As Emily Grace approached her pasture in Mitchell County, North Carolina, on Saturday, September 28, she expected the worst. She thought her barn would probably be washed away, as her Burnsville post office was, or underwater, like her dad’s house. She thought about her herd of Highland cows, who had never experienced such extreme weather. She thought about how her entire life had just been dismantled.
When she’d left the farm two days earlier, Emily knew inclement weather was coming. She never imagined there wouldn’t be enough gas to return the next day or that the roads and bridges just north of Pisgah National Forest would be torn apart.
And so on Saturday, she found herself navigating through debris and flooding on the back roads of rural Yancey County. When she finally arrived on her land, she saw two miracles: First, her barn was intact. Second, a day-old calf was waiting for her in the pasture.
As she drove her side-by-side through fallen cherry trees and over soaked grounds, the cows grazed in the sun, evidently unharmed. Everyone was accounted for, and they even had a plus one. Emily still has no idea how the mother did it: She had somehow delivered a calf in the middle of one of the worst storms in Appalachian history.
“Based on how dry its umbilical cord was, I knew it was born the day before,” Emily says of the baby. “It would have been born right during the storm. I was expecting death and destruction, but it was just incredible.”
The newest member of the herd doesn’t have an official name yet, but followers of Happy Hens & Highlands Farm have affectionately suggested Stormy, Hope, and Furricane. Typically Emily names her new calves in accordance with the Highland breed’s traditional letter of the year. With 2024 being the letter N, she’s leaning toward Noah, strategically spelled “NOAA.”
While the calf is a bright spot for the farm and local community, there is a long road to recovery.
Emily spent most of Tuesday at the local fire department, setting up her satellite internet for others to use, unloading water bottle pallets and propane, and leveraging her social media following to get in contact with the outside world. She was surprised to learn that supplies were perilously short in their rural corner of North Carolina. “Nothing was making it to our end of the county,” she says.
One scene of destruction from Yancey County.
With the help of Emily’s outreach, the fire department has since received more deliveries from helicopters and larger vehicles. But more help is urgently needed; she suggests donating supplies to organizations with boots on the ground, following along with local businesses’ social medias posts, and calling on those with large followings to spread the word. “The locals know what the needs are,” she says.
Emily isn’t sure how often she’ll be able to return to her farm in the coming days and weeks, but she knows her community will keep her going—including one friend who checked on the tentatively named NOAA and other cows on Tuesday. They are doing just fine.
