay “to get feed into the burned-out parts of the south,” according to father Lance Schiele’s Facebook page.
Friends noticing the Facebook post alerted the West Branch Times, who contacted the family.
Mother Jeni Schiele said a trucker offered to haul the hay for free, though the family helped pay for fuel. Son and West Branch High School sophomore Brett, a 4-H and FFA member, loaded the hay onto the trailer.
Lance said he, Brett and another son, Dylan, 10, recently visited western Kansas and saw burned fields stretching as much as three miles across in some parts.
A cattle rancher himself, Lance heard about the need for feed through fellow cattle ranchers on Twitter.
He saw another rancher in Washington, Iowa, sending hay and connected with him for the delivery.
Lance said shipping the hay probably cost more than the hay is worth, but “they’ve got to get it from somewhere, so it might as well come from me.”
He said the media does not seem to give the wildfires much attention, so he and others are hoping this action will help do that.
The Schieles had been visiting Kansas to help prepare their children — they also have a daughter, Hannah, 12 — to one day take over the cattle farm.
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