Our Story:
We originally moved to our east TN property in 2011 to start our farm. Our desire was to help preserve and promote the rare akhal-teke horse which is one of the world's most rare and ancient horse breeds. At first, everything was uneventful and we enjoyed starting our little horse farm as we made improvements like building a run-in, a barn, and putting up fences.

In 2019, we experienced the worst flooding and our horses had no where to go that wasn't knee-deep in mud. The barn even had standing water in the stalls. Our main pasture that takes up around half of our land, was under water again for the next 5 months. Due to being submerged under water for so long, the grass has all died, leaving us nothing but fields of inedible weeds and dirt. The increased costs of having to feed hay when normally grass would be abundant has created a hardship for what was to be our dream of running a working horse farm. Additionally, this is not a healthy way to "keep" our beloved horses.

We had to use this canoe to get from the house to the barn to care for the horses multiple times each day. No one should have to live like this!
Due to the repeated heavy flooding, that at times almost reaches the house and makes even the driveway unusable, we are asking for assistance to do some grading work to help "control" the water that is constantly draining from surrounding lands onto our farm.

Here are some facts on our situation:

- We have NO water elements normally on our farm (NO rivers, creeks, or ponds).

- Our property is NOT in a flood-zone.

-New construction on property surrounding our farm has contributed to more water running off onto our land than there was previously.

- Basically any time our area experiences an abnormal rainfall (sometimes even just a day or two), we get flooded.

- We cannot just "dig a retention pond" because there is way too much water we are dealing with. (We have around 6-7 acres of 6+ feet deep water).

- We have not been able to get help! We have tried to reach out to state government organizations for assistance but have been unable to get help. We have written to representatives etc. with NO help other than "suggestions."

- Our flooding is a result of the surrounding properties draining from all directions and "collecting" in our main pasture which is the lowest point.

- Our farm is level to slightly rolling topography without any deep ditches or steep inclines.

- The water in much of the flooded area is 6 feet or more deep and it kills off all of our pasture grass each time it floods.

-We have spent significant time, money, and effort trying to reseed and rehabilitate our pastures almost annually on our own and have exhausted our abilities to continue this cycle. (we need to try prevention now but due to our hardships created by the perpetual flooding, we lack the funds to do so).

WHAT WE NEED:

We have been told the grading work that is needed will likely cost us around $20K. We have set our goal at $30K to make up for any addition costs that are unknown in addition to the costs of fixing our gravel driveway which has been washed out and reseeding our entire farm as our grass has all been killed off. What wasn't flooded under water, was killed from the mud and horses having no where else to go. We will also need to reinstall all of our fencing because it will need to be taken down in order to re-grade the land.

We need your help! We believe there are still kindhearted people out there who DO care. No one should have to live like we have been constantly dealing with flooding to this degree for months at a time.

Please consider helping us get out of the flood water with a donation of any amount.

Everything is greatly appreciated! If you can't help, please share this to help us reach more people who can. Thank you so much.

We will be eternally grateful to everyone who helps us with a donation of any amount and/or shares our story to help us reach more people about our situation.