ALBERT LEA, Minn.- Freeborn County officials are saying the violent storm that left one person dead and more than dozen others injured could have been much worse.
Heavily populated areas were mostly spared.
Now teams of volunteers are working to help clean up farming fields now riddled with debris.
Hundreds of people in Freeborn County watched as a monster twister tore up farmsteads and fields.
"He was standing in our entry way window, and he said vick it's john but come up here and look at this we could see it was north of us,” said Vicki Kuethe.
Unlike some of their neighbors, Vicki and her husband Gayle’s home was spared.
But the storm destroyed hundreds of acres of their crops.
"It was a bean field, it's gone, I don't think I've ever seen anything like that, not from wind," said Gayle Kuethe, looking at a field stripped of all vegetation after Thursday’s storms.
The twister left behind a bumper crop of debris. The Kuethe's are receiving help from friends, family, and strangers as they work to clean it up .
"You need to get a lot of it up, you're gonna have problems with the combines, I mean it's gonna be many years of this I'm sure," said Gayle.
Everywhere you step in their field you find pieces of trees, or buildings and houses, all of them need to be picked up before these fields can be replanted.
"To pick up all this stuff is so tedious everything is broken up into 6-8 inch pieces so it's really hard to make a lot of progress if you don't have a lot of bodies to help,” said Larry Irvine.
Irvine is a team leader for Ag Star out of Blue Earth, Minnesota. He's bringing groups to Freeborn County to help his clients recover.
"The storm went for such a long distance and affected so many people that it's just a tragedy that's beyond belief," said Irvine.
The Kuethes are thanking the groups of volunteers who are lending a helping hand, and they are hoping they can re-plant their fields.
"If we can get the stuff pretty well picked up and you know depending we haven't had anybody out to look at it yet so," Gayle said.
Irvine says most of their clients affected by the storm do have crop insurance. Adjusters will be out surveying the damage this coming week.
County assessors will be out getting a value of the damage on Monday.
