Someone burned down Blake Jennings’s 15-foot sculpture
By Diego Flammini
News Reporter
Farms.com
An act of vandalism has robbed a Nova Scotia farming community of a landmark piece of agricultural artwork.
For over a decade, Blake Jennings, a poultry farmer at Bayview Poultry Farms and pumpkin farmer in Masstown, NS, has built a 15-foot-bear out of bales of hay. Tourists and families pose with the bear for photos while visiting the farm.
But that all changed between Monday evening and Tuesday morning.
“My cousin texted me and told me, ‘someone burned your bear,’” Jennings told Global News yesterday. “Because I had smelled smoke, it immediately dawned on me that I had been smelling burning hay.”
A before and after of Blake Jennings's hay bear.
Photo: Blake Jennings
Tire tracks could be seen leading up to the bear’s location. A police report has been filed but it’s unlikely the people responsible will be caught, Jennings said.
The value of the lost hay is around $200, he estimates. But the financial loss is secondary to the bear’s representation of family and community, he told Global News. The bear had a special place in his sister’s heart, who has special needs.
“(The bear was) her pride and joy,” he told Global News. “She would name it every year after her favourite stuffed animal. She was quite upset (Tuesday) morning to find out someone burned it.”
After posting a photo of the destroyed sculpture on social media, Jennings learned how much the bear meant to the community.
“I always smiled when driving past every Sunday on my way to Masstown,” Mandy Lloyd wrote on Jennings’s Facebook page.
“I pass in front of it every day,” Jeremie Legere wrote. “(The bear) brings a smile to my mornings!”
And given the dry conditions in Nova Scotia recently, the fire could have easily spread.
“It’s so dry on these fields right now, if a spark could have gone in the ditch, the ditch could have lit up and it would have travelled for miles,” he told Global News.
Jennings won’t let this act of vandalism deter him from rebuilding the bear next year, he said.
Top photo: Blake Jennings stands next to where a 15-foot hay bear used to sit. Vandals burned the bear overnight.
Photo: Shoreline Journal/Facebook