HARRISVILLE, Mich. – A Michigan livestock producer is sending donated bales of hay to farmers in hurricane-stricken North Carolina and making trips to Ukraine to help victims of the ongoing war.

Boyd Byelich, who just returned from his 19th trip to Ukraine, believes he answered God’s calling while watching news coverage of the war not long after Russia invaded the country in February 2022.

“I just felt this overwhelming force pulling me, pushing me, just saying go. I had never felt anything like it in my life,” he said.

Quickly, the 61-year-old Byelich started making phone calls to find out how to get involved in his first humanitarian aid effort. He also put in for vacation time where he works full time so he could make it happen.

“I just knew I was going to go,” said Byelich, a conservationist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service under USDA.

He raises more than 50 beef cattle and grows hay strictly as feed for his livestock on 400 acres at Harrisville in the northeast part of the state’s Lower Peninsula. He’s a board member for the Michigan Forage Council.

His first trip, Byelich said he volunteered at a Ukrainian refugee center in Poland before heading to Ukraine, where he’s part of a network taking food, medicine and other aid to military hospitals, hospice centers and places like orphanages.

He and his group of volunteers travel primarily to facilities in the most remote locations where supplies are often in shortest supply.

“We find these places and we just go,” he said.

His volunteer work in Ukraine has also included helping to build solar energy systems to restore service in homes and other facilities without power since the war.

All his vacation time is now used to take several trips a year to Ukraine and Poland.

“Some people take cruises and go to Disney World. I go to Ukraine,” he said.

Currently, Byelich is trying to raise funds to pay the cost of transporting four semi-truck loads of donated hay to feed livestock in western North Carolina, which was among the areas devastated in late September by record-breaking rainfall from Hurricane Helene.

Since early December, he’s sent two tractor trailer loads of 30 large, round bales of donated hay to that part of the state.

All the hay in the first load came from area growers while monetary donations covered the cost of transportation. Byelich said the next load of hay came entirely from Carmichael Farms near Big Rapids, while the $2,000 cost of hauling it was paid for by a grant from the Erik Jones Foundation.

Jones, a stock car driver in the NASCAR Cup Series, grew up in Byron, Mich.

“When he learned about this, they were excited to participate,” he said.

Currently, he’s looking for financial contributions to send a third truck load of hay to North Carolina as soon as possible.

Right now, Byelich said he’s looking only for money because the hay he still has to give was donated over a few-week period in the fall.

“As we get it, we’ll keep sending it,” he said.

Byelich said whether he starts accepting donations of hay again depends on future need and whether he can get enough cash donations for the remainder of his stockpiled hay to be delivered.

He said one of the things he especially likes to do on his trips to Ukraine is visit with some of the recipients of the aid.

“The fact that you go in person means more to them and they will remember that more than the bag of food you hand to them,” he said.