A father and son were left devastated when a fire ripped through their farm near Monmouth a little over a week ago, but their display of strength following the tragic incident has inspired people from around the country.

A fundraiser to help Square Farm, just off the A40 at Mitchel Troy, has already tipped £7,000 as locals and the wider agricultural community continue to show their support for the family business.

“I can’t believe how generous people are being,” Ryan said standing in front of what used to be the farm’s workshop.

“It’s overwhelming really. I set up the crowdfunding page because we want to use this bad experience to give something back to the community. Children already come to the farm on school trips and in the holidays to learn more about agriculture and more recently how we try to look after the environment, so we would like to build something for them here.”

Although they have insurance cover for some of what they lost during the blaze, Ryan and his father, Robert, say they won’t be able to account for everything they lost in the fire.

Construction experts have been out to the farm and estimated work to restore the workshop and the surrounding areas at somewhere in the region of £60-80,000 while the contents inside the workshop could amount to a similar sum. Mercifully, nobody was harmed in the fire and all livestock have been confirmed as safe and well.

But with a six figure rebuild required to restore the workshop, surrounding sheds and their content to their former status, the father and son have decided they will take the chance to diversify the farm in their typically resilient fashion.

“My first reaction was ‘oh my God’,” Robert said.

“I’ve got to call the fire brigade and I hope it doesn’t go too far. At that time I didn’t know if somebody was in the workshop or if any livestock had broken free so those were the thoughts that immediately hit us.”

Robert is slowly handing over control of the farm to his son, who has pioneered the introduction of more members of the public to the farm and offering support for children to learn and thrive in the natural environment.

As well as the on-site farm shop, which remains open to the public, a portion of the crowdfunding money will also go towards enhancing facilities for members of the public to visit the site.

“When this happened and we slowly got our head around it, we started to think about the problems we already had on the site that we could fix,” Ryan said.

“There’s no toilets for the kids and adults who visit at the moment, and we haven’t really got a dry space for them where they can eat their lunch or do some book work.”

“We thought if we can get an area like that with running water etc., we could get more school children more people onto the farm.”