Pat Ross and Kent Nunemaker were ready to tend to their cattle Sunday morning at their farm and ranch northeast of Lawrence.

“The clouds were going up and down. Dust devils were just everywhere,” Ross said. “Debris was just flying everywhere.”

The winds from the storm destroyed a large barn at Ross-Nunemaker Farms that was about 100 years old. The wind also damaged another barn and an irrigation pivot. Ten cows died or were euthanized after they suffered injuries in the storm, Ross said.

Several friends and neighbors showed up Sunday with cattle trailers and helped haul away and hold about 500 head of cattle while Ross and Nunemaker cleaned up their farm and made decisions about repairs.

The damage has created extra work for the two partners, who were about two weeks away from planting corn, Ross said.

Now they wait with the other farmers and ranchers in northeast Kansas, whose property also sustained damage, to see if financial assistance would be available.

Pat Ross, left, and Kent Nunemaker,right, owners of Nunemaker and Ross farms walk by their barn that was destroyed by the microburst last Sunday morning. Nunemaker said he arrived onto the farm around 8:00 AM just as the storm was hitting and had to turn around to avoid flying debree from the barn.

As a first step in that process, a team with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency surveyed the damage Friday at Ross-Nunemaker Farms. It was the team’s second day of looking at storm-damaged farms, 10 in all.

“It’s obvious that there must have been a tornado involved,” said Rick Abel, executive director for the agency in Leavenworth, Wyandotte and Atchison counties.

Abel said Ross-Nunemaker Farms was the only place where livestock died. The group had mostly seen roof damage. Two silos were destroyed at the farm of John and Karen Pendleton, which is east of Lawrence.

The Farm Service Agency group will now prepare a flash report and send it to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns’ office. The report will document the damage to the area and list how many people were affected.

Abel said he believed the damage to the area was probably not severe enough to make landowners eligible for major benefits. But he said they would likely be eligible for some low-interest loans.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ office also may get involved in the process.

“Farmers are pretty thick-skinned. They deal with a lot of disaster in their lives,” Abel said.

Pat Ross co-owner of Nunemaker Ross Farms stands in front of his mangled barn and describes were the tornado landed on his property early Sunday morning. Ross said the barn was built around 1910 and had been in his family since 1946. Ross is not sure if he will rebuild the barn or not.