News Photo by Julie Riddle Fire burned acres of farmland in Wilson Township Thursday evening, smoke streamed from blackened hay bales as neighbors and firefighters worked to control the fire’s spread.

Charles Zbytowski was pulling his round baler on his hay field near Herron Road when the baler caught fire. He alerted his wife in the house adjoining the field, then unhooked the baler from the tractor as it burned.

Zbytowski’s son Ryan, who farms nearby, stopped the fire’s spread by driving a tractor over its edge and smothering the flames with dirt. Family and neighbors converged on the farm to help, followed by responders from the Wilson Township Fire Department, who used water to contain one side of the fire and to address the blackened hay bales that occasionally toppled over and blazed up.

Sue Zbytowski, who watched the blaze from her yard while tending her grandchildren, said that the bales had been intended to feed the calves the couple is raising. “There’s no hay in the barn,” Sue Zbytowski said. “This was going to be the hay.”