The Barn Fire That Ended in a Wedding

When fire tore through the milking parlor at Comp Dairy Farm in Dorset, Ohio, on the evening of September 22, 2024, the family faced a problem bigger than the barns. About 1,100 cows still had to be milked, and there was nowhere left on the farm to do it. Within about a day, neighbors and haulers had moved the milking herd, and one reluctant driver had met his future wife.

A Dairy With Nowhere to Milk

Jerry Comp found the fire around 7 p.m. as he was coming back from one of his fields. His family has farmed the land since the 1880s, and it is one of the largest dairies in Ashtabula County.

The roof of the milking parlor collapsed, and the fire destroyed the milk tanks and the equipment connected to the parlor. One barn was destroyed and three more were damaged.

More than 70 firefighters from over 15 departments in Ohio and Pennsylvania worked the blaze. No one on the staff was hurt.

Trucks Through the Night

Help started arriving almost as soon as the news spread. "The farming community is the best community," said neighbor Mandy Orahood, then president of the Ashtabula County Farm Bureau.

The milking cows went to 11 other dairies, nine in northern Ohio and two in Pennsylvania. Those farms milked them and kept the revenue from the milk to cover the cost of keeping them.

Jerry's daughter Deanna, the fifth generation on the farm, kept the list. She wrote down the name of every driver who came for cows, their phone number and where they were taking them.

She worked all through the night and into the next morning. She nearly went home before the last of the herd left, then decided to stay until they were all gone.

The Hauler Who Did Not Want to Come

Daniel Duma, whose family runs Duma Meats in Mogadore, got an early-morning call from his close friend Ken Rufener. Rufener had agreed to house some of the Comp cows at his farm, Congress Lake Farms.

Daniel made the 80-mile trip to Dorset, but not happily.

"I told him I did not want to go because we were just so busy," Daniel told Farm and Dairy. "I was irritated the whole way there. But then, that's where me and Dea met."

By then Deanna had been pushing 30 hours without sleep and was covered in cow manure. She walked up to his truck and asked his name.

"Uh, I'm Daniel Duma," he said. Her reaction, as she tells it: "Sweet, cool, man. I don't know what that means, but all right."

Here We Go Again

A couple of weeks later, Deanna, a nurse who was also studying at Kent State University, stopped at Congress Lake Farms after an exam to check on her family's cows. Rufener told her not to worry about getting them home, because someone had already offered to take them back when the time came.

She asked for the name. It was Daniel Duma. "Oh, here we go again," she thought.

She messaged him on Facebook to thank him, and on November 5, 2024, she dropped off Comp Dairy Farm T-shirts at Duma Meats. She stayed for hours.

After she left, she called her mom: "I just met the guy I'm going to marry."

Daniel proposed on Valentine's Day after four months of dating. They were married on July 6, 2025, at 1885 Farms in Navarre, Ohio.

Everyone Is Home

Back in Dorset, the Comps rebuilt and brought their cows home in groups over the winter and spring. By late April 2025 the herd was home, and by mid-July 1,120 cows were going through the rebuilt parlor.

"It was a sigh of relief," Jerry Comp said. "The community helped me immensely."

Deanna moved into the house Daniel bought in his early 20s, a home he had promised to buy as a boy while baling hay on the property. Together they run a burger food truck, help out at Duma Meats and raise cattle on their farm, Duma Ranch.