What do you do with 1,000 chickens before a storm? Lowcountry farmers prep for Isaias
Chickens will always find their way back home after a storm or hurricane, says Marissa Paykos, owner of Whippoorwill Farms and 1,000 chickens.
That fact is a saving grace for farmers like Paykos, of Ridgeland, who said that making sure her animals are safe is the most important part of hurricane preparation.
“We won’t lock them into a barn, because if a tree falls in, we don’t want them to be stuck,” she said. “Our chickens don’t get locked into a coop. They can seek shelter in trees.”
As Tropical Storm Isaias inches up the South Carolina coast, preparing to make landfall in northern South Carolina Monday evening, Jasper and Beaufort County farmers are bracing for heavy downpours and winds.
Tony Jones, owner of Morning Glory Homestead Farm on St. Helena Island, said he’d spent the past day securing the tops to his family’s beehives, lowering the sides of the hoop house in which they grow plants and picking up anything that could be a projectile. Because it’s a tropical storm, he said, and not a hurricane, he does not expect to face worse than he’s seen before.
“[Hurricane] Matthew really was a force to be reckoned with, because we got a lot of flooding here on St. Helena,” Jones said. “But it also allowed us to find out issues that were affecting the flooding.”
Matthew, and some of the storms that followed, devastated Lowcountry farms, damaging roots and felling trees.
At Whippoorwill Farms, Paykos said she fed her animals more than usual Sunday, so that if they get stranded during the storm, they will be able to make it through Tuesday without going hungry.
Paykos’ family has a generator to keep the meat cold in case the power runs out. She said she plans to keep her business open Monday, and on Tuesday, manage the Hilton Head Island Farmer’s Market.
“Farmers — we’re pretty ride-or-die kind of folk,” Paykos said. “It’s not things we have to make, it’s what nature made for us. Even when it’s raining, we’re open.”
In a Facebook post, Okatee River Farms said it was closing its produce stand along SC-170 due to the storm. Owner LaDonna Sanders said her supplies, including a scale and a register, would not be shielded from the rain.
“We get up at 5:15 every morning and start picking up at 6, and we’re out here until 5, unless we sell out earlier,” she said. “It’s just too much to start and run in and out.”
At least a few residents of the farms are excited for the storm, Morning Glory’s Jones said: the ducks. They act like children when it rains, running into the water and splashing around.
“Of all the animals, the ducks really love the water when it comes down,” he said. “For their sake, we hope they don’t get disappointed.”
This story was originally published August 3, 2020 at 1:12 PM.
