Two years ago flooding ruined Alvin Lytle's crops and a fire ravaged his family's home. Two weeks ago, a heart attack nearly took him.

If you've shopped the tailgate / farmers markets at Black Mountain, Earthaven, Enka-Candler, or Glad Hearts, you probably know Alvin. He's a big man, usually in Carhartt coveralls and worn leather boots, a long grizzled gray beard covering most of his face, soft-spoken in a thick mountain drawl. He can seem a little imposing at first, right up until he hands you your figs and asks after your family. Anybody who knows him will tell you the same thing: the size of the man has nothing on the size of his heart.

A quick note on the video below: it was filmed on Alvin's farm in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, well before his heart attack and long before any of this. It wasn't made for this fundraiser. I'm sharing it because it's the clearest look I can give you at who he is and the land he works.

He raises Large Black hogs, grows figs, cabbage, and sorghum he cooks down into syrup, and mills his own grain on land his family has held since the early 1750s, and for years he's loaded it into a refrigerated trailer and hauled it to those markets himself, one man, week in and week out. On August 14th, he had a heart attack. The quintuple bypass went well, but he's now looking at weeks where he isn't allowed to lift, harvest, or work a market, and those markets are the whole of his income. He farms alone. When he can't work, nothing comes in.

A farm doesn't pause just because the farmer does. The pigs have to be fed every single day, which means buying feed and paying someone to haul it out to them, because he can't. His sister June has taken at least two weeks off her own job to backfill on the farm and keep the animals cared for, so Alvin's recovery is cutting into her income too. The figs are ripening without Alvin to pick them. He can't get his hogs to the processor, so there's no pork to sell either. The electric bill and the fuel bill come whether he works or not. When you stop working a farm, the work and the bills both pile up.

And this didn't land on an easy year. It landed on top of two brutal ones. In September 2024, when Hurricane Helene pummeled Old Fort, it took his crops with it, including the corn he grows to keep his hogs fed through the season. A month later, on October 24th, the old family home on the farm caught fire with his sister June inside. She made it out, but their beloved dog, Delta, died in the fire. The house has been unlivable ever since, waiting on a full rewire they can't afford, and June has been staying with Alvin on another part of their property ever since.

Alvin has gone about this the right way. FEMA came through with a little, under $5,000, and two grants have been approved. But there are four or five other programs he qualifies for that are still stuck in process, months on, with nothing paid out yet, and Pisgah Legal Services has been working his case for free just to keep them moving. None of it has added up to enough, and none of it helps a farmer who suddenly can't work. What's carried him this far is his own back and the neighbors who showed up to shovel mud and salvage what they could.

I'm Danny, and I'll be honest about how I know him: when I first started going to my local market, Alvin's table was one I walked past. Big man, seemed quiet, kept to himself, and he intimidated me a little. That went on for a few weeks. Then one day I finally walked over and said hello, and that turned into one of the good friendships in my life. That's the thing about Alvin. He looks like the last man who would need help, and he's always ready to offer it. He's helped me more than once and never wanted a thing back. Plenty of people around here would say the same.

He didn't want to ask for help, but he needs it right now to keep his farm running, so while he's recovering I'm handling this on his behalf, and with his permission. The money comes to me rather than to him, and it goes straight to paying for absolute necessities: feed and hired help for the animals, his electric and fuel bills, his medical costs, getting that burned house wired and livable again, and his own living expenses until the doctors clear him.

Give him a few months to heal and he'll be back behind his market table next season, doing what he's done for years. Anything you can give will matter, and if you can't, passing this along helps, too. Alvin has spent years quietly showing up for his neighbors. Now it's our turn to show up for him.