A Ballard fire early Wednesday morning destroyed the home of Sara and Sam Lucchese and the commercial kitchen they use to make a living, leaving the couple displaced and scrambling to keep their food businesses alive. The blaze caused an estimated $500,000 in damage.

The Seattle Fire Department said the fire started when a container of hot embers spread to a wood pile and then to the house. By Wednesday, the Luccheses had also canceled their planned appearance at the Wallingford Farmers Market, where they were supposed to sell pizza, pasta and baked goods alongside the other local markets that have long known them.

That is why the fire landed so hard. The kitchen burned in the same blaze that took their home, wiping out the place where they make all the food for their three local businesses. For a family whose work and housing were under the same roof, the loss was immediate and total.

“We are missing them down here today,” Ben Chandler said, adding that he woke up around 6 o’clock to a text from Sam saying he could not make the market because his house had burned down. Another longtime market friend, Sarge Sidhu, said he had been doing farmers’ markets with the couple since he was 10 and remembered how they would feed him when he was a kid.

Word spread fast enough that Matt Kelly launched a GoFundMe campaign Wednesday, saying he stopped everything he was doing to get it online. The fundraiser topped $10,000 within hours and has since climbed to more than $20,000, a quick show of support for two people widely recognized at local farmers’ markets.

What happens next is the part no one has answered yet: when the Luccheses can get back into their home, reopen the kitchen and return to the markets that helped build their business. For now, they are out of both a house and a workplace, while Seattle fire crews were also battling a separate massive warehouse fire elsewhere in Ballard.