Jennifer Daaga was sorting berries at a table in the Galey Farms market building Wednesday morning when she heard a boom from Blenkinsop Road and looked up.
“I had two [strawberry] flats when I heard the first boom, so I, like, raised my head and saw the truck coming full speed at us,” she said.
Afraid for her life, Daaga started running.
Around the corner, Eliza Conwell — the other person in the building — had no idea what had just happened.
It was raining, so Conwell, who did not have a view of the road, thought the noise from an 18-wheeler truck hitting a utility pole was just the sound of thunder.
But then she saw Daaga running past her, her eyes wider than Conwell had ever seen before.
The two didn’t manage to make it out of the building before the truck rammed into it, breaking through the exterior wall.
The building shook. The lights flashed, then went off.
But they were far enough that neither of them was hit.
Daaga looked down and realized she was still holding the strawberries she had been sorting moments before.
“She literally saved the strawberries. I didn’t save mine,” Conwell said with a laugh.
Daaga said she was glad Conwell dropped what she was doing and ran to safety.
“Her survival instincts are on point, because she started running when she saw me running too,” she said in an interview the day after.
Both went home for the rest of the day after the incident just after 9 a.m., but returned to work on Thursday morning in good spirits.
Daaga, 21, who has been working on the farm for two seasons, said the crash won’t deter her from coming back next year.
Conwell, 18, a recent high school graduate who started with Galey Farms in June, said she feels the same way. “I don’t think this is going to happen again.”
The 18-wheeler from Golden Valley Eggs was removed from the building around 3 p.m. on Wednesday.
Golden Valley Eggs trucks came by that day to pick up the refrigerated trailer and its contents.
Golden Valley is a B.C. subsidiary of L.H. Gray & Son, a Strathroy, Ontario-based company that calls itself the country’s largest egg processor.
Saanich police, who are investigating the crash, say drugs or alcohol do not appear to have been factors in the incident.
Daaga said the driver was able to get out of the vehicle by himself after the crash, despite the damage.
Both Daaga and Conwell said the driver looked like he was in shock.
Galey Farms is taking the incident in stride, and has set up an open-air farm stand near its parking lot while the building is assessed for damage.
“You can’t dwell in the past. It is what it is,” said owner Rob Galey.
Galey said the market building — which served as a milking parlour when the farm was owned by the Pendray family — had been around for about 80 years.
On Thursday morning, workers were busy shoring up the rest of the building. A backhoe was removing debris left from the crash.
Galey said three of the building’s four walls were damaged in the crash, and a support beam has been knocked out of place by about eight inches.
Galey is considering expanding the tented area adjacent to the farm to continue market operations.
He said he’ll decide what to do with the market building when the engineer’s report comes back.
“The people keep coming, the crops keep coming, so we have to sell the crops,” he said.
Meanwhile, the rest of the farm’s operations are unaffected, including the corn maze and the miniature railway, both of which opened on Thursday, he said.
Galey said support from the community has been phenomenal since the incident.
“A lot of people came by last night, offering to help how they could,” he said Thursday. “It shows that we’re Islanders and not a big city, eh?”
