A July 7 fire destroyed the storage barn at Kiowa Valley Organics, a family farm on Colorado’s Eastern Plains, taking with it the building the farm’s entire harvest ran through. Owner Krista Peace told CBS Colorado she saw smoke from a short distance away and knew immediately which building was burning. A crowdfunding effort has since raised more than $40,000. The community wants to build the barn back up any way it can.
The losses were substantial. The 4,600-square-foot storage building was worth at least $250,000, and roughly $200,000 in equipment and supplies burned with it, Denver7 reported. Harvest bins, tools, produce boxes, a forklift, and a produce conveyor were destroyed, along with thousands of pounds of vegetables headed for grocery stores, according to Westword. The farm puts its total loss at about $500,000.
The building had been the center of processing and storage. A large cooler inside held everything picked out of the fields, and Peace said that storage capacity alone was invaluable to the operation. The barn was 10 years old.
The fire happened during a season that had already gone badly. Peace said a warm winter and problems with water and moisture cut the harvest to roughly a fifth of what the farm normally produces. Insurance is expected to cover about 65 to 70% of the damage, and rebuilding the barn would run near $500,000, roughly double what it cost to put up originally. Peace estimates the farm needs around $150,000 in donations to replace the lost equipment and get operations running efficiently again.
What the Barn Did for the Farm
A fire tore through a storage building at Kiowa Valley Organics, destroying a structure worth more than $250,000, and an estimated $200,000 worth of equipment and supplies.
https://t.co/ii1pVgnSQB— Denver7 News (@DenverChannel) July 21, 2026
Kiowa Valley Organics has operated at its Roggen location since 2006, about an hour from Denver, as a USDA-certified organic farm. It is known across the Front Range for its asparagus, and it also grows summer squash, cucumbers, peppers, winter squash, and decorative pumpkins. The farm covers 90 acres.
Losing the building interrupted the chain between the fields and the customer. Produce deliveries to Denver-area restaurants and farmers’ markets halted after the fire. Peace said she does not know where the farm will store its winter squash crop when it comes in later this year. Farming carries that kind of exposure as a matter of course, and she compared it to gambling, where a hailstorm can wipe out everything in five minutes.
Why the Denver Community Wanted to Help
The response from the community was mostly from the market, where the farm has sold for years. City Park Farmers Market organized the crowdfunding campaign, and co-owner Peter Wanberg said his organization moved as soon as it heard about the fire. Wanberg said the decision was easy because of the relationship between the farm and the people who buy from it, telling Denver7, “When you have a face on food, and then that person needs help.” The campaign hit $40,000 within three days.
Peace said the speed of it caught her off guard, describing people who did not stop to think before offering to help. What she wants is to keep farming rather than find something else to do. She said she intends to “fight really hard to try and keep doing this,” while acknowledging she does not yet know what that will look like.