Two Weeks After the Fire: Oshala Farm Rebuilding Update #2

Two weeks ago, the fire took four structures, but between them, they held almost everything that kept Oshala running: our dryers, storage, employee space, mechanic shop, coolers, and specialized milling equipment. Four buildings, and our entire operational core went with them — along with nearly $2 million in inventory. That inventory wasn’t just product sitting in a barn. It was our future sales, our cashflow, the thing that pays our crew and keeps orders moving for the next year. Everyone and everything living made it out safely. That’s the part we hold onto.

What happened after wasn’t some viral moment or social media phenomenon to study. It was people responding in a way that moved us and surprised us more than we know how to say. Most of the people telling our story, sharing it, showing up for us, we know them. Some of you have been buying from us since the beginning of Oshala Farm.. We’ve watched your businesses grow from the ingredients we grew for you. We’ve met your families, shipped you orders through your own hard seasons, poured a piece of ourselves into what we send out every week. So when the story started moving, through you, in your words, to people we’ve never met — it hit differently than we expected. There’s a particular kind of pain in watching people you love and respect carry your loss for you, tell it on your behalf, worry about you. It’s humbling in a way that’s hard to describe. And it’s support in a way that’s hard to describe too, because it isn’t coming from strangers moved by a headline. It’s coming from decades of relationship, like a hand reaching out to catch you in the exact second you started to fall, before you’d even had time to realize you were going down.

We haven’t had a chance to write to you properly since then. It’s been non-stop — putting out literal fires, then figurative ones, then trying to get a herb farm back up and running with its infrastructure gone. We’re sorry for the silence. We still want to sit down and record a video for you, and we will, soon. For now, we wanted to take you through where we actually are.

A Community That Carried Us

What happened in the days after still amazes us. Within 48 hours, this community had raised almost the entire initial goal we’d set. Since then, it hasn’t stopped. More than 2,800 people have given over $288,000 through GoFundMe alone — and when we look at who actually showed up, it wasn’t random. It was you: our customers, large and small. Our family. Our friends. Herb lovers who’ve bought from us for years, even if we’ve never met face to face. And it was our industry, in a way that genuinely moved us. So many of the largest gifts came from other companies and people working in herbal products, people who understood exactly what this farm means to the supply chain because they depend on it too. A group of teachers put together a four-day lecture series, more than 16 sessions, with every dollar going to Oshala. Grocery stores and co-ops up and down the state and beyond matched customer donations and gave directly, some for as much as $5,000. And so many more people and businesses, of every kind — thousands of them, more than we could ever name individually — gave what they could and shared our story further than we ever could have on our own. Some of our larger contract buyers reached out directly with real action, not just words — paying invoices in full, up front, telling us not to worry about delivery timelines for a year or more if that’s what it takes. Yes, there were strangers too — people from places we’ve never been, giving just a few dollars because the story reached them somehow — and that mattered just as much. But at the heart of it, this was our community and our industry standing up for one of its own. Every bit of it mattered. What came in isn’t close to the size of what we lost — and it was never meant to be. We asked for a fighting chance, not a bailout. We humbly whispered, and you roared. That’s what carried us through some of the hardest days of our lives, let’s be real, and it’s what’s carrying us into the next ones.

The variety of it still gets us. A local raffle raised money with dozens of area businesses donating prizes. Other farmers, people who know exactly how hard every dollar at a farmers market table is earned, sharing some of their market day’s sales with us, and knowing what that money represents made it land differently than almost anything else. Some of you showed up in person with tools in hand, ready to work. Some of you stood beside us fighting the fire itself, before it was even out. Some of you just called, to check in, with nothing to offer but yourselves — and that was enough. Some of you gave us things we didn’t even know to ask for: barn space, cold storage, a place to put what little we had left. However you showed up, whatever you gave, we want you to know we saw it, and we felt it. You are the reason we’re still standing here. Every single one of you saved something that day — not just a farm, but a piece of what we all believe is possible when people choose each other.

What Your Support Made Possible

What that support built, in real terms: Our entire crew stayed employed, full-time and seasonal alike, nobody lost a day of work. Friends showed up with tools and materials and built us a cabinet dryer on-site within days. And we were able to buy back the Mahonia dryers, four large dryers from a property we used to farm, which got us back to harvest fast. We’re not fully caught up yet, but with another week of double duty, we will be. Mojito Mint, then Spearmint, Peppermint, Self Heal, Echinacea last week. This week so far: Wild Bergamot, Basil, Mugwort, Calendula, and Saint John’s Wort. Next up: Catnip, Motherwort, and Comfrey.

Your Belief Changed More Than You Know

Our bank stood with us too — and this one’s worth explaining properly. Our line of credit was collateralized by the inventory and equipment we lost in the fire.. We called our bank right away, before they even called us. But they’d already heard about the fire, and a decision had come down from well above our branch: we were being placed in distress, and our line of credit would be frozen within days. That wasn’t a local call — it came from several hours of meetings at a level none of us could reach. The next day, they called back. After more meetings, they’d reversed course, they wouldn’t call the note, and they’d let us keep using our line of credit for operating expenses (not rebuilding, not equipment, just the day-to-day cash it takes to run a farm) through the end of the year. That matters more than it might sound like. Herb farming eats cash long before it returns any, we carry the cost of growing, harvesting, drying, and processing for a long stretch before we ever see a dollar back, fire or no fire. Losing our inventory didn’t just mean losing product. It meant losing the thing that was supposed to fund the next several months of operating this farm. Our bank’s decision to keep that line open is what filled that gap. What changed their minds, as they told us, was two things: the sheer volume of support they were watching happen in real time on GoFundMe and social media, and the fact that we picked up the phone ourselves before they ever had to call us. For a conventional ag bank, one that mostly deals in commodity crops, and honestly still scratches its head a little at a farm that grows, on purpose, things most other farmers are out there spraying or pulling as weeds, that kind of decision was not small. Here’s what we want you to understand: your belief in us didn’t just show up as dollars in a GoFundMe total. It became the reason our bank believed in us too. In a very real way, every donation, every share, every person who showed up for us multiplied itself through that one decision — into cashflow that will carry us through the rest of this year in ways most of you will never see directly, but that we feel every single day.

The Road Ahead for Oshala Farm

The size of the hole we’re still climbing out of. People hear “fire” and picture something that gets fixed in a season. This isn’t that. Between the buildings, the equipment, and the inventory we lost, we had more than $3.5 million invested in what burned that day. Insurance and everything this community has given have covered a real, meaningful part of that — but even combined, we’re still looking at a gap of more than $2 million between what we invested and what we’ll actually be reimbursed for. And that gap is the floor, not the ceiling. We don’t have real rebuild quotes yet, but everyone knows building costs today aren’t what they were back in 2016–2019, when a lot of our original infrastructure went up — and everything we’re seeing so far, on key components like drying equipment, bears that out. That gap doesn’t close in a season, or a year. We are currently applying and looking for loans to bridge this gap. Realistically, we’re looking at the better part of a decade to fully rebuild — while still planting, harvesting, and delivering every single day in the meantime.

The cause of the fire is settled. The state fire marshal and our insurance company’s independent inspector both concluded, separately, that it was accidental — most likely an extension cord plugged into the back of a scale. The investigations are closed and we can now start the process of cleaning up.

Why Oshala Farm Exists

One thing we want to say plainly. One of the things Oshala has always been about is this: we intentionally try to fit other people’s dreams inside our own. My dream was to be a farmer. Elise’s was to be an herbalist. Together, we became herb farmers — but a lot of how that took shape came from listening to other people’s dreams along the way. The soap maker. The tincture maker. The small tea company: just getting started. The home herbalist: teaching themselves in their  kitchen. Even the large companies we work with — every one of them is chasing something they dreamed up, with a team behind them who believes in it. We grow the ingredients that turn those dreams into something real. So when we talk about the weight of getting back on our feet, that’s what we mean. It’s not just about us. It’s about every dream we’ve agreed to help carry. We don’t take that lightly, and we never have. At the end of the day, we grow the ingredients dreams are made of.

Where We Stand Today

Where we actually are. Harvest isn’t fully caught up yet, but it will be within the week and we’re pulling double duty to close the gap. Our crew is whole. Our bank is behind us. Every day looks more like a normal day at Oshala than it did the week before. And still the road ahead is long, hard and we’re not going to pretend otherwise.

Here’s what we hold onto instead: we’re lucky enough to be passionate about what we do, and about the people we do it for and with. Because what happened here these past two weeks wasn’t really about a fire, or a GoFundMe, or a bank. It was about what happens when a community decides to move as one. This herbal community, the friends, the neighbors, the customers who’ve become family, the people we’ve never met who gave anyway, you didn’t just help us. You showed what’s possible when people choose to work through love and mutual respect instead of waiting for someone else to go first. You moved a bank. You made sure nobody on our crew lost a day of work. You made sure the ingredients kept moving, so the products kept moving, so families all over the world still had what they needed, made by the people who needed to make it.

It is a genuine honor to be held and loved by so many of you. We love each and every one of you back, and we don’t know how we’ll ever fully return what you’ve given us. We honor the responsibility of the road still ahead — it’s a long row to hoe, and we know it. But we’re confident of one thing: we will keep showing up for you, the way you showed up for us. Thank you for believing in us. We have always believed in you too. There is nothing like the power of love.

Jeff, Elise and the whole Oshala Farm Team