Burlington family's farm destroyed by fire

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BURLINGTON, Wis. (CBS 58) -- Fire crushed a Burlington family farm this week, just ahead of the spring growing season. But the family's staying close together, praying someday they'll be able to rebuild.

"Get out, we got to run, run, run, so we like booked it and when we turned around, the whole thing was on fire," said Amy Rose Weber.

Mid-day Wednesday, the Gevena Lakes produce farm that Scott and Jackie Koster built from the ground up went up in flames.

"I ran into the office while it was on fire, got some files out, got my bible that my grandmother gave my wife and I for our wedding," said Scott Koster, Geneva Lakes produce owner.

A handful of items spared, but the fight was on to try to save the dream. Thirty years ago, Scott Koster gave up his full-time job because this was the life he wanted.

"We grow a lot of the basics tomatoes and sweet corn and melons. We do a lot of the fun stuff like Bok Choy," said Scott Koster.

Flames jumped from one small building to the next, and the family's grateful for the efforts of the Lyons Fire Department.

"Next to the green house here we have storage trailers with a bunch of flammable stuff and if they would've started on fire the green houses would have," said son, Corban Koster.

This farm means so much to the family that without hesitation both men jumped up onto the roof tops of these green houses with hoses in hand.

"My first thought was to put it out, but there was no putting it out, the whole back of the shop was engulfed, so we did what we could, had to sit down a few times and take a mental break. It was exhausting," said Tylor Schallert.

"It's something that we really acquired, built, made over the years, memories and all of that," said Corban Koster.

A few greenhouses, and all the beautiful hanging plants inside, were spared. But all around, it's an eyesore of melted sheds, farmers market supplies, and damaged-beyond-repair tools.

"We have bins and bins of potatoes that just disintegrated, melted," said Corban Koster.

Now they're finding little things in the rubble like these peas that they would've planted this spring.

"And I say if you have a bulldozer, that would be nice, but if you would pray for us that would be even more powerful, because we're stepping out of, we're asking (gets emotional) excuse me, we're asking God to come forward in a big way," said Scott Koster.

Two days later, clean-up's slow. Tylor Schallert put together a GoFundMe page for a family who's meant so much to him.

"It just broke my heart to watch it all burn, but nothing we could do," said Schallert.

Here is a link to the GoFundMe page.

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