Asheville – While spending a couple hours in Reidsville, South Carolina, avoiding grocery and gas lines and enjoying phone and text, if not internet, Marjorie Kulba from South Bend, Indiana, called. A news producer for Farm Bureau Broadcasting (FBB), she was concerned because she “had been talking to a lot of farmers.”
When she was told about the woes of trying to write newspaper articles when forbidden by authorities to travel and having no phone or internet, the idea of collaborating for an article was born. Marjorie agreed to forward forward press releases, which could be downloaded for reading back in Asheville.
One mentioned Jason Roberts, who posted a story on social media about having to move 300 head of dairy cattle in the storm. They were taken to a farm with a milking facility that, having sat idle for nine years, took some work to get up and running again.
Roberts told the Tribune he was not the owner. “I’ve known those boys all my life,” he said. A bunch of neighbors just got together to help where it was needed, like they always do. He assured that the livestock were transported in trailers and not herded through the storm.
Roberts said he personally knew four farmers that lost all of their winter feed, but as he spoke, he was awaiting the arrival of good Samaritans hauling to the rescue from Georgia, western Tennessee, and eastern North Carolina. Sadly, some animals lost more than just dinner.
Henderson County’s Cooperative Extension Director Terry Kelley said there weren’t that many livestock farmers in what is considered the most agricultural county in WNC. The problems he was hearing about from the local livestock industry dealt mostly with fences and structures being blown down.
As the largest apple grower in the state, however, Henderson was struck hard, right in the middle of apple season. Over half the total crop was lost.
“Apples blew off the trees, and lots of trees blew down,” he recalled. It was also mid-season for tomatoes, peppers, and blackberries. Asked if the apple growers needed any volunteer labor, he declined, saying mostly they’re trying to figure out how to salvage what they can of the season.
Tony Fisher at Candler Feed and Seed said most of the horror stories he’d been hearing are coming out of Haywood County. “Buncombe County just isn’t that agricultural—unless you want to count everybody raising chickens in their backyard,” he said.
“When I started, about 60% of this business was selling hay for horse feed.” Now, he estimated that about 80% of his customers raised chickens. “They love their chickens,” he said, “and if they’re empty nesters, they take better care of them than they took care of their kids.”
Fisher said there were also a lot of small, “little family cow/calf homesteads where people try to teach their children” things like raising animals for food and food for animals. He added that the few people he knew in Buncombe County who tried to raise pigs for food got out of the business about as quickly as they got in.
Fisher said the greatest impact Helene has had on his store is the number of people who have donated items for giveaway. When the Tribune arrived, he was moving pallets of MREs and water around with the forklift. Inside the store, he had “all kinds of paper, infant, and hygiene products, all donated for giveaway.” He added, “My inventory is selling like usual.”
Fisher said the first couple of days, when everybody was hit by surprise, he was taking down credit card details from his regular customers or people in dire need, so he could run them when electricity was restored. Fisher described his customers as the salt of the earth. He said they weren’t the type to take something just because he was giving it away. Instead, they were the ones donating things and helping to unload them.
Shady Brook Farms is one of his customers with a large farm in Haywood County, and they “lost about 10 meat birds that either drowned or were swept away.” He also had a friend who “lost some cattle that were swept away.”
Most remarkable in FBB’s press releases was the repeated use of the word “flattened” to describe crops in the Southeast. Compounding the direct devastation of wind, rain, and rising mud, induced threats to livestock and crops included chemical spills, water contamination, power outages, and the destruction of roads.