Northeast floods devastate farmers as months of labor and crops are swept away

Well before it was warm enough to plant seedlings in the ground, farmer Micah Barritt began nursing crops such as watermelon, eggplant and tomatoes — eventually transplanting them from his greenhouse into rich Vermont soil, hoping for a bountiful fall harvest.

Within a few hours this month, those hopes were washed away when floodwaters inundated the small farm, destroying a harvest with a value he estimated at $250,000. He still hopes to replant short-season crops such as mustard greens, spinach, bok choy and kale.

“The loss of the crops is a very tangible way to measure the flood, but the loss of the work is hard to measure,” said Barritt, one of five co-owners of Diggers’ Mirth Collective Farm in Burlington, Vt. “We’re all grieving and heartbroken because of this.”

That heartbreak was felt by farmers in several Northeast states after floods dealt a devastating blow at the worst possible time — when it’s too early to harvest immature plants, but too late to replant in the region’s abbreviated growing season.

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Storms dumped up to two months’ worth of rain over a couple of days in parts of the region, surpassing the amount that fell when Tropical Storm Irene blew through in 2011, causing major flooding. Officials have called the flooding Vermont’s worst natural disaster since floods in 1927.

Atmospheric scientists say floods occurring in different parts of the world are fueled by climate change, with storms forming in a warmer atmosphere, making extreme rainfall more frequent. The additional warming scientists predict is coming will only make it worse.

Diggers’ Mirth is one of seven commercial organic farms located at the Intervale Center, according to Melanie Guild, development director of the center, which manages 350 acres in the heart of Burlington.

Operators of the center, located near the Winooski River, have long been aware of the threat of flooding. As the forecast called for heavy rains, the center reached out to hundreds of volunteers to harvest as much as possible.

“This is smack dab in the middle of the growing season so anything that was ready to harvest was pulled. Whatever was left was lost,” Guild said. “There were cabbages just floating around in the flood.”

All seven farms were washed out. Losses at Intervale will likely run higher than from Irene, where losses tallied about $750,000, she said.

Not all farms that suffered losses grew vegetables or flowers.

The Maple Wind Farm in Richmond, Vt., which produces pasture-raised animals, was also struck.

Beth Whiting, who owns the farm with her husband, said even with predicted heavy rains they assumed their turkeys would be OK because they’d never seen flooding reach the area where they kept the birds.

Then at about 3:30 a.m. on July 10, the nearby Winooski crested higher than they’d ever imagined, Whiting said. Workers in a canoe were able to rescue about 120 of 500 turkeys. Workers also saved about 1,600 chickens, but lost 700 at a second farm.

“We had no idea the flood was going to be so dramatic,” she said.

The flooding forced many farmers into tough choices, according to Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts. Dairy farmers who found roads to processing plants impassable were forced to dump milk.

Another problem is the loss of corn, a key source of food for the dairy industry. Thousands of acres were completely or partially underwater or flattened and unusable, he said. Flower farms were also destroyed.

“Some blueberry bushes are under water. That is very important for pick-your-own operations. Once produce is under water it can’t be used,” he said.

In Vermont and Massachusetts, hundreds of farms reported damage from flooding, according to agriculture officials.

Damaged farms ranged from community farms to a farm with 300 acres of potatoes that were a total loss just weeks before harvest to a 230-member “community-supported” farm only five weeks into a 30-week program.

In Connecticut, Bryan Hurlburt, the state’s agriculture commissioner, said the flooding affected about 2,000 acres of farmland, much of it in the Connecticut River Valley.

The flooding is part of a larger environmental crisis, according to Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont.

“What the hell is going on here?” Lamont said, speaking in front of a flooded farmer’s field in Glastonbury. “Look behind us. We were irrigating that a couple of months ago, desperate for water in the middle of a drought. And today it’s Lake Wobegon. And so what do you do?”

Kate Ahearn, who runs Fair Weather Growers along the Connecticut River in Rocky Hill, said the floodwaters took a heavy toll.

“This is our livelihood that is at stake,” she said. “Fair Weather Growers is going to lose about 300 acres of crops and more than half of our labor force, plus all of our wholesale accounts.”

In Pennsylvania, officials have been monitoring rainfall.

“When water is rising, that’s the big concern because you get a lot of standing water and the soil starts to loosen up, turns into mud and the mud starts to wash away. When dirt and soil washes away, crops do as well,” said David Varner from the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau.

Recently, a farmer called the Penn State Extension in Bucks County saying his crops looked wilted, as if they hadn’t been watered in a while, said Margaret Pickoff, horticulture extension educator.

It was the opposite: The soil was so full of water, the plant roots were unable to take in any oxygen, and were dying off.