How farmers are trying to recover after Helene

If you talked to Steve Scott a year ago, he would've never believed what he was seeing as he walked down one of his farms along the Nolichucky River.Tomato plants were growing. Any other year, that would have been business as usual. But Helene changed everything when it flooded the farms along the Nolichucky.He runs Scott's Strawberries with his wife, Fran, their two sons, Cody and Ryan, and daughter-in-laws, Jamie and Riley. Working together, and with more than 160 other workers, is what pushed them through to this year."I told them, back then, 'I don't know what we're going to do.' And then that changed to, 'OK, we got to do something,'" Scott said.Farms in Northeast Tennessee, especially along the Nolichucky watershed, are going through a recovery process unlike anything they've seen before.Andy Brown owns a Christmas tree farm in Asheville. He's also the executive director of the Appalachian Resource Conservation and Development Council.In 1998 he started an environmental consulting company, which he sold in 2012. He said he's always worked in jobs that have to do with the environment, natural resources, fishing and hunting. Throughout that time, he's experienced at least two severe floods and three hurricanes in the mountains."This was a magnitude or two beyond anything we've ever seen," he said.When there were flood risks in the past, Scott's Strawberries had a protocol. They would move any equipment up from the river to avoid flooding — trucks, irrigation pumps and seven-to-eight-thousand pound forklifts.But last year, those measures weren't enough for the water that swept through.Almost no one in Unicoi County and Erwin could have expected what they found: machinery and trucks flipped upside down. Sediment swept through and buried 48-inch long tomato sticks, leaving about four to five inches still above ground.Scott and his family found a tractor buried underground through a few inches of machinery peaking out from under the sediment. Land lined with tomato plants was almost completely unrecognizable."I truly didn't know. I told 'em, I said 'I don't know what to do.' We had never experienced this before. We've had hailstorms, we've had floods. I mean, we lost 40 acres of tomatoes to a flood before. But we never lost everything we had," Scott said.How soil has changedThe soil Scott's Strawberries is farming after the storm is sandy. It tracks with what researchers and soil scientists have found in the months after the flooding. Most fields have changed one of three ways: they're either rocky, sandy or silty."Rather than trying to go back down to the old flood plane, our advice is very much, 'Let's work with what we've got, and let's renovate the sediment,'" said Forbes Walker, professor and environmental soil specialist at University of Tennessee.That's some of what Walker shared at a Flood Recovery Initiative Field Day in August. The recovery initiative is part of a partnership between the UT Institute of Agriculture, USDA, TNDA and the Governor's Response and Recovery Fund.Soil, vegetable and forage specialists at UT have all been working over the last year to try and see what will and won't grow in these new plots of soil.Soil sample tests showed surprisingly ideal pH levels after the disaster, Walker shared. Most micronutrient levels were promising, except for some specific micronutrients like manganese. That's typical for sandy soils, which are not typical for Tennessee. Walker also said they don't have significant concerns about heavy metals in the soil after the storm.The floods didn't just wash sediment off and onto farmlands. It also washed in diseases and weeds from North Carolina that farmers in Tennessee may not have had to deal with before, according to Annette Wszelaki, UT professor and commercial vegetable extension specialist.Farmers are also adjusting to the soil's new texture, whether they're farming sandy or silty land."We feel confident that we can work with you guys to identify what the sediments are and how we can help you do whatever you need to do," Bruno Pedreira, director of plant sciences at UTIA, told attendees at the Flood Recovery Initiative Field Day in August.Community resources after the stormThe ARCD, which has been working in the Appalachian community for more than 30 years, was able to serve as a hub of resources for farmers affected by the storm. They raised about $150,000 for farmers' immediate needs in the weeks after from organizations like Farm Aid, the East Tennessee Foundation and the First Horizon Bank foundation, along with about 30 other individuals.That money was dispersed in two different rounds of funding: the first in small, $200 to $300 installments. The second was $2,000 to $10,000 grants for any other costs that weren't covered by government assistance.Tractor Supply, a farm supply company, also helped give $100,000 of fencing, feed and warm coats to local farmers.People also came to ARCD with questions about how to stabilize their banks and what to do with their fields, Brown said. Farmers came to them saying what used to be lush bottomland with topsoil was now cobble and rocks. Others were filled with sand and silt.Scott's Strawberries saw both sides of that coin. They'll likely never use one of the fields to farm again. All that's left of it is cobble. There's a small island of soil, about four feet high. A memory of a field that used to be.For the fields that were left sandy, Scott said a lot of organic matter washed away. He was surprised when they conducted soil sampling and found that they would be able to work with what they had.Last year, more than 92% of their tomatoes flooded. Out of the 360 acres that did flood, they're hopeful to recover 300 acres for this season."People, after the flood, started saying, 'Well with the soil, you're not gonna be able to do this, you're not gonna be able to do that.' Well, you know, it don't matter, because it's all we got. We got to make it work," Scott said.Jorgelina Manna-Rea is a Report for America corps member covering environmental issues for Six Rivers Media.