Farmers are still reeling months after Hurricane Helene ravaged crops across the South
Farmers in Georgia are still reeling more than two months after Hurricane Helene blew away cotton, destroyed ripened squash and cucumbers and uprooted pecan trees and timber
LYONS, Ga. (AP) — Twisted equipment and snapped tree limbs still litter Chris Hopkins’ Georgia farm more than two months after Hurricane Helene made its deadly march across the South.
An irrigation sprinkler system about 300 feet (92 meters) long lay overturned in a field, its steel pipes bent and welded joints broken. The mangled remains of a grain bin sat crumpled by a road. On a Friday in early December, Hopkins dragged burly limbs from the path of the tractor-like machine that picks his cotton crop six rows at a time.
“I have wrestled with lots of emotions the past two months,” said Hopkins, who also grows corn and peanuts in rural Toombs County, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) west of Savannah. “Do we just get through this one and quit? Do we build back? It is emotionally draining.”
Hopkins is among farmers across the South who are still reeling from Helene’s devastation. The storm made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26 as a major Category 4 storm and then raced north across Georgia and neighboring states.
