A group of western Kentucky businesses and farmers are sending help hundreds of miles away to another group of farmers impacted by flooding several months ago.
The purpose is to give them supplies to get them back in business.
“We start in the woods, bring them in, take the bark off and set them off to dry so they’re properly treated,” says David Miller of Green River Post, describing how the wooden posts are made.To him, the wooden posts his company is donating are also symbols of rebuilding for farmers in Nebraska, who faced severe flooding this past spring.
“I went on the internet and saw a lot of the pictures of what happened out there, and I said, ‘Yes, let’s do something,'” Miller recalled.
His company donated posts and trucks to deliver them. More than $16,000 in supplies were loaded up this morning at Calhoun Feed in Madisonville. Wooden posts, barbed wire, and other items will be sent to farmers along rivers that saw historic flooding.
“What that did was that ice flow went through and a 10-11 foot wall of water took out all the fencing for their cattle, which is a high capacity cattle area where this happened,” says Curtis Dame of the Hopkins Co. Cooperative Extension Service, recalling the flooding in Nebraska that happened in March.
One of the things the farmers will use these wooden posts for is to set up boundaries for their livestock that were taken out during the flooding earlier this year.
“The flood of 1937 and 1927 in this area, historically, one of those 200 year floods that impacted the whole region. What they experienced there is on par or worse than what we experienced in ’37 here,” says Dame. He also says the fencing supplies should arrive by next Monday, and those livestock should be up in about two weeks to get farmers up and running again.
“Everything we do as far as fence posts is farm related. It affects us if we can help in any way, we want to be there,” Miller says.