CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The farming community is tight-knit with local farms around Charlotte doing what they can to help their neighbors in need after Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina.
Even without the same devastating damage, the hurt in their hearts after Helene was all the same.
"Just a lot of rain. Too much rain," Brian Howard, a farmer at Howard Family Farm in Harmony, told WCNC Charlotte.
He says the damage out west is a completely different story.
"It’s disaster like I’ve never seen before," Howard said.
Howard's farm got a lot of rain even before Helene, and it damaged some of their pumpkin crop, but he says it's nothing compared to what happened in the mountains.
"We didn’t have any erosion problems like they’ve had up in the mountains, we just had like 12 inches of rain," he said.
Rain that came down tenfold for farmers in North Carolina's mountains, devastating the land. Howard has since made countless trips to help farmers who lost everything in the storm.
"The ground’s gone. Their dirt’s washed away," he said. "When you take the dirt away, there's nothing else to farm with. I don't know how many years it will take, if ever, to be back."
In the meantime, local farms like his are doing what they can to provide their support – like selling produce for their neighbors.
A little further east, Doug Patterson at Patterson Farm & Market Tours in Mount Ulla says they were also fortunate.
"We did have some rain. We had a little bit of wind damage," said Patterson.
They’re selling apples to support Stepp's Hillcrest Orchard in Hendersonville.
"We grow tomatoes, strawberries, bell peppers, cucumbers," Patterson said. "We don’t grow apples here. But these apples are from the Stepp’s. Since people can’t get up there, they were able to get these picked and brought down to us. We told them if they could bring us some apples down here we would sell them and all the proceeds would go back to them."
Patterson says farmers are dealing with economic devastation too. Fruits and vegetables meant to be harvested this time of year were lost to the storm.
"They were getting ready to harvest their last crop of the season because it is starting to get cold and it just wiped those out," he said.
Along with their livelihoods. It’s a story these farmers hope can somehow turn around.
"It’s really heartbreaking, what they’re going through," Patterson shared.
If you’d like to help support farmers in western North Carolina, there's an opportunity this Sunday, Oct. 27 at the Charlotte Regional Farmers Market.
From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Western North Carolina Agritourism farmers will be selling produce, flowers, baked goods and hand-crafted fiber products.
Contact Destiny Richards at drichards5@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, X and Instagram.