Hurricane Helene Recovery Support for Happy Dirt Farmers

Happy Dirt is a farmer-owned organic produce grower and distributor based in Durham, North Carolina. For 20 years, we have advocated for farmers across the southeast to sell, market, and distribute their crops while providing holistic in-house support directly to our farmers through technical assistance, resource sharing, and beyond.

As the waters recede in Western North Carolina and the damage left in the wake of Hurricane Helene continues to become clear, the Happy Dirt team is painfully aware of the long-term financial and emotional costs that farmers and producers in our network will face in the months and years to come. 100% of these funds will go directly to the farmers/producers and will support the losses listed below and beyond.

Some of the losses that farms are facing currently include:

Future farmworker wages have been lost

Fruits, vegetables, and seed have been washed away

Farm infrastructure such as greenhouses and high tunnels decimated

Equipment was washed away including tractors, implements, irrigation lines, trellises and ground plastic

Farmer housing was destroyed or severely damaged

Culverts were washed away and need to be replaced

Soil was stripped from the land and will need to be remediated

Gravel roads were washed out and need re-graveling

Debris removal can be costly, and very time consuming

Running a farm is expensive and it’s difficult to sustain your operation, even over a good growing season. And when disaster strikes, farmers continue to take care of their community even when they have lost the majority of their crops and equipment. Now these farmers and producers that we rely on to feed us need our help to be able to make it through the winter and still have a farm to come back to.

Happy Dirt is starting this GoFundMe to support several farmers and producers in our network who have given us permission to share their names and to raise funds for them on their behalf. 100% of what we raise in this GoFundMe will go to the farms listed below based on the needs of their operation. We plan to disperse funds based on need and will ask the farms to fill out a short Google Form describing their immediate needs so that we can equitably provide money to folks based on their context. We want these funds to go towards things that other state, federal and private money cannot have the most efficacy during the recovery process.

The farms and vendors that we are looking to support with these funds include:

Fishel Organics

TendWell Farm

Clem’s Organic Garden

Dare Vegan Cheese

River Ridge Organics

R Farm

While disaster relief programs can be helpful, they take a lot of time, effort and paperwork, with uncertain outcomes. We want this campaign to help our farmers in the near future and take some burden from them going into the winter.

These farms and producers are not only a key part of our supply chain at Happy Dirt, but they are also our friends and colleagues who we have gotten to know well over the years. They need our help now – every dollar helps ensure that these farms will be able to weather the aftermath of this disaster and rebuild their farms and lives.

We also acknowledge the great need across Western North Carolina, so if you are curious how else to give your time, money and support, Carolina Farm Stewardship Association has put together this comprehensive list.

Update 10/16/24 from Clem Swift:

On Sept 26-27, Hurricane Helene brought powerful winds and floodwaters to our farm. We experienced more crop damage than we've ever had, but our most immediate concern is damage to our greenhouses. We lost the plastic covering three large production greenhouses to wind and our wood pellet-fired heating furnaces were damaged by flooding. Our focus right now is getting our greenhouses back up and running as soon as possible before winter comes so that we can have a successful winter production season and keep our year-round staff employed.

I am requesting assistance with the immediate expenses of purchasing replacement greenhouse plastic ($4784) and furnace parts ($2040), as well as the labor expense of covering the greenhouses (estimated $2112), for a total of $8936.

Clem