Through a generous donation from an Illinois farmer, trucks full of round bale alfalfa hay have been making a 700-mile trip to North Carolina to provide relief for farmers and ranchers affected by Hurricane Helene. Midwest Food Bank (MFB), founded in 2003 on the Kieser family farm in rural McLean County, Illinois, is coordinating the transportation efforts.

CEO Eric Hodel says MFB has always been involved in disaster relief and typically provides food, water, supplies and family food boxes when the need arises. A hay donation wasn’t something he was expecting, but MFB got right to work making sure it could be put to good use.

“I was working on our family farm earlier this fall and received a call from a neighbor who had seen the loss people in the Southeast were experiencing and wanted to donate about 600 bales of hay to the people affected by the storm,” Hodel says.

MFB reached out to the North Carolina Farm Bureau and North Carolina Cattlemen’s Association to find out how best to put the donation to use.

“We quickly learned that this donation was going to be a huge blessing to those farmers and ranchers who have lost all of their hay and forage for the year,” Hodel says.

MFB had a donor and a place to take the hay; now, they needed to figure out the logistics.

“That's a little bit of our operating mode — saying yes, then figuring it out from there,” Hodel says.

MFB currently distributes nearly $500 million worth of food to more than 2,400 non-profit organizations in 12 locations in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, New England, Haiti and East Africa, and has its own fleet of trucks. However, it doesn’t have flatbed trailers to haul hay. Through phone calls to area farmers and businesses, they were able to identify trailers and volunteers who were willing to deliver the hay.

“We're hauling 17 bales at a time and should be right around halfway done at Thanksgiving,” Hodel says. “I just knew the first load was the key load to get there because we would learn a lot.”

“It's a ripple effect of everybody doing their part to help,” Hodel says. “From the person that donated the hay to some neighbors that are helping with loading of the hay and making sure that it gets strapped down correctly, and our local grain elevator allowing us to use its facility to park our trailers once we get them loaded, it’s been a group effort. We have also had donations for the fuel it takes to make these trips.”

Each truckload of hay costs approximately $1,500 in fuel. Donations for fuel costs can be made at midwestfoodbank.org/relief .

The WNC Livestock Exchange (WNCLE), located in Canton, N.C., has been at the center of receiving hay and other donations for those affected in western North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Stockyard manager Dan Messer has been working with MFB.

“Almost immediately after the hurricane, calls to help and loads of hay and supplies were coming in,” Messer says. “It was all unsolicited. The donations just started coming.”

WNCLE has been at the center for getting hay, feed, fencing and even human supplies out.

“This help has been huge because we lost probably six weeks of the fall grazing in places due to silt, landslides, flooding and downed trees,” Messer says. “A lot of times we can graze clear up to Thanksgiving or after on stockpiled grass, and having lost that the end of September, people are having to start feeding hay or sell out.”

Messer says as an auction yard, it’s important to keep people in the cattle business.

“We’re trying to get help to as many as we can,” he says. “Getting them feed, fencing supplies and hay to help them stay in business is our goal.”

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