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

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

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

“When we got 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.

Around the state, and especially in hard-hit central and northern Vermont, farmers are again assessing their losses and trying to figure out how to adapt and make it through the season and next year.

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

There’s hope that some of the feed corn crop for livestock could bounce back but it 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 designation for the state, so that federal financial assistance, including low-interest loans, is available to growers.

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency is currently in Vermont assessing the overall damage from the flooding, which knocked out bridges, tore through homes and washed away roads, leaving some people stranded.

“The storm’s torrential rains caused innumerable streams and rivers to flood towns, destroy roads and bridges, inundate farms and ruin crops,” Scott, a Republican, wrote. “Many Vermont farms had not fully recovered from last year’s destructive storms before they were again under water in the middle of Vermont’s short growing season.”

When the state agriculture secretary 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 still inundated by floodwaters days after the storm. The water has receded and the damage is worse than last year. Nineteen of the farm’s 52 acres were flooded, pushing the total loss to 36%, Linehan said.

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

Fourteen acres were under 8 feet (2.4 meters) to 10 feet (3 meters) of water, and five acres were under 3 feet (almost 1 meter) to 4 feet (1.2 meters) of water, he said. Last July, they lost 20% of their crop and had to take out loans to cover the losses. They only plant a small percentage of their potatoes on lower land knowing the flood risk, which now is more frequent.

“Honestly, in my opinion, two years makes a trend and we’re not going to be planting anything down low next year because I am never going to be in this position again,” he said.

At Joe’s Brook Farm, Skovsted said they made some changes after last July’s flooding. They put in cover crops near the river where the flooding had wiped out valuable field crops last summer. But last week, the flood waters from the river filled the greenhouses full of thriving tomato and cucumber plants. They can’t sell the produce that was contaminated by the flooding but can salvage some growing above that level.

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

“It’s especially hard for those guys because they were counting on the salary to make repairs to their homes,” she said. Normally they would have worked at the farm until October or November but that will be cut short at the end of August, “because we can’t really foresee having much of any work after that, we have no crops to bring in,” she said.

The fundraising effort was a huge relief because the couple’s first concern was how to take care of their employees, Skovsted said.

Another Barnet farm — an organic, pasture-based livestock operation — also had devastating losses, according to an online fundraising page. Cross Farm needs help to replace roofing, hay and large amounts of fencing as well as to clean up mud, debris and boulders and rocks from their barn and pastures, according to the GoFundMe page. The farm lost 400 chicks when the barn flooded.

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

They’ve talked to other farmers who grow on higher land — but they also suffered damage and lost crops in the flooding, she said. They lost top soil and now it’s just sitting at the bottom of their hills, Skovsted said.

The couple doesn’t want to move. She grew up nearby and they love the community, which she said has been very supportive.

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