RICE LAKE, Wis. — In Kurt Wohlk’s mind, when fellow farmers are in need that call must be answered. Wohlk headed up an effort to collect hay and other supplies for those devastated by Hurricane Helene.
“It just feels very American,” Wohlk said. “It doesn’t matter what race, creed, color (or where) you come from. In a time like this, everyone is just an American, and everyone helps.”
Wohlk, who trucks part time and farms part time with his brother, Clayton, on their 65-cow, 500-acre dairy farm near Almena, joined forces with fellow Barron County agriculturist Kaitlin Esanbock to set up a collection day Oct. 12 at the Barron County Fairgrounds for area residents to answer the call for help. The duo said they were shocked by the response.
“We had hoped to put together at least one flatbed semi-trailer of hay and maybe some fencing supplies,” Wohlk said.
What they ended up with was five semi-trailers filled with hay, livestock feed, fencing equipment, food, bottled water, cleaning supplies and personal items the people of the southeastern U. S. needed in the wake of the historic hurricane.
This relief effort is not the first time Wohlk has rallied his neighbors to help distressed fellow farmers. In 2017 he worked with a group of local farm enthusiasts, including Esanbock, to send three semi-loads of hay, fencing equipment and other supplies to Ashland, Kansas, following wildfires that ravaged the area that spring.
As car after car pulled in through the donation site, and trailer load after trailer load of hay was unloaded, from as far south as Mondovi and as far north as Superior, Wohlk said he was overwhelmed, but not completely surprised at the generosity of the people of northwestern Wisconsin. Dozens of volunteers were on hand at the fairgrounds helping to collect donations and reloading them onto the semi-trailers.
“We needed to find another truck to haul for us,” Wohlk said. “The response has been amazing. In total, we had around 1,400 bales of hay, including almost 1,300 small squares.”
In addition to his own truck, operated as Hay River Hauling LLC out of Barron, Wohlk was joined by Phil Limmex, driving a truck donated by Limmex Trucking in Clyman; Bruce Heldt of Cameron, retired from Heldt Trucking drove a truck donated by Indianhead Renewable Forest Products in Barron; and Allison Wohlk of Almena driving a truck donated by Groeschl Ag Service in Hayward. Joining the convoy as the fifth truck was Axel Survila, owner of AKS Trucking in Rice Lake.
The group of four trucks departed Barron early Oct. 14, meeting with Limmex in South Beloit, Illinois. They traveled nearly 700 miles before stopping for the day. They embarked early the next morning from the Dayton, Ohio, area, with just under 400 miles remaining to their final destination of Chilhowie, Virginia.
“We didn’t have any detour issues, but you could see on Google Maps that not too much further there were detours for roads washed out,” Wohlk said. “Traveling you could see trees and all kinds of debris hung up along bridges.”
Wohlk said he learned that a 15-minute drive would bring them to the junction of the border of western Virginia, North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, where damage was immense.
“They told us just a few minutes down river, the town of Damascus, Virginia, was just about wiped away,” Wohlk said.
The group arrived at their destination, the yard of an excavating business, where they saw dump trucks that had been submerged in water up to their cabs.
They were greeted with meager help for the unloading process — a task that took nearly 11 hours to complete.
“It made for an incredibly long day, and we were all exhausted,” Wohlk said. “We were putting small squares up into a loft.
They had a skid loader grapple attachment that could grab 10 bales at a time. We had two guys on the trucks throwing hay off; two on the ground arranging them in a pattern for the guy in the skid loader to pick up and two or three people stacking them up in the loft. It takes a long time to move 1,300 small squares, 10 bales at a time.”
Wohlk said that the local distribution of much of their donation took place over the following weekend. They planned to hand out supplies that were needed locally before sending the remaining supplies to Asheville, North Carolina.
“The locals told us that Asheville, was the epicenter of the damage and much of the relief was being directed there,” Wohlk said. “They told us, tearfully, that out in western Virginia they felt almost forgotten. They were crying tears of joy at the sight of our trucks full of hay and supplies pulling in.”
Wohlk said the area where their donations were dropped appeared to be mostly horse country. While he had hoped to impact more dairy farmers, he said people in need are people in need. He noted that the monetary donations that poured in for the relief effort outpaced the fuel and travel costs for the five truckers who made the journey. He has been made aware of several other loads of hay from farmers willing to donate to the hurricane victims and he has made connections with dairymen in other affected locales since embarking on the trip.
“I am going to see if I can find a way to get more hay down there,” Wohlk said. “I just saw a Facebook post by a dairy farmer begging for alfalfa. He said they have lots of grass, but nothing with the nutritional value needed to support dairy cattle.”
The satisfaction he receives from helping his fellow Americans — complete strangers living over 1,000 miles away — is great, Wohlk said.
“The gentleman I was in contact with told me it felt like Sept. 12 all over again,” Wohlk said.
It was much like the united community spirit and patriotism that occurred after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“He was right,” Wohlk said. “I was pretty young at that time, but the feeling of being united as Americans is pretty amazing.”
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here