Stephen Zelsnack was driving back from a farm supply store in Moravia on Nov. 30 when he was critically injured in a traffic accident.
The next day, his friends and colleagues at the Cortland Fire Department began filling in for a new schedule.
They began volunteering, twice a day, to go to Zelsnack’s 228-acre farm in Marathon and care for the family’s 100 beef cattle, about 40 sheep and 13 pigs and four chickens.
As the weeks went on, firefighters from other places, such as Binghamton and Norwich, came to help, says Derek Reynolds, who’s worked with Zelsnack at the fire department for years.
Zelsnack, 48, died at Upstate University Hospital on Dec. 21.
The volunteer farm duty continues. Shifts are filled out into the new year, Reynolds said.
“We’ve got firefighters coming to help a brother in need,” Reynolds said this evening. “It’s an amazing sight to see.”
Reynolds said Zelsnack and his brother, Jim, had recently bought the fourth-generation family farm from their father. “He was a full-time firefighter and a full-time farmer,” Reynolds said of Steve.
Zelsnack joined the Cortland fire department eight years ago where brother, Jim, is also a firefighter, Reynolds said. Steve’s son, Justin Zelsnack, is a firefighter in Binghamton.
“Farming and firefighting run in the family,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds said the final police report has not been issued from the accident, which happened at Route 41A and Sayles Corners Road in Sempronius. Shortly after the accident, state police said Zelsnack failed to stop his pickup truck at a stop sign and ran into a tractor trailer, the Auburn Citizen reported. The other driver was not injured.
Friends are selling T-shirts to raise money and a fund has been set up for donations.
Calling hours are from 10 a.m. to noon Dec. 29 at Saint Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church in Marathon, N.Y. A mass will follow.
Reynolds said it was too early to say what the family’s long-term plans were at the farm. He said firefighters were planning to keep helping the Zelsnacks into the new year.
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