BARNET, Vt. — 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 percent 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.
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 percent, Linehan said.
“The crop has just melted into the ground. It’s toast, absolute toast,” he said.
Fourteen acres were under 8 feet to 10 feet of water, and 5 acres were under 3 feet 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 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 floodwaters 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.
