A year ago, the Matyas family, owners of Seeds for Generations, suffered a devastating fire that destroyed much of their seed business. Many people supported them with money, materials, labor, prayers and more, helping them get back on their feet. I was pleased to see this update posted this morning. God is good, and He brought good things from the ashes. 

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After the smoked cleared from the fire, and it became clear that our seed business had been destroyed and we would need to start over again right as our busy season started, we had some pretty big obstacles to overcome.  Though we considered a number of options for how to get operations started again, we quickly settled on buying a mobile shed building to set up operations in.  We quickly obtained new bulk seeds and re-packed many thousands of seed packets with the help of our kids as well as neighbors and friends from around our area that all pitched in to help us get our inventory back in stock quickly. With the help of several skilled neighbors and friends, and the financial support of so many, we got the framing and electrical on the new office space done very quickly, and we were able to start using the main part of the office for order fulfillment within a month of the fire.  God blessed us to be able to resume taking orders on our website three weeks after the fire and shipping them in the week that followed.

The seed-buying season, along with shop cleanup and trying to organize everything without our main tool storage area kept us busy for a couple of months, and we got behind on seed starting and garden prep.  That required a little more focused effort around our last spring frost, which came a bit late, but we got most of our crops into the ground on time.  It seemed like we were always behind on some garden tasks for the entire year, but the Lord was good to us and gave us a great harvest overall.

For a myriad of reasons, our seeds sales were down about 40% from the time we re-opened after the fire and remained that way until near the end of the year.  This significant drop in revenue gave us some significant constraints – most of all that we were not able to easily hire more help to assist us with our overflowing task list.  Due to this cashflow and manpower shortage, we did not make much progress on cleaning out the shop and documenting items for insurance claims for most of the year, and are still in that process today.  Please pray for diligence in completing this difficult process.

Despite these challenges, God’s blessings were abundant and overflowing to us this year.  First, no one was hurt in the fire, and there were some tools and other items that were not destroyed.  We had financial support that came from everywhere it seemed, and offers to help were abundant in our local community, and that was instrumental in us being able to get back up and fulfilling orders in only three weeks.

A tragic setback like this offers the temptation to only focus inward and cease looking for opportunities to serve others.  Fortunately, due to our family’s desire to prioritize hospitality and our children’s love of people, we hosted monthly country dances at our farm throughout the summer for the youth in our church and community, which provided lots of opportunity to create a wholesome culture for our kids and others like them to enjoy time together like the old days.

At the end of the summer, we were especially blessed to have four of our children baptized in our creek, with nearly 140 family and friends in attendance.  God has been good to redeem our covenant children and make them His own, renewed to walk in faith in Him.

When Thanksgiving arrived, we had much to be thankful for, including the aforementioned blessings, and topped with the news that our oldest daughter Lydia was engaged to be married to a wonderful young man named Jonathan, who bought also just bought a new house for his future bride, and they are working diligently to prepare it to be their home when they get married in May.

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You can also use our affiliate link to buy seeds from Seeds for Generations here, or bypass our link here and buy directly. 

I am glad to hear they are doing well. It’s good to support family businesses, and it’s amazing to see how people come together in tragedy.