Farmers Story Archives - Page 2 of 2 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

When Walmart Closed in McDowell, a Local Food Pantry Lost Their Main Source of Food

This week, we’ve been hearing a series of stories from the Inside Appalachia team about the challenges that some Appalachian families face when trying to eat fresh food. Sometimes it’s the cost, or poor choices. Sometimes it’s limited access because they live in what’s called a food desert.

Seven months ago the Walmart in McDowell County closed, and this was especially difficult for the Five Loaves and Two Fishes food pantry, run by Linda McKinney and her husband Bob. They say the superstore’s closing has actually inspired their family to rethink how they get food for the pantry.

Once a month, the McKinney family, and a small group of volunteers, provide shopping carts full of canned food, oatmeal, and macaroni and cheese.

“I just never want anyone to go hungry, cause I watched as my grandmother provided for the children who lived in out holler that would come in our yard and play. She always had fresh bread, hard salami,” said Linda McKinney.

She and her husband Bob, a retired minister, have been running the food pantry since 2009. She says the need to help hungry people keeps growing in McDowell County.

Last year, the food pantry gave away enough food to feed half the population of McDowell County. Now, Five Loaves doesn’t keep track of customers who return month to month, so it could be a much smaller portion of the population who use the food pantry, but it’s still a lot of food.

Linda McKinney stands outside the Five Loaves Two Fishes Food Pantry, which she runs with her husband Bob

McKinney says she serves laid off miners and their families, as well as grandparents raising grandchildren. She says it’s important to remember that most of us are equally vulnerable.

“You know, you and I are probably just one paycheck away from poverty. I mean it’s not just the mines.”

It’s also now Walmart, she says. The Walmart closure is a double whammy for the food pantry. 140 people were laid off, which means demand might go up at the pantry, but Linda and her family have relied heavily on donations from Walmart. Last year, they received 95,000 pounds of donated food from the company. Walmart delivered the food at least three times a week.

McKinney says when the superstore closed, she almost lost hope.

“I was in the fetal position for two days. I cried, I said ‘what am I gonna do?’ And then I just took a deep breath and I said, God will provide. It does get overwhelming. Especially with the children. It gets overwhelming.”

Some people have stepped up to donate- a group of ATV tourists from North and South Carolina drove up a truckload of canned food for the food pantry.

Linda McKinney cooks her grandmother’s recipe for pasta sauce at the Five Loaves Food Pantry kitchen. She’s using the sauce on spaghetti pizza

Walmart wouldn’t agree to an interview, but their communications director Brian Nick did send us an emailed statement that said the decision to close 154 Walmart stores was based on a variety of factors, including financial performance, but he didn’t provide any specifics about the superstore closure in McDowell County.

West Virginia University Geography professor Bradley Wilson has been paying close attention to the Walmart closings. He says they can be really difficult for communities. That’s especially true for towns where the small local store closed after Walmart first arrived.

“Walmart convinces everyone to put their eggs in one basket. When you’ve got one person holding all the eggs, and they drop them, you don’t eat. So they’re gonna have to find another route to finding food. They’re gonna have to start over again.”

In McDowell County, there are locally owned grocery store chains – Goodson’s in Welch and Grants in War. But these aren’t big enough stores to supply the food pantry.

So McKinney has had to seriously rethink how she is going to continue feeding people in need.

“My philosophy is, you better learn to grow your own food, cause if something happens to McDowell County, and you would wake up and you’re the only person in McDowell County, you better learn to grow your own.”

The McKinneys are starting to grow food in the parking lot outside their food pantry. Here is a high tunnel, under construction, where Linda’s son Joel plans to grow vegetables year round.

Desperate times call for creative solutions, and McKinney is hopeful as she heads back to work. Lately, she’s had a lot of sleepless nights, but the anxiety doesn’t seem to slow her down. Feeding people is a job that’s never over.

Is Hemp West Virginia's Next Cash Crop?

Hemp, known in the scientific community as cannabis sativa, is a cousin to the more commonly known marijuana, but unlike its medicinally and recreationally used relative, hemp does not contain any THC- a mind-altering ingredient.

So, throughout the nation’s history, hemp has been used more practically. It’s often turned into fibers used in fabrics or rope or pressed into oils, but the plant itself is still considered a schedule one drug, meaning law enforcement treats it just like they would heroin or Ecstasy.

In 2014, however, Congress left an opening in the federal Farm Bill to allow state Departments of Agriculture and universities to begin doing research on the best ways to grow hemp in their areas.

West Virginia began its program in 2015 and now, about a dozen farmers in the state are growing the plant.

Managing Editor of the magazine West Virginia Living Zack Harold wrote about the budding industry in the latest edition of Morgantown Magazine and joined Ashton Marra to discuss his reporting.

One of West Virginia's Last Sheep Shearers Reflects on His 64 Year Career

There are 100,000 less sheep in the state of West Virginia today than during the 1970’s. Now, there are 36,000 sheep in the state. The demand for synthetic fibers over wool for our clothes and blankets is one reason for the sharp decline. One man from Upshur County is about to hang up his shears. After sheep shearing for 64 years, Calvin McCutcheon says he will retire next year.

At just under 80 years old, Calvin McCutcheon looks like a bodybuilder. His thick stocky torso is bent over while he wrangles a full grown sheep, trying to get it to lay still and stop thrashing.

But this is nothing- McCutcheon holds the state record for shearing 300 sheep in one day.

Sheep at Sam Cunningham’s farm in Beverly, West Virginia

He began shearing when he was a teenager. At a 4-H Farm in Spencer, someone with WVU Extension offered to teach him.

“And as a cocky 14-year-old I climbed down off the fence and said “I’ll try anything once. I’ve sheared a 100,000 sheep since then.”

At 23 years old, he was determined to step away from the shearing business and become a Methodist pastor.

“But the best sheep shearer in the 10 county area lost his arm to a corn picker the fall before. So he got his arm cut off. He couldn’t shear sheep any more. And they were hurting. I sheared 1,200 sheep right there in that area.”

And so, McCutcheon picked his clippers back up and became a sheep shearing preacher.

He prepares for the spring shearing season almost like an athlete- he goes to the gym about 20 days a month, working to strengthen his shoulders and his lower back.

Beverly, West Virginia. This field is down the street from Sam Cunningham’s farm on Rich Mountain.

One of the farmers who hires McCutcheon to shear sheep is Sam Cunningham, who says it’s just really tough to raise sheep, and there’s not a lot of money in it. “I used to keep 75, now I keep 10 head around here just for my grandkids,” said Cunningham.

Cunningham runs the wool up to a buyer in Pendleton County, named Joe Harper. From there, it will get sold to South Carolina, where it’s carded, and then exported to woolen mills China. Most of the woolen mills in this country have gone out of business.

The view from Sam Cunningham’s farm on Rich Mountain

Farmers here in West Virginia earn less than a dollar per pound, which is hardly even a profit. Some farmers make value added craft products out of their wool, which can help turn more of a profit. Sheeps and Peeps Farm in Aurora and The Holler Farm in Renick are two businesses that sell locally made wool crafts.

Sheep farmers earn more income selling the lambs as meat.

Even though the wool industry is on the decline, there’s still a high demand for sheep shearers because sheep farmers still try to keep the wool off their sheep’s backs to keep them clean and healthy.

But there just aren’t many people interested in learning the trade. Some farmers in West Virginia even hire people from out of state to shear their flock.

Over the years, Calvin McCutcheon has taught dozens of young people to shear sheep, but most of them quit because the physical labor is so tough.

“Well if someone wants to shear sheep, they’ve got to be willing to do hard work, learn a skill and keep at it.”

In 1955, McCutcheon won fifth place in a national contest for sheep shearing. In sheep shearing, time is important, but the way you handle the sheep and keep them comfortable and controlled is the main thing judges look for.

When he won the national award, McCutcheon was recruited by a professional shearing company to work full time out west.

“I was invited to be a part of a shearing band that would migrate from Texas to the Dakotas. I would have been able to make in 4 months times more than I made all of probably 20 years before I made that much money as a pastor.”

But instead- he decided to stay in West Virginia, and that’s where he plans to stay, even as he puts down his professional sheep shears next summer.

Although he officially retired as a Methodist preacher, he was recently asked to return as a pastor, so he’ll be continuing that work next year.

Farmers Exempt from New Tank Law, But is Water Still Protected?

It’s well-known what happened in the Kanawha Valley on January 9, 2014. A massive chemical leak into the Elk River left tap water unusable for 300,000 West Virginians for as many as ten days. The 2014 legislative session had just begun, and in response, lawmakers passed a bill that would require all aboveground storage tanks in the state be registered and regulated under the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

Over the next year, tank owners began to grow frustrated with the regulations, and in the 2015 legislative session, lawmakers reevaluated the bill. Senate Bill 423 was approved on the final day of the session and made some considerable changes that take effect Friday.

Doug Stolipher and his son, Mark are cattle farmers in Jefferson County. Mark was one of many farmers who were frustrated with the original tank bill. He says it heavily regulated farmers who were already under regulations with the Department of Agriculture. He owns a 9,000 gallon diesel fuel tank on his farm.

Mark Stolipher’s 9,000 gallon diesel fuel tank.

“I generally order 2,000 gallons at a time, and we burn about 7,000 gallons of diesel fuel a year,” Mark explained, “and by buying it in the larger quantities, I get a better price on it and everything. So I like my larger tank, but with the regulations, I would’ve had, I couldn’t, you know, 1,320 gallons is as large as it could be before you fell into the regulations, and you can’t manifold’em together, so each tank, I’d had to have a couple, two to three tanks, and each tank would’ve had its own pump in it, cause you can’t hook’em together. Cause once you hook’em together, combined capacity, over went the gallon threshold for regulations.”

Mark says it would’ve been cheaper for him to purchase those smaller tanks rather than pay the regulation fee to the DEP and have his 9,000 gallon tank inspected routinely. But at the same time, he says he still would’ve lost a lot of money because he wouldn’t be buying that fuel in bulk anymore.

Senator John Unger, a Democrat from Berkeley County, oversaw the writing of the 2014 bill as the Chair of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Water Resources. This commission was created in response to the chemical spill.

“It started out they were exempt,” Unger noted, “and then that exemption was taken out through the legislative process. That was the whole push for this new legislation in order to address that and exempt farming.”

Unger says Senate Bill 423, the bill approved in 2015, amended and reworked the first bill so farmers using tanks for agricultural purposes would be exempt again. But he says other rules were placed in the new bill as well.

Rule for the 2014 tank legislation:

Held 1,320 gallons or more of liquid.
90% or more above ground.
60 days at a fixed location.

It was estimated to affect as many as 80,000 tanks used in a variety of industries and for a multitude of purposes. Under this law, all tanks were registered and all tanks were regulated.
Now, that rule has changed.

Scott Mandirola, the deputy cabinet secretary and director of the Division of Water and Waste Management with the DEP, says under the new law, there are two levels owners of tanks need to worry about. Everything else only needs to be registered on the DEP’s website.

Rule for the 2015 tank legislation:

Level one – Zone of Critical Concern
5 hours upstream from a public drinking water intake.
Holds 50,000 gallons or more of liquid.
Contains a hazardous substance.

Level two – Zone of Peripheral Concern
10 hours upstream from a public drinking water intake.

Senator Unger says he’s concerned the new legislation won’t protect everyone.
“Now we have legislation that protects major metropolitan areas, but the vast majority of West Virginia, they don’t live in major metropolitan areas, they live in small rural communities, and the question is are they protected? All we’re doing is protecting the municipalities, the cities, and the towns. These smaller communities, that’s still on well water, they’re not being protected at all, and their water supplies is not being protected,” Unger said.

Mark, the cattle farmer, says he’s happy the new bill exempts agriculture from the regulations, but he says he wishes things had been thought out better down in Charleston.

“I think the state needs to regulate the really hazardous materials, whatever they’re calling the class one and everything need to be regulated,” Mark explained, “The fuel side of things, I don’t feel the need, you know, they’re not as hazardous as some of these other chemicals, so I’m hoping, you know, I hope we get a little bit of both, you know. Things get eased up, they’re willing to work with us instead of just throw something out and get us all into compliance with everything, and make everything safer.”

Senate Bill 423 goes into effect Friday, June 12, and all tanks must be registered with the DEP by July 1.

These Groups are Reforming West Virginia's Food Economy

The phrase “food-desert” might sound like a landscape of sagebrush and armadillos, but it’s really a place where SlimJims, chicken nuggets and Slurpies count as dinner. A food desert can happen anywhere- we’ve all seen them. People who live in a food desert may be surrounded by food—fast food or convenient store hotdogs, instead of fresh, healthy food.

Even in rural West Virginia, where small farms still dot the roadside, fresh food isn’t available to all people. In some places it can take over an hour just to reach the next grocery store. Reawakening some of the old, small farm traditions– and bringing a new local food movement to West Virginia– is the work of five non-profits that were highlighted by the James Beard Foundation. Groups were chosen based on their work to bring healthy, local food to more people.

One of those chosen to be highlighted is the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition, directed by Elizabeth Spellman.

“We focus on helping people connect with each other so they can educate each other and be stronger together,” said Spellman.

The coalition trains farmers and advocates for statewide policies that help nurture small farmers.

Spellman says that because West Virginia has the highest number of small farms per capita in the country, there is a unique opportunity here to help transform the local food economy.

Children with a YMCA camp helping find harlequin beetles in the West Side Community Garden Project in Charleston

“Yeah, and we’re uniquely positioned to show what a small farm state can do because we don’t really have that many large farms. We’re mostly small farms. And people relying on each other and working together.”

The Food and Farm coalition launched in 2010 under the West Virginia Community Development Hub, but recently the group has grown and is now its own nonprofit. Other groups that work in West Virginia that the James Beard Foundation chose to highlight were the the Collaborative for the 21st Century Appalachia– which hosts the Cast Iron Cook Off each January, the West Virginia University Small Farm Center, The Wild Ramp market in Huntington, and the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, which helps preserve heirloom seeds across the south. The organizations were all selected to be part of a guide, which launched yesterday on FoodTank and is meant to help chefs and consumers identify sources of local, healthy food.

Hannah McCune, age 11, helping in the West Side Community Garden Project in Charleston

Eastern Panhandle Farmers Express Concern Over Proposed Storage Tank Regulations

After a chemical spill contaminated the drinking water for 300,000 West Virginians, state lawmakers passed a bill to regulate above ground storage tanks…

After a chemical spill contaminated the drinking water for 300,000 West Virginians, state lawmakers passed a bill to regulate above ground storage tanks in the hopes of preventing it from happening again. Just a few weeks ago, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection released some guidelines for tank owners on how to interpret that law until their inspection program is finalized later this year. The DEP held an informational meeting in Martinsburg yesterday to hear the concerns of tank owners and collect comments on their new program.

The informational session on the proposed Aboveground Storage Tank Program was met with…distaste from the forty or so in attendance. The majority of those people were farmers living and working in the eastern panhandle whose storage tanks would be directly affected by the new proposed rules. And the overall feeling…was not one of pleasure.

“This is a bunch of bull,” said Eddie Hough. Hough and his brother are dairy farmers in Charles Town, “We have a 4,000 gallon milk tank, and I can’t believe that it will be an environmental hazard if it does spring a leak.”

And Hough wasn’t the only one who was upset. Most of the other farmers refused an interview, but many did say during the meeting that they had either milk tanks or water tanks and just couldn’t understand the need for them to be regulated. One woman even expressed outrage on how she would adequately regulate a water trough for her farm animals.

Under this proposed program, all aboveground storage tanks in the state would have to be regulated by the DEP if they have the capacity to hold 1,320 gallons or more of liquid, are 90 percent or more above ground, and are at a fixed location for at least 60 days. It’s estimated that this could affect as many as 80,000 tanks used in a variety of industries and for a multitude of purposes.

Last month, DEP Secretary, Randy Huffman entered an emergency rule meant to guide tank owners through the inspection process described in law until his department can fully implement the tank inspection program.

That rule said tanks would be categorized in three groups with varying inspection levels for each. Tanks like Hough’s that contain water or food based products must be registered and inspected by the January 1st deadline, but can be inspected by the owner or a designee. Only tanks containing hazardous materials, holding more than 50 thousand gallons of a substance or located near a public water supply must be inspected by a certified engineer.

Dr. Terry Polen, West Virginia DEP Ombudsman, a person who investigates individuals’ complaints, led the meeting.

“I’m going to go through a short overview of this, and then allow folks to make comments and then I will take those comments back to the agency to those people that are actually drafting the bills. If changes need to be made, if people think that changes need to be made, then their voice needs to be heard,” said Polen.

The draft interpretive rule is out for public comment through October 9th. That rule will set the framework for the final above ground storage tank program for the DEP.