Historic Blood Farm Destroyed in Weekend Blaze
Another historic Groton landmark was lost last weekend when a fast moving fire destroyed the meat processing facility of Blood Farm in West Groton. The fire started early Sunday morning around 1:30 a.m. in the facility's smokehouse and quickly spread to the rest of the building.
Groton Fire Department received a call around 2:05 a.m. and responded with units from Center Fire Station and West Groton Fire Station. The fire response grew to four alarms and it took approximately four hours to extinguish the blaze. The 7,000 square foot building was a total loss and there were no injuries reported. Other buildings on the property including the family house were not damaged. Groton fire officials do not believe foul play contributed to the fire.
According to the Fire Department, the fire was first spotted by a passerby around 2 a.m. Sunday morning who then reported the fire to the Department. It is believed that the fire had been burning for a while before it was discovered by the passerby. In addition to Groton fire units who fought to extinguish the fire, fire units from surrounding towns through mutual aid also responded. Fire units from Dunstable, Pepperell, Townsend, Littleton, Shirley, Lunenburg and Ayer aided in the four-hour effort to extinguish the fire.
Later Sunday morning after the fire was extinguished, Dick Blood who manages the business for his father Barney Blood was dismayed as he viewed the damage. While the family will weigh the future of the business, Dick indicated he would like to rebuild and keep the business going. Dick has worked at the family farm all his life and as he told a reporter for WBZ news, working at the farm is all he knows.
The economic loss to the family while significant will have far greater impact on the local farm community in the Merrimack and Nashoba Valleys and Southern New Hampshire. Small commercial farms that raise livestock for local markets and restaurants were scrambling to determine where their animals could be slaughtered and prepared for market. One such farm is Lyn-Dell Farm in Pepperell. Lyn-Dell Farm is a large customer of Blood Farm and cows raised at Lyn-Dell are slaughtered there and sent to Farm-to-Table restaurants like the Bull Run Restaurant in Shirley. Lyn-Dell Farm also sells its beef to a couple of restaurants in Boston and also runs a farmer's market in Boston.
Todd Russell, owner of Lyn-Dell Farm, also surveyed the damage to the farm on Sunday morning after the fire was extinguished. Russell said the nearest slaughterhouse to the area is Lemay's in Goffstown, NH. Russell indicated that LeMay's would not be able to handle all the customers that Blood Farm serviced before the fire. He said he didn't know what he would do and noted that the destruction of Blood Farm would have serious negative impact on his farm and business.
Another small commercial farm which used Blood Farm to slaughter their livestock is Hollis Hills Farm in Lunenburg. Groton's Gibbet Hill Restaurant also used Blood Farm to slaughter cows. In addition, many homeowners who raised sheep and pigs on their land used Blood Farm to slaughter the animals and prepare the meat. On the scene Sunday morning after the fire was put out, one young man was surveying the damage and noted that recently he had two pigs prepared there and was thinking out loud that they were probably lost in the fire.
Blood Farm was the only USDA certified slaughter house in the region and only one of two in Massachusetts. Blood Farm dates to the 1780s and it's meat processing business started in the 1860s.
