After Helene, Growers Look at Alternative Crops with Extension’s Help
Ed Winebarger, left, shows Richard Boylan, N.C. Extension Cooperative Area Specialized Agent, Agriculture, a field of garlic on his seven-acre farm in Watauga County. Winebarger planted the garlic about two weeks after Hurricane Helene hit the area, eroding and breaching the dam of his pond, and also cutting through his road and garden. Working through the winter, Winebarger has repaired many of the damaged areas, and is hopeful that his farm will be fully operational this year.
The flood waters receded months ago and the national media has turned its attention elsewhere, but in western North Carolina, the impacts of Hurricane Helene are still seen and felt every day.
“People ask me for pictures, but I didn’t take any pictures,” said Adam McCurry, agriculture and natural resources technician with Cooperative Extension in Yancey County. “I don’t want to ever see this again, but I see it every day driving to work.”
Yet, after unprecedented disaster, people in the High Country are recovering and rebuilding, and their Cooperative Extension staff – some of them neighbors who experienced the storm’s fury firsthand – have a key role to play in that process.
Michael Rayburn, urban agriculture agent in Buncombe County, said many growers suffered either erosion or saw huge deposits of silt or sand on their land. Silt, he added, is sticky and takes “forever” to dry out, and the soil gets so compacted plows and heavy equipment become useless. Rayburn advises farmers, including small farmers in urban spaces, to plant deep-rooted grasses and hay in those areas, which can break through the silt to the native soil below and begin the healing process. Rayburn said he’s also talking to growers about letting their land recover by contracting with USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service.
“If you have the financial ability to let the land be set aside for, say, five years, then you can go into contract with NRCS for conservation programs and get paid to have that land in conservation while it’s healing,” he said.
Richard Boylan, area small farms agent management agent based in Watauga County, said some farmers are re-examining their more marginal fields in the lowest, wettest areas close to streams, and considering reverting those areas into stream bank plantings that can withstand floods and hold the soil.
Native silky dogwood trees were planted along the banks of the Swannanoa River in Black Mountain to aid in riparian repair following erosion created by the floodwaters spawned by Hurricane Helene.
“Instead of fighting to keep that land as vegetable or strawberry ground, they are saying, ‘let’s look at shrubs,,” he said. “Nine bark and elderberry and a few other things are good pollinator habitat, their good for flower arrangements and maybe some fruit, so there can be a benefit to the farm beyond just holding soil.”
Moving forward, Extension programs will also look at specialty crops that can turn profits quickly and better withstand weather disasters.
“This is an opportunity to look at alternatives,” said McCurry. “Upslope crops – fruit trees, brambles like raspberries and blackberries – can bring slope stability, and they’re profitable.”
