Fire Destroys Chesco Barn, Animals Rescued

EAST PIKELAND TWP. —The enormity of the tragedy is difficult to comprehend.

But 37-year-old Ashley May kept a positive outlook Wednesday morning as insurance adjusters were surveying the scene of a blaze that destroyed an historic barn where May was storing her memories of a lifetime.

May, a mother of three, was asleep in a farmhouse she was renting when a fast-moving blaze destroyed the adjacent barn containing all of her belongings, on Prizer Road in East Pikeland Township, bordering Phoenixville.

Chester County Fire Marshal John Weer said Wednesday the cause of the fire has been ruled undetermined.

It took firefighters three hours to extinguish the blaze that broke out at 5:36 a.m. Saturday.

No one was injured and all animals were rescued.

Weer said the damage estimate is $300,000 for the barn and $150,000 for the contents inside.

A table and outdoor furniture was set up in front of a massive pile of rubble containing charred belongings.

Firefighters from Kimberton, Phoenixville, Valley Forge, Ridge, Lionville, Spring City, Glenmoore, Ludwigs Corner and Royersford responded.

Moving to the farm

After losing her husband, Andrew, May was looking for a place to rent to raise her children and her pets, Norman the cow, a hen, two pigs and nine ducks.

Her Facebook friend, Beth Dixon, told May that her mother-in-law’s farm was available to rent.

May shared her journal in which she wrote about her feelings about moving to the farm.

She wrote that she had fallen in love with the shade of blue on the roof of the barn.

“You cannot select your home and the future of your family on the color of a barn,” May wrote in her journal

Nevertheless, she felt renting the farm was the right thing to do.

“Everybody is moving to the new farm,” she wrote. “The barn is gorgeous. The house is gorgeous.”

Two week ago, the family moved to the farm. May and Dixon and her husband, Michael, were fixing up the home.

May and the Dixons became close friends.

After the fire destroyed the barn, Beth Dixon went grocery shopping and stocked the refrigerator and bought blue hydrangeas.

“I am blessed to know and be surrounded by the best damn people the world has ever known,” May wrote. “It’s a village of love and I am exceedingly, abundantly blessed.”

The goal is to replace the barn.