Back in October, Rosetown was faced with a fire that ended up claiming the local Ag building. Fortunately, the Ag building was the only casualty of the fire, but what kind of impact did it leave behind?

Mike Moon from Central Plains Co-op explained that the impact has not been as large as expected.

“Impact wise, it’s been a learning process. We’ve had to do a lot of planning, and there’s a lot of recovery work, but our team has done a great job at pulling together, and getting us ready for the future. Obviously, we’ve been ready for spring, because we’ve been up and running here at our new site for 4 weeks now, and everything’s been going well.”

In the absence of the larger building Moon said that several smaller buildings have been set up as miniature agriculture centres. While they are perfectly adequate for the role they’ve been given, Moon did say that they “are more temporary than permanent.”

While the planning process has begun for a new site, it hasn’t gone much farther than that. As with everything else these days, planning has been slowed down by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and Moon expects that the Coronavirus will continue to stall planning in the coming months.

Thanks to hard work, and quick planning, local farmers should not have seen an impact to their business with the Rosetown Co-op Agriculture centre.

“We moved our team over to our Administration building right after the fire, and they were able to help out our customers throughout the process, so we really didn’t miss a beat that way. It’s just some of the behind the scenes things that you don’t see. You gotta do things a little bit differently. It’s just that you don’t have your building to go to where you knew where this thing was, but we don’t suddenly have it because it’s burnt.”

Moon added that their customers were very supportive both after the fire, and in regards to their plans going forward.

When asked if he expected any challenges in the upcoming seeding season, Moon said that they are in great shape, and that, despite COVID, business is expected to continue as usual.