{"id":58742,"date":"2024-10-29T01:00:54","date_gmt":"2024-10-29T09:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/?p=58742"},"modified":"2024-10-29T08:17:32","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T16:17:32","slug":"how-food-and-ag-businesses-pivoted-to-disaster-relief-after-hurricane-helene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2024\/10\/29\/how-food-and-ag-businesses-pivoted-to-disaster-relief-after-hurricane-helene\/","title":{"rendered":"After Hurricane Helene, Local Farmers and Chefs Pivot to Disaster Relief"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/div>

A few days after Helene hit Western North Carolina, Stuart Beam and Preston Green of Big Bottom Milk Company<\/a> took stock of their situation. Their creamery\u2019s infrastructure\u2014including its 70-year-old bottle filler\u2014was intact. They had generator power, clean municipal water, and an ample supply of plastic milk packaging, including gallon jugs. <\/p><\/div>

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But as the company\u2019s co-founders made calls to farming contacts beyond their home of Forest City, about 60 miles southeast of Asheville, Beam and Green learned that potable water was much harder to come by elsewhere in the region, especially in rural areas with challenging logistics. So, they sprang into action, bottling and shipping water directly to places in need, all while keeping up their usual milk production.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve kind of been helping everybody else so we didn\u2019t have to think about our problems. It\u2019s a lot more fun.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Food and agriculture businesses across Western North Carolina are telling similar stories amid the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Although Helene had weakened into a tropical storm by the time it reached the area, it was still the region\u2019s worst storm since 1916<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Helene killed at least <\/a>98<\/a> residents<\/a> in Western North Carolina, knocked out power<\/a> and water<\/a> for hundreds of thousands of people, and destroyed countless buildings. Many farmers, occupying low-lying valleys and riversides in the Appalachian Mountains, were especially vulnerable<\/a> to record levels of flooding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And yet those same farmers, as well as people farther up the supply chain in the Asheville area\u2019s vaunted food scene<\/a>, have been working to support their communities, even as they deal with the fallout<\/a> themselves. By repurposing equipment, opening space to relief efforts, and organizing donations, they\u2019re helping meet the region\u2019s most important needs. Tested by the storm, the tight-knit community has responded with food, water, and hope that Western North Carolina will pull through together.<\/p>\n

Bottling Hope<\/h4>\n<\/div>

Green and Beam had expected a normal, albeit rainy, day on the farm when they went to bed the night of September 26. When the two got up the next morning, it became clear the day would be anything but. <\/p><\/div>

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Green had to walk each of Big Bottom\u2019s 65 Jersey cows from their pasture to the milking parlor across a road flooded with eight inches of water. Beam\u2019s truck got stuck on his way from the dairy to the creamery; after Green rescued him, he tried again in a tractor, taking over 2 hours to navigate roughly 2 miles amid lashing rain and storm-toppled trees. Once Beam started the facility\u2019s generator, he set out again, struggling for hours to clear side roads in rural Rutherford County.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was several times where I was scared of my life,\u201d Beam recalls. \u201cI was shoving trees, trying to hook to somebody\u2019s car and get them out of the ditch to where they could get out of there. And you\u2019re just thinking, \u2018The next tree\u2019s going to fall on me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>

\"Stuart<\/a>\"Empty<\/a><\/div>

Stuart Beam, left, and Preston Green in Big Bottom Creamery\u2019s cold storage room. Empty bottles, right, await their turn under Big Bottom Milk Company\u2019s vintage seven-valve filler as the creamery geared up to package whole milk on October 16, 2024. (Photo credits: Daniel Walton)<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/section><\/div>

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Once the storm had subsided and the worst of the wreckage had been cleared, the two launched into their water bottling effort. Word of mouth and social media posts brought a steady stream of helpers, from children assembling cardboard boxes to an 81-year-old man with a walker feeding the machinery with empty jugs. On the first night of the operation, creamery staff and volunteers stayed up until 3 a.m., packing 40 pallets of water, with each pallet holding 100 to 140 gallons depending on bottle size.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve kind of been helping everybody else so we didn\u2019t have to think about our problems,\u201d Beam says with a modest smile. He and Green both lost power at their homes for several days, and he had to clear a tree that had fallen on his own house. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot more fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

The effort grew as Big Bottom\u2019s web of connections sprang into action. Sofia Lilly, a friend at nearby Overmountain Vineyards<\/a>, spearheaded nearly $50,000 of fundraising to keep the creamery humming. Green tapped his contacts in the packaging world, temporarily buying his suppliers out of gallon and half-gallon jugs. Beam, who co-chairs a Farm Bureau committee for young farmers and ranchers in the region, talked with colleagues across the state to identify the most critical needs and supplement water deliveries with other essentials.<\/p>\n

Among those beneficiaries was the Buladean Volunteer Fire Department<\/a>, roughly 100 miles northwest in Mitchell County. Fire Captain Jeremiah Swann and his crew had spent days cutting fallen trees, clearing the route to the nearby Tennessee border before unblocking residents\u2019 driveways and conducting wellness checks. They were running low on supplies when a truck from Big Bottom showed up, bearing three pallets of water, over 300 gallons of fuel, and a healthy amount of milk.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt blesses all of us up here to know that people are rallying around, willing to help us and bring us stuff to get us through a hard time like this,\u201d Swann says. \u201cI would travel 2.5 hours to go get their milk\u2014one, because it\u2019s some of the best milk I\u2019ve ever drank, and two, they\u2019re willing to chip in and help us up here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooking Out of a Storm<\/h4>\n<\/div>

Chef Jamie McDonald had long extended an invitation for Jason Collis to come by Bear\u2019s Smokehouse BBQ<\/a> the next time he was in Asheville. The two had worked together in Morocco and Poland for World Central Kitchen<\/a>\u00a0(WCK), \u00a0a global nonprofit that provides free hot meals in crisis situations. <\/p><\/div>

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\u201cWe thought it was going to be more on a vacation basis,\u201d quips Collis, WCK\u2019s chief relief officer.<\/p>\n

Instead, McDonald and Bear\u2019s co-owner Cheryl Antoncic partnered with Collis\u2019s team to transform their restaurant into the command center of WCK\u2019s Helene response. Bear\u2019s is closed to the public, but on a sunny Monday morning, its courtyard buzzes with food deliveries, a meal-packing assembly line, and several giant stainless-steel skillets stir-frying vegetables and chicken.<\/p>\n

The Bear\u2019s interior is a logistical war room, complete with a massive map outlining deliveries of roughly 30,000 meals per day to more than 160 distribution points. Collis says needs are constantly shifting, but he expects WCK to remain in the region until widespread potable water returns, which could be many weeks away<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>

\"A<\/a>\"Volunteers<\/a>\"Bear's<\/a><\/div>

A helicopter (left) takes off behind Bear’s Smokehouse BBQ delivering food from World Central Kitchen. Volunteers (center) portion out free hot meals produced in partnership with World Central Kitchen. (Photo credits: Paul G. Cressend, Jr. and Dricana Dafonte)<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/section><\/div>

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The majority of the meals are cooked on site, but many have come from other Asheville restaurants that have shifted operations toward relief, such as Chai Pani<\/a>, Curate<\/a>, and Rocky\u2019s Hot Chicken Shack<\/a>. (WCK pays local restaurants<\/a> per meal, allowing them to retain staff and be better prepared to serve the public when conditions allow.)<\/p>\n

Antoncic is proud of her restaurant\u2019s flexibility and use of local connections in the face of the unexpected. She points to how its freezer capacity saved 1,000 pounds of meat from storm-damaged purveyor Hickory Nut Gap Farms<\/a> that was distributed through WCK meals.<\/p>\n

Just as importantly, Antoncic continues, Bear\u2019s has catalyzed relationships beyond the meals themselves. Through Linked4Life<\/a>, a mental health nonprofit supported by the restaurant, she\u2019s helped local counselors reach impacted communities at food distribution sites. And she recently held an event where people wrote messages of hope, attached to carabiners symbolizing connection, that will be sent out into the community in the days to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs much as food and water are basic human needs, I really do believe that connection is a basic human need as well,\u201d Antoncic says. \u201cIf you do have a crisis, whether it\u2019s in your own personal life or in a community at large, having those support networks is what\u2019s going to get you through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

How to Help WNC Food Businesses<\/div>