His son, Adam Stewart, said he had finished watching the Panthers beat the Buccaneers Monday night and had only been in bed about 30 minutes when he heard explosions. He thinks what he heard was the sound of the huge combine thrashing and harvesting machine's tires popping as the fire that destroyed the barn and all its contents raged. He ran outside to investigate and saw that the barn, roughly 40 yards from his house, was ablaze.

"The barn was engulfed in a flaming inferno," Stewart said Tuesday. "Everything was gone in the shed when we got there."

He called 911 and he and his father moved as many trucks and other pieces of equipment as they could away from the 60- by 120-foot barn.

"That was a good-looking combine and spray truck before the fire," said Stanly Stewart with a tired smile indicating the charred vehicles standing beside the smoldering barn.

Stewart said losing the hay was costly but the biggest losses were the 2003 John Deere combine, the 2005 Chevrolet spray truck, other assorted equipment and trucks and the barn itself. Damage estimates were unavailable at press time.

"It' a good thing nobody got hurt trying to get everything out," said Ryan Harrell of the Bandys Volunteer Fire Department. "If we hadn't gotten here as fast as we did, they'd have lost more than they did."

Harrell said his department got the call that the barn, at 2620 Balls Creek Road, was on fire at about 12:30 a.m. and worked through the night to bring the fire under control. The three-alarm blaze closed the road from about 1 to 7 a.m. reopening in time to allow access to the nearby Balls Creek Elementary School.

Both Stanly and Adam Stewart spoke openly and smiled freely as they explained that the fire could have been a lot worse and expressed their appreciation for the Bandys Crossroads Volunteer Fire Department and the other responding departments for their hard work.

Adam Stewart said he's been working on the farm, known as Promise View Acres, with his father and grandfather since he graduated from Lenoir-Rhyne College in 2006 with a degree in chemistry. Their main crops are corn, wheat and soybeans.

Looking over the ruined building and equipment, Stewart said, "It's covered on insurance so we should be good to rebuild." He won't need another combine until next year's harvest, but he will need a replacement spray truck soon to begin preparing to plant next year's crop.