Margaret Bloomquist fills many roles through her work in agriculture and community development. Research scholar. Project manager. Lead organizer. Co-director. In short, her natural role is “go-to person.”
Those skills serve her well as a research scholar with the North Carolina Alternative Crops and Organics Program led by Jeanine Davis, an associate professor and Extension specialist with the Department of Horticultural Science at NC State University. With research on commercial vegetables, organic agriculture and emerging crops such as hops, hemp, elephant garlic, truffles, artisan materials, and loofah gourds, the program helps identify options for small- and medium-scale farmers in the mountains of western North Carolina.
A team member for 14 years, Bloomquist is based at the Mountain Horticultural Crops Research and Extension Center (Mountain Hort.) in Mills River, North Carolina, just south of Asheville. Medicinal herbs and forest farming are among her specialties. Bloomquist is a lead organizer for Western North Carolina Medicinal Herb Growers and the Woodland Stewards, its subgroup. She serves as co-director of the Appalachian Forest Farmer Coalition.
“I love working for NC State and for Dr. Davis’s program because it merges a lot of my interests,” Bloomquist says. After studying food, fiber and medicinal plants around the world, she came to North Carolina to be near family. A temporary summer job grew into a full-time position.
“Not only do I get to work with the plants, but I also have great connections to our community and direct impacts as people develop new enterprises around here,” Bloomquist says. “We have some ingenious farmers.”
Last fall, her work on every front halted following devastating flooding and landslides from Hurricane Helene. Knowing that heavy rains were expected ahead of the storm on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024, the NC Alternative Crops and Organics team had battened down their projects and laboratories and planned to work from home. It would be days before they could return.
Damage Assessment
After the storm, the area had little power nor communication for at least five days. Only two of many cellular phone towers in the region worked. Fortunately, Bloomquist had service through a fire station near her home. At first, she could only reach one team member. Eventually, everyone from the center was confirmed alive and well. In between finding water and food and removing fallen trees, they wondered what had happened with the farmers they worked with, and to their work in Mills River and across the region.
“We’re all plant geeks,” Bloomquist says. “We did not see our babies for two weeks, which tells you how extreme it was.” Because the damage was less severe in Haywood County, the team did their first checks of research plots there.
Meanwhile, many sites, including the Mills River center, became a staging center to gather and distribute livestock feed and farming supplies after the disaster. The Mountain Hort team worked long hours with limited supplies to repair roads, bridges, and irrigation systems to keep root crops going during a drought that followed the Helene flooding. While a portion of the crops being researched at Mountain Hort. weren’t salvageable, some data could be collected, so it wasn’t a total loss.
Wednesday Workdays
Bloomquist’s connections in the community helped bring groups together in Helene’s aftermath.
“Most of our staff and our community were really affected by the storm,” Bloomquist says. “In response, we already have this great group of people, a bunch of staff from the Mountain Hort. Center, from all sorts of departments at NC State – from plant pathology, entomology. We started to ask, ‘How can we help?’”
Throughout the fall, the team organized Wednesday workdays at farm, forest, and community sites, with five to 12 volunteers each week. The WNC Woodland Stewards group formed a core part of the team and others helped by packing lunches each week. Craig Mauney, area specialized agent for commercial fruit and vegetable production in the Western Region, who’s based at Mountain Hort., was one of the experts who joined in.
“We’ve been involved with everything from tree clearing to soil remediation work to gutting homes, and it’s been good for us to work together throughout this challenging time,” Bloomquist says. “We have a lot of horticultural expertise, so we’ve been able to help repair a wasabi operation and a cut flower farm, forest farms and an in-forest nursery for native plants and woodland botanicals.”
A forest farmer needed help clearing access to his property and inoculating logs with fungus for mushroom production. Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa asked for the group’s expertise in recovering planting stock. “It’s really been uplifting for everyone because at everyone’s place we’ve been to, we’ve been able to help take something off their list of what they need to do so they can have a little hope.”
The group spent a number of memorable days at Mountain Gardens near Burnsville. Founded by the late Joe Hollis, it’s home to one of the largest collections of native Appalachian and Asian medicinal herbs in the eastern United States, as well as wild foods, vegetables and ethnobotanicals. Landslides there took a toll.
“We went there first to release and dig out trees from three feet of mud and debris,” Bloomquist recalls, pausing to add, “We also harvested ginkgo leaf that day.” In fall, the fan-shaped leaves of gingko trees turn a brilliant golden yellow. “Above all this muck, a little silver lining.”
A Brighter Spring
An extra allotment of paid time to volunteer has given NC State’s full-time employees more opportunities to help as we head into the growing season.
“In addition to participating in good and specialized work, we also have been able to stay connected to our community and the collective recovery process, which has been important for the team,” Bloomquist says.
Farmer-to-farmer workdays continue this spring, with NC State organizing a monthly trip and several other groups joining in. The Organic Growers School is hosting a volunteer listserv and can direct volunteers to these farm recovery opportunities. In early March, volunteers made a return trip to Mountain Gardens, which posted a thank you on Facebook.
This time, the daffodils out front were a sunny yellow.
Want to Get Involved?
Here are links for upcoming service events in western North Carolina.
NC State employees have 16 hours of volunteer time in 2025 allotted specifically to help with recovery from Helene.
- Join the Recovery Work Day volunteer email list and find more post-Helene resources from the Organic Growers School.
- Find out more about the WNC Woodland Stewards on the NC Alternative Crops and Organics website.
- Locate more post-disaster resources and complete the Appalachian Forest Farmer Coalition Damage Assessment.
