Scott Farm in Dummerston is known for heirloom apples. In a good year, its apple harvest totals more than half a million pounds of varieties such as copper-skinned Ashmead's kernel and a 16th-century French apple called Calville blanc d'hiver.
Last year was not a good one. The orchard lost 90 percent of its apples to a record-breaking May 18 freeze, which was attributed, like many recent extreme weather events, to the destabilizing effects of climate change. Exceptionally low February temperatures had already decimated Scott Farm's potential yield of peaches, apricots and other stone fruits.
"We got hammered," orchard manager Erin Robinson, 41, summed up.
Which explains why she was out building predawn fires on April 24 and 25 this year to prevent frost from killing the buds on a dozen early-blooming Blenheim apricot trees.
Saving a few bushels of apricots would hardly make up for 2023, but last year's dispiriting experience compelled the orchardist to light the fires. Recalling the helplessness she felt watching temperatures fall last May, Robinson was desperate to feel some sense of control in the face of nature's threats. "I thought, If I can try and raise that temperature around those blooming trees, I have to."
Each night the temperature dropped to its lowest point just before dawn, but Robinson suspected the chill she felt was also emotional. "I was nervous," she said.
The fruit grower might have been speaking for fellow farmers around the state as they dive into a new season after last year's apocalyptic weather, knowing full well that this year could bring more of the same.
As climate scientists continue to predict a frightening future roiling with heat waves, wildfires, floods and storms, farmers and food security experts around the world are rethinking what it will take to feed people.
Before last year, many Vermonters believed that our lush, green state would be spared the worst of it. 2023 was a rude reminder that we are vulnerable, too.
But it was no surprise to farmers and others working on the ground in Vermont agriculture. They had been trying to figure out how to keep growing food in an increasingly unpredictable climate even before a year that delivered not just a May freeze but devastating July and December flooding, as well as unrelenting rain and severe windstorms.
On top of the early losses to orchards and vineyards, floods drowned low-lying vegetable, hay and corn fields and even washed away some livestock. Rain rotted melons and berries. Wind tore up swaths of maple trees. Frequent lightning strikes and noxious drifts of wildfire smoke chased farmers from their fields. The losses disrupted local supply chains, leaving restaurant and market buyers scrambling to replace food from local growers.
In all, last year's weather cost Vermont farmers $55.8 million with food system ripple effects of far more. Federal, state and nonprofit programs have delivered just under $9 million in aid so far. Private and crowdsourced fundraising has helped, too, but it's all a drop in the bucket of need.
And there's no way to quantify the hefty toll on farmers' psyches.
"You get to the point where you don't want to go out anymore," said Heather Darby, a University of Vermont Extension agronomist and Alburgh farmer. "It's too hard to see the losses, the failures."
She recalled telling her husband last year, "If this is what the future holds, I don't know how people are going to grow food."
And yet, Darby said, with arid regions around the world becoming even drier, Vermont is lucky to have water. "We have to be really thinking about the role places like Vermont are going to play," she said. "We need to be proactive about being able to grow food near us."
Vermont farmers recognize that need. They are digging in and acknowledging that to survive, they must change: what they grow, where they grow, how they grow. They are building soil to better absorb water, excavating drainage ditches, moving crops under cover, and diversifying their products and how they sell them.
And they are making the hard choices about where to invest to protect land, animals and crops — not to mention their livelihoods and mental health.
For Robinson, the Scott Farm orchard manager, those choices included a decision to leave nighttime fires behind. During the April week of freezing temperatures, she overnighted an $8,700 check for a seven-foot mobile frost fan, which can protect up to 10 acres by preventing cold air from settling around tender buds.
It arrived, to her relief, on April 29.
Navigating weather is nothing new for those who rely on Mother Nature to help them coax food from the earth. But people who study the intersection of climate and agriculture in the state believe we have reached a new level of unpredictability.
"Farmers rely upon weather to have certain patterns and norms," said UVM Extension research associate professor Joshua Faulkner, who coordinates the Extension's Farming and Climate Change Program. The problem with current weather patterns, he noted, is that there aren't any. "Abnormal is now normal."
Faulkner coauthored the 2021 Vermont Climate Assessment Report, which cautions that extreme weather events are expected to become more frequent, as last year's flooding made clear.
The report notes that average annual precipitation in Vermont has increased by nearly seven inches since 1960 with 2.4 more days of heavy precipitation each year. At the same time, there are also wide swings in rain- and snowfall. In 2023, for example, some parts of the state suffered their wettest growing season on record, but the previous year saw drought. In other recent years, depending on the region, Faulkner said, "you could have one of the wettest Mays on record and then one of the driest Julys, all in the same season."
For farmers trying to figure out where to invest limited time, energy and capital, the need to prepare "for both ends of the spectrum in the same year is extremely challenging," Faulkner said.
Alissa White, New England deputy director for the national nonprofit American Farmland Trust, has done research on climate change and agriculture for more than a decade. In a nutshell, she said, "We're expecting to see weather that is warmer, wetter and wilder."
Vermont winters are an average 3 degrees warmer than in 1900 and, since 1960, have seen fewer very cold nights, less snow and more rain. For farmers, less snow cover and no hard freezes risks soil erosion and runoff that can damage water quality. Many perennial plants suffer without the insulation that snow provides or the deep cold they need to remain dormant. Pests and plant diseases are more likely to survive from year to year.
Warmer summers, up more than 1.5 degrees since 1900, and falls boost new scourges, like the raspberry-devouring spotted wing drosophila, or bring familiar ones at unexpected times. Extended hot spells reduce the nutrition and yield of forage crops and put stress on livestock that can cause poor health, failure to thrive and reproductive difficulties. Farmworkers also suffer in extreme heat.
Sugar makers are seeing consistently earlier starts to their season. That is not inherently problematic, said UVM Extension maple specialist Mark Isselhardt, as long as sugar makers are prepared for it and the season still brings the temperature swings that prompt sap runs. However, severe windstorms have wreaked major damage on some sugar bushes and there is concern that a warmer climate will invite new pests, diseases and invasive species to Vermont woodlands.
People often assume that the upside to the longer freeze-free period (three weeks more than in 1960) is an extended growing season. But the unpredictability of temperatures makes that risky, as evidenced by Scott Farm's apricots. "We want there to be a silver lining," White said, "but when you dig into it, it's not really the case."
Darby, the UVM Extension agronomist, agrees. Despite the longer growing season, she still recommends farmers plant shorter-season corn.
The weather is "just too erratic," she said.
Much of Darby's UVM Extension work focuses on helping farmers build soil structure. Healthy soil is a utility player; it can help a farmer through wet weather and drought conditions. "You have to build the ability of the soil to absorb water and hold on to water," she said.
Kaity Mazza was working on just that during a recent phone conversation with Seven Days while she drove a tractor on one of her family's fields in Williston. Mazza, 21, was also juggling her final semester at UVM as she started the season as her dad's farm manager.
Paul Mazza has farmed for 38 years, his daughter said. The family's 250 acres of fruits and vegetables are sold through their Essex and Colchester farmstands and in many local grocery stores and supermarkets.
The Mazzas suffered fruit losses from last May's freeze. They took another blow when their Essex pick-your-own acreage and farmstand were swamped by eight feet of water in July and again in December. It took their crew 5,000 hours to clean up.
"We definitely don't believe that they're once in a lifetime anymore," Kaity said of the floods. "Morale is low, especially going into this year with the water table still really high."
The young woman had responded to an interview request directed to her dad. He was too busy to talk, she apologized, dealing with equipment repairs and trying to get things back on track after a miserable season.
Mazza's Colchester location did not flood, Kaity said, but "last year was such a wet year anyway, not many of our crops were really thriving to begin with."
Paul was probably, in fact, too busy to speak with a reporter, but it became clear that Kaity was watching out for her dad. "I think he cheers up by being out in the field and doing the work," she said. "I try to get him out and doing that."
When the subject turned to tactics for managing excess water, Kaity said she and her dad are actively trying to improve drainage. "I'm actually working in a field right now doing some subsoiling."
After the Mazzas noticed a lot of standing rainwater in that field last year, they decided to pull out their subsoiler, which they hadn't used a lot. The tractor attachment has a long, hooked shank that breaks up compacted soil deep in the ground with minimal disturbance at the surface. Loosened soil not only better absorbs excess water but allows roots to reach deeper, which also helps build healthy soil and more vigorous plants.
Kaity estimated it took her about 10 hours to subsoil the 30-acre plot, a big job to squeeze into the preseason sprint, especially when also juggling schoolwork.
Longer term, she and her dad are investigating other ways to improve soil structure, such as direct-seeding winter squash and pumpkins into cover crops.
"It can be a bit intimidating to change up production techniques," she acknowledged. "You don't necessarily know what the result will be, and you invest a lot in it."
Flood-devastated farms justifiably received a lot of attention last year, but almost all Vermont agriculture operations suffered from the rain. Jane MacLean recognizes that her Sweet Roots Farm & Market in Charlotte was lucky to escape flooding, but, she noted, "the rest of us didn't have an umbrella over our farms."
MacLean did not mean that literally, but she is among the many Vermont farmers who are working to put more of their crops under cover — permanent umbrellas, if you will.
Growing in bare-soil hoop houses is among the most obvious — and most visible — adaptations farmers make to protect their plants from unfavorable growing conditions. The plastic-wrapped high tunnels have sprouted like giant caterpillars on many vegetable and berry farms over the past decade, thanks in part to a federal cost-share program.
Originally pitched as season extenders, they help protect plants from the direct effects of weather, as well as pests. Plants grow in the earth as they would in the field but with a layer between them and Mother Nature.
MacLean and her husband, Dan, took over the 57-acre former Charlotte Berry Farm on Route 7 in 2021 under a long-term lease with the Vermont Land Trust. Their farm was certified organic in 2023 and now includes a two-acre vegetable operation alongside the existing berry bushes and small orchard. Jane, 38, runs the bright, airy seasonal store stocked with food from many local farms.
Last year prompted the MacLeans to plan long-term for more covered cultivation space. Abundant natural irrigation plumped the berries, but frequent downpours literally knocked the fruit off plants. Constant moisture made crops vulnerable to disease and pests, a problem compounded by choking weeds, which flourished in waterlogged soil unnavigable to their heavy mower. Pick-your-own berry traffic slumped badly due to the weather.
There is no future in which Sweet Roots will be able to put a structure over its five acres of signature blueberries, but the MacLeans are erecting a used hoop house for plant propagation, as well as a planting of strawberries under cover. The project will cost them about $20,000, even with Dan doing most of the work.
MacLean has worked closely on planning with UVM extension specialists, including Becky Maden. The free services are highly valued by farmers. Maden consults annually with about 200 of them; she has also farmed for more than two decades herself.
At Singing Cedars Farmstead in Orwell, Maden and her husband grow vegetables almost exclusively under cover in 10 high tunnels on about half an acre. "We do very little out in the field, which is part of the climate story," Maden said.
Maden explained that this adaptation is not immune from climate-related hurdles. With summer temperatures and humidity rising, she said, farmers need to figure out a way to provide cool, moving air. Without it, disease can run rampant in the warm, moist tunnels and heat spikes can impair fertility in fruiting plants such as tomatoes and peppers.
In Burlington's Intervale, Nour El-Naboulsi is taking growing under cover to its extreme. In early May, he received a large shipment that will help produce fresh vegetables year-round completely insulated from weather.
Make that really large.
El-Naboulsi is executive director of Village Hydroponics, which will grow plants in a climate-controlled shipping container nourished by nutrient-rich water under grow lights.
The project met its fundraising goal of $80,000 on April 22. A week later, El-Naboulsi received his final city permit to set up at the Intervale in the shadow of the McNeil Generating Station. The hulking, rust-speckled container was delivered by trailer on May 8 and maneuvered into place by crane onto a gravel pad. Electricians stood by to hook it up.
El-Naboulsi has spent many hours working in the Intervale's organic fields a stone's throw away. The 30-year-old farmer and community organizer is well aware that raising food hydroponically is unappealing, at best, to many Vermont farmers.
He codirects the People's Farmstand, a nonprofit which gleans surplus Vermont-grown produce and collaborates with local farmers and community members to grow culturally relevant vegetables — such as mustard greens, bok choy and African eggplant — for free distribution.
Late last summer, for the first time in four seasons, the People's Farmstand had no vegetables to give away. "We had to post on our social media that we just couldn't show up," El-Naboulsi said, clearly pained by the memory.
By that point, he had already launched a fundraising effort to test out a hydroponic operation for off-season growing. The climate crisis was initially a secondary motivation, but the disastrous 2023 season "bolstered the idea of Village Hydroponics 100 times over," he said.
"It's not the answer, but it's potentially one of the answers in the larger puzzle," El-Naboulsi said. "We want to show that communities can aid in their own food self-sufficiency and climate resilience."
Once the project is up and running, "If there was a flood today," El-Naboulsi said, "we could plug in the container and have baby greens in three weeks, or microgreens out one week from today."
After a year of torrential water, drought may not be at the top of most people's minds. But farmers remember that before the rains of 2023 came the drought of 2022.
White, of the American Farmland Trust, grew up in New Hampshire in the '80s and early '90s. The data bear out what she's observed anecdotally on farms around New England. "When I was a kid, none of the vegetable farms installed irrigation," she recalled. "Now, every farmer needs it."
And not just vegetable growers. At the top of a Shoreham hillside of blooming peaches and pears and budding apples, Bill Suhr pointed out a pond built to catch and hold rainwater. It is part of a $100,000 irrigation project that helps Champlain Orchards water some of its fruit tree acreage during dry years.
Suhr, 52, founded the orchard in 1998 and bought nearby Douglas Orchards in 2020. That 100-acre property had a reservoir, but he's working on a $300,000 project to install a pump house and piping to deliver water efficiently to trees. All new plantings are installed with drip-irrigation systems. With so much uncertainty, Suhr said, "It's a variable we can control."
Most of the newer rows of trees are grown on trellises that can support protective drape netting, if needed, to shield fruit from hail, pests and sunburn. Best to be prepared for everything, Suhr said: "We're not shocked by anything anymore."
His orchards' hillside location near Lake Champlain largely protected them during last year's late frost, but rain claimed about 30 percent of the apple crop. With half an inch daily throughout much of July and August, organic and conventional pesticide applications immediately washed away, opening the door to pervasive fungal disease. "We could've sprayed every other day, but that's not the kind of fruit we want to market," Suhr said.
The orchard team has diversified as much as possible to spread risk and gain flexibility. The business was able to keep fresh apples in the stores through spring by pausing sweet cider production. It's adding hardier fruit tree varieties, agritourism offerings, and pies and other value-added products to use up cosmetically imperfect fruit.
Last year, Champlain Orchards launched a new cider garden where visitors could quaff the orchard's hard cider within view of trees that bore its core ingredient.
Unfortunately, it rained 16 of the 18 weekends the outdoor space was open.
Pitchfork Farm co-owners Rob Rock and Eric Seitz have had more experience with destructive flooding than the average Vermont farmer. It comes with the territory: The pair leases land from the nonprofit Intervale Center. They raise organic vegetables on about 30 acres scattered across the fertile but naturally flood-prone bottomland around the Winooski River in Burlington.
Over the farm's 18 years, the business partners have stopped counting the times they've flooded. Instead, they've changed what they grow for the quickest possible rebound.
"We're smarter and nimbler," Rock, 44, said on a cool April afternoon after a long day transplanting 4,000 chard and 8,000 kale starts. A small raptor sliced through the sky overhead, and the two looked up in admiration.
Asked if they'd considered relocating, the farmers said they'd be hard-pressed to walk away from the $80,000 investment they made in a 600-square-foot storage cooler completed in 2020. The farm's soil quality is unsurpassed, they added, and similar land is impossible to afford near Burlington.
Rock noted evenly that he and many peers chose a career in sustainable agriculture to help address climate change. "Now," he said, "we are some of the first to confront it."
Pitchfork has evolved to specialize in quick-growing crops such as herbs, radishes, salad greens and other leafy greens, which it sells to restaurants and other wholesale accounts. Rock and Seitz gave up farmers markets, which work best with a wider variety of offerings.
At summer's peak, the farm produces around 1,500 pounds of greens weekly. "If we flood — when we flood, rather," Seitz, 40, interrupted himself, "we can hopefully pivot and be back in action in four to five weeks."
If, instead, they were growing substantial quantities of tomatoes or winter squash, "We'd be fucked," he said.
Maden, of UVM Extension, sees many farmers taking a similar risk-reduction approach. "They'll say, 'I'm gonna focus on salad or things that don't cost a lot to grow,'" she said. "If something happens, you can replant."
The strategy has worked for Pitchfork. For several years between epic floods, Seitz said, "We made very good livings. We've been able to build a safety net for ourselves."
A couple of years after Tropical Storm Irene, Rock and Seitz decided to invest in another safety net and started paying annual premiums of about $5,500 for insurance through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency. That puts Pitchfork in the distinct minority of Vermont farms, only 30 percent of which carry crop or livestock insurance, according to the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets.
After the 2023 flood, Rock and Seitz hoped the insurance they had funded for a decade would pay them $80,000 at the very least, against their $230,000 in losses. They recently learned the farm will receive just $22,000.
Their FSA agent assures them that the USDA is trying to come up with better insurance options for their type of farm. The Pitchfork farmers haven't decided if they'll keep shelling out for it, but they're moving on.
"Spring is hope. I'm ready to go," Seitz said. "It's like we're gamblers," he added with a grin.
While some farms have adapted by narrowing, others are broadening what and how they sell.
At Foote Brook Farm in Johnson, the propagation greenhouse was fuller than it's ever been as Joie and Tony Lehouillier prepared to open on Mother's Day weekend, a week earlier than normal. Their preseason veggie and flower plant sale normally grosses between $8,000 and $10,000, which they hoped to double this year. After half a million in losses from last year's flood, "We need to make money fast," Joie, 52, said.
This year, the Lehouilliers are also trying to attract more farmstand customers, whose purchases deliver a bigger margin than wholesale accounts. They're devoting a small portion of their 45 acres of organic vegetable fields to sunflowers. Should they flood again, "it's gonna be a lot less painful to lose a couple acres of a sunflower walk than an acre of onions," Joie said.
In Fairfield, Cecile Branon has been putting in as many as 18 hours a day in the production kitchen at Branon Family Maple Orchards. Her spice blends, maple cream, maple Buffalo sauce and aged maple bourbon vinegars ship all over the world and are helping the family pay sky-high electric bills from this year's season.
The earlier start of the season is not a problem for the Branons, who set 93,000 taps across more than 3,500 acres of sugar bush. But the lack of extended cold periods between sap runs this year cost them. "It never froze up good and hard," Cecile, 66, explained. That prevented them from the standard practice of periodically shutting off the electric vacuum pump systems that move sap from trees.
They have yet to even assess cleanup from the early January windstorm that took down several thousand maples.
The Doton sugar bush operation in Barnard was also badly damaged in a lightning strike the likes of which Paul Doton had never seen in his 74 years on the family farm.
It fried 2,500 feet of sap tubing and wire, which took 60 hours and $1,500 to repair at a time when there was little to spare of either labor or money.
Like many small-scale dairy farmers, Paul; his wife, Sherry; and their 37-year-old son, Bryan, have done what they can to make up for the fluctuating milk prices over which they have no control. They milk, set 3,000 taps and grow three acres of sweet corn. Bryan plows driveways in the winter, and his dad, a justice of the peace, presides over weddings.
"They say to diversify," Paul said, sitting at the farmhouse dining room table recently, wearing red plaid slippers and pants with suspenders. One corner of the room was stacked high with plastic jugs of the farm's maple syrup.
Across from the old red barn beside their sugarhouse, Richmond Brook burbled downhill. Its water efficiently cools the sugaring operation's reverse-osmosis system. Bryan loved to play in it when he was the same age as his tow-headed 6-year-old, who peeked into the dining room at one point to say hi to granddad.
Last summer, the gentle brook jumped its banks and swallowed the farm's three acres of sweet corn, depriving locals of a longtime summer tradition.
The Dotons also lost a big chunk of hay to flooding and rain, obliging them to downsize their milking herd by 10 cows, to about 60, due to lack of feed. The milkers spend the summer rotating through about 30 acres of grass, one crop that did well last year. "It grew like the devil," Paul said.
But the family had to stop sending the cows to pasture, further ballooning the feed bill. The paddocks were fine, but the pathways to get there were impassable. The herd "would have gone right up to their knees in mud, which doesn't help the ground or the cow," Paul said.
The family is planning to deploy Natural Resources Conservation Services funding to build up water-resistant cow lanes between paddocks. They are also looking into ways to improve forage quality and soil health in some of their fields.
Paul said he's not sure what else the family can do except to keep at it. "We've diversified about as much as we can. It takes labor to diversify, and we don't have a lot of that."
The lifelong farmer believes that agriculture done right can help address climate change. "If you go getting depressed you don't help yourself or the rest of the world," Paul said.
Paul Doton's stoicism contrasts with the growing number of farmers who are openly sharing how the stress of farming, including weather pressures, affects their psyches — and, critically, are asking for help.
Leanne Porter is program manager at Farm First, which offers free support services to Vermont farmers and their families. The public/private not-for-profit program has seen a marked increase in inquiries for mental health counseling over the decade since it was founded, Porter said.
In the past, callers would request financial or legal resources, and maybe, after a few interactions, a resource coordinator might delicately broach the subject of mental health. Now, Porter said, more farmers proactively bring it up "just like they would address a hole in the fence or a broken piece of equipment."
Porter said it's hard to parse whether need is higher or the stigma of requesting help is lower, but she believes it's both. The unpredictable weather takes "a huge emotional toll," she added, because "it's so out of their control."
Hannah Doyle of Boneyard Farm in Fletcher learned about Farm First at the 2023 Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont winter conference and later requested help to find a counselor. That call preceded what Doyle, 37, described as a "catastrophic" growing season that "certainly didn't help our mental and financial health."
Hannah and her husband, John, bought their Fletcher farm in 2021. Much of its 180 acres is forested. They do some logging, grow just under an acre of organic vegetables, and raise beef, lamb, pork and eggs.
The Doyles had high hopes for last year. "We'd poured so much of our household time, energy and money into our business," Hannah said. "We needed to have a really good season, and we didn't."
In September, Doyle posted a selfie on Instagram in which her muddy hand held a melon slice smile in front of her face. The text did not quite match the smile.
"It's okay to feel sad when things end prematurely, and not on your terms," she wrote. "It's okay to feel exhausted after a particular season has kicked the crap out of you in almost every imaginable way."
Doyle explained on Instagram that she needed to close Boneyard's farmstand early for the season and skip the last few Jericho Farmers Markets in order to fill the final shares for her community-supported agriculture members.
John runs a fencing business, so Hannah works alone most of the time. Last year, she said, "that was a lot of me, layering up in rain gear and doing really unpleasant tasks by myself. I'd be out there with a shovel and a grub hoe trying to trench water away from my garden. It's demoralizing."
For 2024, she resolved to make some changes. Faulkner, of UVM Extension, came out to advise her on improving drainage around her market garden and her pair of high tunnels. She lined up an excavator to dig those ditches and expects it to cost a few thousand dollars.
But what Hannah looks forward to most is company on the job. She has budgeted $10,000 for an assistant farmer who will work beside her for about 25 hours a week. It's a "leap of faith" for an operation that netted $15,000 last year, Hannah acknowledged, but a necessary investment to support the farmer and her farm.
Faulkner would likely agree. "We need resilient farms," he said. "But more than that, we need resilient farmers."
There may be a climate future when all farming will be forced to retreat indoors from the weather like Nour El-Naboulsi's hydroponics project. But for now, the state's farmers — scattered across fields, valleys and hilltops — not only nourish Vermonters but also contribute significantly to its economic vitality and identity.
According to the latest Vermont Farm to Plate report, Vermonters bought $371 million worth of local food in 2020, about 16 percent of all food purchases. The 2022 Census of Agriculture puts the market value of Vermont's agricultural products overall at more than $1 billion.
It's hard to imagine how Vermont would look and feel without farms, but 2023 provided a vivid reminder that the struggles of farmers should not matter only to farmers.
During the summer, Dean Thuma, purchasing director for the Farmhouse Group's four Chittenden County restaurants, typically buys 250 pounds of mesclun and arugula weekly from Pitchfork Farm for the Farmhouse Tap & Grill in downtown Burlington.
After the flood, he filled in Pitchfork's six-week hiatus with some of the farm's last-minute emergency harvest and with greens from other local farms.
Rather than worry about the fragility of Vermont agriculture in the face of climate change, Thuma said 2023 reinforced why he feels safer relying on local farmers than an anonymous global food system. Arizona and southern California had bad growing seasons, too, he said, which more than doubled prices for some ingredients Thuma sources nationally.
Pitchfork could have done the same after the flood but didn't, though Thuma said he would have understood if it had. "It's important to them that we stick around, and it's important to us that they stick around," he said.
Many farmers are grappling with whether to increase prices to help cover losses and the substantial costs of needed adaptations.
"There's a responsibility on consumers to respect that difficulty comes with a price," Jane MacLean of Sweet Roots Farm said. "If we want to continue to have a vibrant agricultural landscape, we have to support the agricultural economy."
Joie Lehouillier of Foote Brook Farm knows she should raise prices this year but is reluctant to do so. It's important to her that her Johnson neighbors can afford the farm's organic vegetables. "I feel like I'm maxed out with what people are willing to spend," she said.
When Foote Brook Farm went underwater, all the yellow potatoes in storage and in the field that had been allocated for Red Hen Baking's potato bread were ruined. The Middlesex bakery's co-owner Randy George could have found substitutes through national distributors for the thousands of pounds he needed, but he chose not to.
Instead, Red Hen stopped baking the bread for eight months. George wanted to make a point.
"There's things like cornflakes that feel like they're just going to be there forever," George said. "Local food isn't necessarily like that."
In late March, Red Hen's potato bread returned to store shelves. Tony Lehouillier had found just enough potatoes to meet the bakery's production needs until he's able to dig his new crop out of the ground.