Farm equipment may have gone airborne Sunday night

James East stands between the feeder and his pole barn.

By Rob Alway. Editor-in-Chief.

AMBER TWP. — Mason County saw very little damage from Sunday’s high winds. However, a strange thing occurred at one Amber Township residence. James and Liz East awoke this morning to find an animal feeder had appeared in their yard at 830 N. Dennis Road. The only logical place where it could have come from was the Vischher farm located a few hundred feet up the road. But, the round feeder, which weighs a few hundred pounds and is made of all metal, did not travel a straight path.

Patsy Visscher said it very likely is theirs. She was going to check with her son, Caleb, who manages the farm.

The Easts’ house is on the east side of the road and to the southeast of the Visscher farm. Between the farm and the resting spot of the feeder is a clump of trees.

James East figures the feeder had to have been airborne and could not have just rolled over. “It hit our pole barn,” he said, pointing at a dent in the building, about 5 feet off the ground, “and then it landed here next to it. It had to have been in the air.”

Having come from the northwest, it would have been impossible to just roll over into the the Easts’ yard.

James said he came outside Sunday night about 11 p.m. to have a cigarette. The pole barn is about 75 feet to the north of the house’s attached garage, where James was standing. He said he did not see anything at that time.

The wind gusted Sunday between 30 to 50 mph.

“We discovered it this morning,” James said. “Liz happened to be looking out the window and noticed something really strange in our yard. How it got there, is just kind of a mystery.”

Mason County Emergency Coordinator Liz Reimink said there was no report of tornados in Mason County during Sunday’s storm and there have been no other reports of damage along Dennis Road.