By Lauren Dorsey, Staff Writer
The aftermath of last year’s flood events has left local farms grappling with significant challenges as they head into spring. From dairy production to maple, farms of all types are dealing with saturated soils, significant reseeding projects, and reduced planting space. “It was a nonstop floodfest last year,” said Deirdre Heekin, co-owner of farm and winery La Garagista in Bethel. “It’s hard to know what this season is going to look like. [We’re] just not quite sure yet how that water, still leftover from last year, is gonna move or if we’re going to get a good drying-out period.”
Of La Garagista’s five vineyards, those at the highest elevations fared the worst last summer. “I would not have expected that,” said Heekin. She explained that the damage may have hit those vines harder because they were still young and had shallow root systems.
The young vineyards were also some of the first plateaus the water reached as it washed down from higher elevations. “Everything just became so saturated that there was nowhere for the water to go, either to sink down into the ground or to slide down the mountain,” said Heekin.
As a result, several of the fields had standing water for weeks. “It really impacted the growth of the fruit, the health of the plants, and the health of the leaves,” said Heekin. “There was also a lot of fungal disease.” In response, Heekin says she rotated sheep throughout the parcels. The sheep ate the vegetation on the field’s floor, allowing for more air circulation, which helped the plants dry out.
As spring approaches, Heekin plans to bring the sheep back and prune the vines to help their recovery. “[Pruning] brings the energy back to the center of the plant,” said Heekin. “With vines, as their arms grow out, the energy goes out to the tips, but if the plant has been suffering or in stress, that’s a lot to ask the plant to do.”
It remains difficult for Heekin to assess how the upcoming season will unfold, partly because most fields are still covered in a layer of snow. “We’ll just have to see what happens in terms of the next six weeks or so, to see if we’re getting more rain,” said Heekin. “If that water table remains really high this year, the impact is going to be the proliferation of fungal disease because it will be the perfect environment for that to occur.”
A town over, at Brook and Blossom Flower Farm in South Pomfret, the flooding has forced owner Heather Durkel to decommission almost a sixth of the farm’s growing space. “That section of field turned into a swamp or a kind of flash lake in the summer,” said Durkel. “The crops, both [annual] and perennial, were basically destroyed. We now just really want to avoid it, so we have a limited space that we’re working with.”
Despite the reduction in planting space, Brook and Blossom plans to significantly boost their crop output this year to give them a buffer if their flowers are again compromised by wet conditions. “Probably half to three-quarters of our Dahlia crop rotted in the field last year,” said Durkel.
Usually, Billings Farm & Museum prefers to grow its own feed hay on site, but farm manager Phil Ranney says that due to the damage from last year’s flooding, Billings will need to purchase much of this year’s crop from outside sources. Courtesy of Billings Farm & Museum
Dahlias weren’t the only flowers that suffered. Wet conditions led to bruised petals, rotting blooms, and poor colors. “You would go out with the hope of harvesting a particular quantity and come back with half to a quarter of that,” said Durkel. “We’re just planting more of everything this year in case there is another flood event, and there are certain things that aren’t salvageable.”
Riverview Farm in Plainfield, N.H., is also reevaluating its planting space. According to owner Nancy Franklin, after last year’s floods devastated their pumpkin fields, they are replacing the gourds with Christmas trees, which they hope will better withstand rising waters. Despite the big adaptation, Franklin doesn’t feel particularly comfortable moving into this season. “I’m a little anxious about this warm weather,” said Franklin. “Not that I wanted to see snow, but the colder temperatures helped to slow things down.”
As the maple season at Bourdon Maple Farm in Woodstock comes to an early close, Meg Emmons, the operations manager, and Don Bourdon, the owner, opened up about how the floods altered their production.
In addition to seeing considerable road and trail damage, which they haven’t yet been able to repair, Bourdon Maple Farm lost some trees, which toppled in the wet soils. “Some of them uprooted during the high winds because there was nothing for them to hold on to,” said Emmons.
Bourdon’s maple season also started significantly earlier than usual. “The first production came on February 11, which is the earliest that I’ve ever seen,” said Bourdon. “It’s also closing sooner, which is representative, for at least the last couple of years, of a trend that we don’t want to see happening.”
Bourdon plans to spend much of this summer repairing roads and thinning out the forest to help those trees that remain thrive should unseasonable weather persist. “The biggest issue we’re facing for our industry is climate change. Although it was an El Niño year last year, we’re going to be seeing a lot more extreme weather events going forward,” said Emmons. “Heavy rains, big ice storms, heavy snows, and even droughts — it’s really putting some stress on the trees in the forest, so we’re trying to get it as healthy as possible so it can withstand some of these changes.”
Billings Farm & Museum in Woodstock, which primarily grows hay and produces dairy, is also dealing with the lingering effects of last year’s flooding. Perhaps most pressingly, they still need to repair the lower hay fields by the Ottauquechee River Trail. “Once those fields have been fixed from the flooding, which involves regrading them and removing some debris, we need to reseed the fields,” said Phil Ranney, Billings’ farm manager. Billings has about 35-40 acres to reseed in total, which Ranney hopes to have finished by the end of May, depending on the weather.
The farm, which usually aims to grow all of its own hay, will continue to have to purchase much of the crop this year, as the newly seeded fields won’t produce much during their first season.
To help prevent such damage in the future, Ranney plans to significantly expand the riparian buffer on the farm’s lower fields. “It’s worth the trade-off to give up a little bit of the land in order to protect the rest of it,” said Ranney. “And I know with global warming and climate change, this is only going to become more frequent, so we’re trying to do the best we can to protect it.”
The Green Mountain Horse Association (GHMA) in South Woodstock also has some cleanup to do before the season begins in May. “We still have to get some of the silt from all the fields and do some reseeding. We didn’t finalize all their work last fall,” said Bruce Perry, the GMHA executive director. “We wanted to wait until the end of the snow melt this year, just in case we got some more flooding.”
GHMA, which was hit particularly hard last year, is also looking for ways to increase its resiliency. The organization just received a $100,000 grant from the state as part of that effort. “Most of it will be used to develop alternatives and see what choices are out there,” said Perry, “Like [assessing the impact of] moving barns further away from the floodplain or changing the orientation of some of our arenas.”
Overall, the speed with which the region’s farms will fully recover from last year’s flooding remains dependent on this year’s weather and each organization’s ability to respond to ever-changing conditions. “We will continue to adapt and we’ll just be ready for anything,” said Heekin. “I think that’s the name of the game right now, with climate chaos, is that you have to be ready to pivot and be creative. So we’ll just continue trying to mine that way of thinking.”