This all happened yesterday.

I was finally going to see our family farm—this place that's been in our family for over 100 years—and I was bringing my fiancé along to check it out too.

Dad had warned me it was a "dilapidated eyesore" now, but I still wanted to see it. We were already heading out that way for my grandpa's 80th birthday on the other side of the family, so it seemed like perfect timing.

We followed Apple Maps down this long dirt road off the highway, and as we got closer, I could see the farm from a distance. But something was wrong. There was just a barn and silo standing. The farmhouse, the other barns, all those beautiful trees—gone.

Turns out, the place had caught fire just a few days earlier. And here's the crazy part—my cousin, who's from my OTHER side of the family (completely unrelated to this farm), was first on scene as a volunteer firefighter. He and his crew fought that fire for 5+ hours straight. They still don't know what caused it, but apparently all the junk metal that had piled up over the years made the fire burn super hot.

So my first-ever visit to the family farm was seeing it mostly burned to the ground. 100+ years of history just... gone... in hours.

I'm still processing this. It's just so bizarre that days before I finally see this place, it catches fire, and the person leading the effort to save it was my cousin from a completely different branch of the family.

Life is wild.