BLYTHEWOOD – In the aftermath of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene on western North Carolina, many individuals and organizations in South Carolina are coming to their sister state’s aid in different ways.
In Fairfield County and Blythewood, several groups of Good Samaritans have focused on providing feed and hay for farm animals in North Carolina that have nothing left to eat after Helene washed it all away, literally.
To that end, a group of neighbors off Deer Run, Windy Cove, and Dutchman Lane neighborhoods in the Lake Wateree area have been caravanning truckloads of donated round bales of hay – mostly donated by generous farmers in Fairfield and Chester Counties and Blythewood – to Burnsville, N.C., where they drop their loads off at Davis Farms, a small, rural farm supply store. The hay is then inventoried and distributed by the local state agricultural rep to those farmers who desperately need it.
“So far, we’ve delivered more than 200 bales,” said Terry Jones, who lives on Lake Wateree and is one of the organizers of the hay transport. “A cow can eat 25 pounds of hay a day, and round bales weigh from 500 – 1,000 pounds each. That area we’re delivering to needs about 4,000 bales to get their animals through the winter, so we need more hay donations, more trucks and trailers and more people to help us,” Jones said. “We’re making another run this weekend,” he said.
“South Carolina farmers, truck and trailer owners, and the many individuals who have made donations – some as much as $500 to buy round bales – they just keep chipping in and chipping in,” Jones said. “It’s amazing.”
The trucks are also loaded with propane bottles, heaters, generators, and new winter coats along with the hay.
This particular effort began when Lake Wateree resident Chris Hahnle got a text from a fellow VillageChurch member in Blythewood saying he needed to find someone who has a gooseneck truck and trailer to haul a large amount of hay to North Carolina for the farmers.
“I reached out to my neighbors here on Lake Wateree,” Hahnle said. “Someone knew someone who had this and someone knew someone who had that …it just started to snowball as people realized the need. These guys hauling that hay are making a big dent. But there’s a lot more needed. All this hauling …it’s the Lord at work.”
As word got out about the hay transport effort, farmers in Fairfield, Kershaw, Chester and the Blythewood area were calling and offering hay, Jones said.
“I have 6 or 7 neighbors with diesel trucks and trailers who said they’d haul it,” he said. “These farmers around here have cows and horses, and they know what the North Carolina farmers are suffering. The animals have nothing to eat and many of these farmers have lost their homes, their barns, everything – more than 2,000 structures in the area we’re hauling to.
“But there are so many good people stepping up,” Jones said. “One guy brought us a big box of brand new winter coats for kids. Two people each gave us $500 to buy farm supplies. One woman purchased 50 round bales from a farmer for us to haul. We just had someone donate three super nice chain saws. We’ve delivered bottles of propane, carbon monoxide detectors, smoke detectors, generators, and fire extinguishers. The farmers are still in desperate need of metal fence posts, wire and barbed wire, wire insulators, and solar panel chargers for the electric fence. The donations just keep coming in.”
“These are just good people,” Jones said.
The story has been repeating itself elsewhere in Fairfield and Blythewood.
In a similar effort to bring comfort and aid to North Carolina, Carla Lomas, who owns Blooming Bean Coffee Bar on McNulty Street in downtown Blythewood, hosted a free bluegrass concert at her shop with free chili last week to raise funds for North Carolina farmers. Noted South Carolina fiddler Jim Graddick of Cedar Creek and two friends entertained at the event, raising more than $1,500.
Lomas’ daughter, Jasmin Younts, organized the event, and used the donations to buy 20 bags of livestock feed, 20 50-lb bags of chicken feed, 50 fence posts, 8,000 feet of fence wire, plus 75 square bales of horse hay and other supplies.
“We made a lot of our purchases at the Tractor Supply on Killian, and I want to give the store a big ‘thank you’ for the great discount they gave us on our purchases,” Younts said.
James Rimer, who owns the hardware store next door to Blooming Bean, also pitched in with $1,100 of propane bottles, propane heaters, animal feed and other farm supplies.
Younts said it was a group effort. “I and my husband and our friends Kaycie and Mike Tobias and Rebekah Curry hauled it all up to the Western Regional Livestock Center in Canton (western), North Carolina,” Younts said. “The farmers up there were so anxious for the supplies we brought that they were there waiting to load it up for their animals”
Younts says she and her husband may make another run next week.
“We have some loose hay on the ground and my dad’s going to go ahead and bale it and let us take it up there instead of keeping it,” Younts said. “Mike and Kaycie are distributers for South Carolina Shavings Company, so I think they’re going to run a load of shavings as well.”
The trip to the hills of western North Carolina is long and the work of loading up 500 – 1,000 pound round bales is hard. But the Good Samaritans – truckers, South Carolina farmers and the many individual donors are undaunted.
Just hours before The Voice went to press with the story, Jones posted on his Facebook page: “Trip number three coming up. We already have four trailers loaded …those folks in North Carolina need everyone’s help,” he wrote.