A thought suddenly struck. "I hope it’s not our farm."

The wait was agonizing. The train finally passed and the trucks roared across the tracks. Bossel followed. They were only eight kilometres from home when she began to see the smoke and fear the worst.

Her husband, Jules, died suddenly last year at age 61 of a sudden pancreas attack. Now she feared for the lives of her boys, Steve, 25 and Yann, 21.

The family dairy barn was engulfed in flames. Bossel could only watch from across a corn field as she sped down Development Road, between Kemptville and Winchester, behind the lights and sirens and North Dundas volunteers who fled the fireman’s dance when the call came in.

Bossel pulled up to the Nelson Road farm and ran for the boys. They were pulling cows from the barn. "She couldn’t watch the barn burn," recalled her son, Yann. "So, she got sandwiches ready for the firemen."

Firefighters took over. "They went into the heart of the fire and still pulled out four cows," Yann said. "But they had to get out real quick because they couldn’t see the door. There was too much smoke."

The barn collapsed about 10 minutes later. About 20 of the 70 animals were killed.

The Sept. 17 fire started at about 7:20 p.m. Steve Bossel saw embers falling from the straw chute and ran to warn Yann. The boys had just come home with two cows from the Fawcett Sale barn and Yann was filling up the TMR mixer.

They grabbed for their prize cow, the four-year-old they bought in Ohio last year and from which they’ve sold embryos as far away as Spain and Japan. "As I’m pulling her out, I fumble with my cell phone, call 911 and get a dispatch from Toronto who doesn’t know where Dundas County is," said Yann. "I told him: you figure it out."

He ended the call and rushed back to the barn. Steve turned on the four big fans at one end of the barn to suck out the smoke. "That gave us another 10 minutes," Yann said. "But the cows hadn’t been outside in four years. We had to pull them out one by one."

From the time the fire started it only took about 30 minutes before the barn collapsed, he said. Yann’s 911 call was recorded at 7:26 p.m., which means it only took firefighters about 12 minutes to leave the dance, get to the trucks, wait at a railway crossing and arrive at the farm.

The boys got to bed at about 3:30 a.m. while firefighters stayed until dawn.

Five days after the fire, Yann Bossel walked slowly across the charcoal remains of the barn as small flames continued to shoot up from a smoking black heap, where cows were buried. A black and stiff carcass lay upside down. There was an overturned hay elevator, a water bowl, a twisted milk pipeline and a strong smell of carbon in the air.

Recalling the Friday night fire, he said, "the next morning the milk house was still burning… I was sore and sickened, crushed."

Looking around, his head down, he added: "There’s just a big pile of nothing now."

When asked if he and his brother would rebuild, Yann turned without hesitation and looked straight at this reporter: "It takes more than this to knock down a Bossel."

One of his neighbours agreed, smiling when she heard what he said. "He’s tough like his father was."

The plan is to rebuild in the spring. Meantime, they are extremely grateful for Dean and Anne Keyes. They’re just down the road and sold their herd in August. With the milking machines all in place, the Bossels will have a place to milk their animals until their new barn is ready.

"Be sure to thank everybody," Yann said. "The whole community helped."

Steve and Yann Bossel are grateful that neighbours arrived the night of the fire to relocate the animals. Two area trucking businesses used their vehicles to haul in water. One farmer has offered to help with harvesting. Others have already been by with free hay.