Hurricane Helene Pasture and Hayfield Restoration Program Lessons Learned
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Left: Hayfield flooded during Tropical Storm Helene Right: Same hayfield restored through the N.C. Cooperative Extension of Yancey County Hurricane Helene Pasture and Hayfield Restoration Program
Since May 2025, N.C. Cooperative Extension of Yancey County has been carrying out the Hurricane Helene Pasture and Hayfield Restoration Program. This program provided seed and other assistance to producers and farmers that were restoring fields that were damaged by Hurricane Helene. The program originally had 2 goals that included offsetting a potential hay shortage and speeding up field restoration efforts through the use of annual forage crops, and assisting producers by restoring hay and pasture fields through the planting of perennial forage crops. This program was funded by two grants received from the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina (CFWNC).
Here is a snap shot of a few outcomes of this program:
- Purchased a T-50 DJI Agricultural Drone to assist producers with field restoration efforts
- Purchased and distributed enough annual and perennial forage seed to plant more than 1,100 acres
- Assisted 54 producers with hayfield, pasture and cropland restoration efforts
- Secured donations to purchase 2 additional pieces of shared use equipment that will enable future programs focused on restoring damaged soil.
- This project has also led to establishing future research and demonstration projects that will not only benefit Yancey County producers, but also those producers impacted by future storm events.
- Throughout the course of this program, we have also assisted in planting more than 400 acres of pasture, forage, and cover crop seed by aerial drone.
The program was not conducted without at least some learning curves and failures. For example, we learned that some producers are going to need additional restoration efforts to return fields to production. In particular, producers are going to have to add organic matter, top soil, and/or biochar to those fields where soil was extremely damaged by the flooding during Tropical Storm Helene, and that also had large deposits of sand and silt following the storm. This has initiated future efforts to assist these farmers with obtaining compost. We are also working to find ways to assist farmers overcome the cost barrier for purchasing biochar.
Perhaps one of the largest successes of this project was demonstrating how annual forages can greatly enhance livestock operations. In particular, those producers that have the ability to graze annual forages. The annual forages that were most successfully incorporated into this program included annual ryegrass, and winter cover crop species, which included cover crop wheat, cereal rye and turnips, cover crop oats, and triticale. These species of annual forages were very easy to establish using aerial drone seeding, and they were very productive. Hay needs were greatly decreased in the early spring and late summer months on farm where these were planted and grazed.
Forage crabgrass was a great summer addition on several of the farms where it was planted. However, this forage was not optimized due to the late procurement of the seed and drone. Where we did plant forage crabgrass, we were not able to plant early enough in the year to grow well established stands that would support grazing and haying needs. Another great addition to this program was the forage grain drill that was supplied to us by NC State Extension. This tool was instrumental in successfully establishing permanent forages in hayfields. Aerial seeding by drone was not the most successful method of establishing permanent forage grass species, such as orchardgrass and tall fescue, but the drone will be tremendously beneficial when many of these hayfields and pastures are frost seeded with clover in the upcoming spring months. The forage and grain drill that was supplied by NC State Extension allowed more than 300 acres of hayfields and pastures, that were almost completely damaged by Hurricane
Helene, to be restored and returned to production for the 2026 hay harvest season. N.C. Cooperative Extension of Yancey County will be continuing to explore funding options that will allow us to purchase a forage and grain drill, which will hopefully one day be incorporated into our new shared use equipment program.
All together, this project was a great success, and benefit many farmers in Yancey County. It will lead to additional programs and efforts focused toward assisting Yancey County farmers still in the process of recovering from the impacts of Tropical
Storm Helene.