Vermont farmers take stock after losing crops to flooding two years in a row

BARNET, Vt. (AP) — Exactly one year after last year’s severe flooding in Vermont, Joe’s Brook Farm was again inundated by the remnants of Hurricane Beryl.

This time it was worse. Workers were able to harvest some produce before last week’s floods, but the family’s vegetable farm still lost 90% of its harvest in fields and greenhouses.

“If we get hit twice on the same day two years in a row, it’s pretty hard to recover from that,” said Mary Skovsted, who owns the farm with her husband.

Across the state, and especially in hard-hit central and northern Vermont, farmers are taking stock of their losses and trying to figure out how to adapt and survive the season and next year.

“We’re going to have significant damage,” said Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts. “You’re going to have areas that have been hit two or three times in the last year.”

There is hope that some of the feed corn crop for livestock will resume, but that depends on the weather, he said. Gov. Phil Scott said Friday that he has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue a disaster declaration for the state so that federal financial assistance, including low-interest loans, can be made available to farmers.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is currently in Vermont assessing the total damage from the flooding. Bridges have been washed away, homes have been destroyed and roads have been washed away, leaving a number of people stranded.

“The storm’s torrential rains sent countless streams and rivers into the ground, flooding towns, destroying roads and bridges, inundating farms and destroying crops,” wrote Scott, a Republican. “Many Vermont farms had not fully recovered from last year’s devastating storms when they were flooded again in the middle of Vermont’s short growing season.”

When the state secretary of agriculture visited Sparrow Arc Farm, a potato farm on the Connecticut River in Guildhall, last weekend, farmer Matthew Linehan had to take him out in a canoe to see the fields, which were still under water days after the storm. The waters have receded, and the damage is worse than last year. Nineteen of the farm’s 52 acres are flooded, bringing the total loss to 36 percent, Linehan said.

“The crop has just melted into the ground. It’s toast, absolute toast,” he said.

Fourteen acres were under 8 to 10 feet of water, and five acres were under 3 to 4 feet of water, he said. Last July, they lost 20 percent of their crop and had to take out loans to cover the losses. They plant only a small percentage of their potatoes on low-lying land, knowing there is a risk of flooding, which is becoming more common now.

“Honestly, for me, two years is a trend and we’re not going to plant anything low next year because I never want to be in this position again,” he said.

At Joe’s Brook Farm, Skovsted said they’ve made some changes since the floods last July. They’ve planted green manures near the river, where last summer’s floodwaters had wiped out valuable field crops. But last week, floodwaters from the river filled the greenhouses with flowering tomato and cucumber plants. They can’t sell the produce that was contaminated by the floods, but they can salvage some that grows above that level.

A friend started a GoFundMe page to help the couple continue paying their 10 employees through the end of August, including three men from Jamaica on seasonal visas. One of the men lost the roof of his home and another had major damage to his own farm a week earlier during Hurricane Beryl — the same storm — Skovsted said.

“It’s extra hard for those guys because they were counting on the paychecks to fix their houses,” she said. Normally they would have worked on the farm until October or November, but that will be cut short at the end of August, “because we can’t really foresee that we’ll have much work after that, we don’t have any crops to bring in,” she said.

The fundraiser was a huge relief, as the couple’s first concern was how to provide for their employees, Skovsted said.

Another farm in Barnet — an organic, pasture-based livestock farm — also suffered devastating losses, according to an online fundraising page. Cross Farm needs help to replace roofing, hay and large amounts of fencing, and to clear mud, debris, rocks and boulders from its barn and paddocks, according to its GoFundMe page. The farm lost 400 chicks when its barn flooded.

Nearby, at Joe’s Brook Farm, Skovsted and her husband are trying to figure out how to adapt to the extreme weather caused by climate change.

They’ve talked to other farmers who farm on higher ground, but they’ve also suffered damage and lost crops from the flooding, she said. They lost the topsoil and now it’s just at the bottom of their hills, Skovsted said.

The couple have no plans to move. She grew up in the area and they love the community, which she says is very supportive.

“We want to adapt quickly, but we’re not sure how to do that,” she said.