Nicole & Gaelan (Green Toe Ground Farm) Need Help!

UPDATE OCTOBER 14 from Nicole

We are two weeks on from the disaster and devastation of Hurricane Helene, in some ways it feels like yesterday and in other ways Months already.

We have been overwhelmed with love and support during this chaos and for that we are so eternally grateful. We have felt that from our very closest neighbors, to those we only pass on the road with a nod, to complete strangers showing up with tools and strength, to those within our small one mile radius, to those from Asheville, from our farmer community here in WNC and across the US and friends from abroad. And of course, FAMILY, who has shown up, in all the ways, there are no words to say how much that means.

The first week was spent just in survival mode, how to get water, food, information, while starting to clean up the rubble and debris everywhere. This section of the South Toe River Valley was devastated, if you are familiar, it starts about halfway down Highway 80 South and from there all the way to the Parkway, is utterly transformed. It is hard to recognize where you are.

There are many intense moments each day which we try to alleviate with laughter and humor, thank goodness! We've lost some loved ones (our beloved Checkers and Star our horse) and we are harvesting a lot of grief each day.

We have had incredible work days and to our eyes, the fields look so much better. All four high tunnels were destroyed and bent beyond repair, all deer fencing and posts, buried under sand and mud, trees down, tractor and well head flooded and our beloved barn, wash pack shed, cooler all three outbuilding washed away down river. The barn was in the road and had to be taken apart by the locals to have the road be passable the first days after the storm. The main field had a giant sand deposit, but we are grateful it was not gravel and rocks. Our friend Kenny Pieper has used his tractor to push most of it to the side creating a giant sand dune berm along the forested area and we think the topsoil is intact. The other field is also a sand deposit (we rent two fields). The old "firefly" field was not deposited but had some areas scoured out. I will be doing some soil samples this week and try to get a sense of what we are working with. What we have left to work with is the LAND itself, all else needs to be recreated and rebuilt.

The debris and cleanup will continue and at the same time, we have so many decisions to make regarding what a rebuild will look like and what resources we will have to do that with. We've had this farm 23 years and we are 50 and 51 years old. Maybe now is the time to build our dream farm as we are wiser and know what we can do, what works, and what systems we need? It's daunting but also exciting.

Sending you all so much love, We love you all!

ORIGINAL STORY

My sister Nicole DelCogliano and her husband Gaelan Corozine have had an organic farm called Green Toe Ground in Burnsville, NC (40 miles north of Ashville) for 20+ years, their main source of income. Hurricane Helene has completely destroyed it: barn, greenhouses, and outhouses demolished, fields covered in dirt and sand, farm equipment swept away from flood waters, and so forth. Fortunately, their house, about ¼ mile up the hill from the farm, was spared. The entire area, however, is without services, no water, no cell, no power. Help is slow in coming due to the magnitude of this disaster. Currently Nicole and Gaelan assessing the damage and trying to salvage what they can. This is a life-altering catastrophe. Please help them recover from this devastation as they figure out how to move forward.

Pictures of Clean Up

Pictures from Tuesday, October 1

Pictures from Sunday, September 29