A large hay bale display painted to promote Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris’ 2020 campaign was torched on Friday night in Massachusetts.
Staffers at the Holiday Brook Farm in Dalston stacked 19 oversized hay bales on Thursday and painted the display with blue and red to read, “USA Vote Biden-Harris 2020.” Kate Pike, an employee of the farm, told local news that the display was constructed along Route 9 in a field by Cleveland Road to support Biden and Harris’ election efforts.
“You know, we expected it to be vandalized leading up to the election, you know, and we had plenty of paint to paint over it to fix it,” Pike said. “And I was driving home last night and saw that it looked like there was coffee spilled on it or something, so I pulled back around and kinda figured, ‘OK, I’ll be fixing that in the morning.’
“Like, it didn’t even last 24 hours,” she added. “And then, basically, before I made the ten minute drive home it was up in flames.”
Holiday Brook Farm staffers found the bales set alight on Friday at around 6:30 p.m. local time as they started wrapping up work for the evening, according to The Berkshire Eagle.
At roughly 6:40 p.m. the farm called the Dalton Fire Department for assistance in putting out the fire that had started to spread. Officials quickly contained the blaze that evening, however, the hay bale display had been completely destroyed. No one was injured in the incident.
On Friday, Dicken Crane, the farm’s owner, shared an image of the burning bales to social media. “I didn’t take long,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “It’s actually hard to believe anyone who says they love this country would do this.”
Police have launched an investigation into the incident and are yet to determine whether the fire was intentional. Crane said he believes it “was very deliberate.”
“It’s hard to explain. Six minutes later it was on fire, but there was nobody there,” he told the Eagle. “It was not spontaneous combustion.”
The bales weighed around 1,000 pounds and were worth $65 each. The farm will decide in the coming days whether to construct a new display in support of Biden and Harris.
Newsweek reached out to the Dalton Fire Department for additional information.
In the lead up to the election, political signs from both major parties have been reported stolen, and other partisan displays have led to abuse.