Irene-Related Grant Recipients

Evening Song Farm, Cuttingsville, VT

When Tropical Storm Irene swept into Vermont, Kara Fitzgerald and Ryan Wood Beauchamp prepared for the effects of high winds on their five-acre field of vegetables. They picked tomatoes and otherwise battened down their small produce farm.

This was their first growing season on the land they had bought in 2010, a flat piece of an old farm tucked in between the Mill River and a bend in Route 103 just south of Cuttingsville, near Rutland. They had built the soil with compost and cover crops. They had 50 customers signed on for their Community Supported Agriculture program and they were having a great harvest.

On Monday morning after Irene, the river, normally a small, rocky stream in the fall, was rising alarmingly fast. Soon it was higher than it is during spring runoff. By 11:15 it was coming over its banks. Fifteen minutes later torrents of water and huge waves roared across their field.

“The arugula’s going to be ruined!” thought Kara. “I hope we can still dig the potatoes.” “Never in our wildest dreams did we think there’d be a river where our vegetables were,” said Ryan.

But that’s what happened. The Mill River formed a new channel across their crops and scoured away the topsoil, their greenhouse and their new irrigation system, leaving a field of jumbled rocks, sand, and boulders. And almost no sign of their work.

Since then they have been trying to serve their customers with what they had harvested before the flood and some new greens that they have started, but one thing seemed abundantly clear: Their young farm was gone. There was no soil to grow on. They decided they would have to find another piece of land for the next growing season.

Fitzgerald and Wood Beauchamp, who met at Earlham College, a Quaker school in Indiana, have found great support for farming in Vermont, from their neighbors to the state Department of Agriculture. In addition to a grant from the Vermont Community Foundation’s Farm Disaster Relief Fund, they have received help from the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont and the Vermont Farm Fund as well as donations from many individuals. One of their customers cried when they returned to the Rutland Farmers’ Market with the remnants of their crop. A fellow farmer gave them use of an acre and a half to grow fall greens.

By mid-October they were ready to offer their CSA customers a produce pick-up. It wasn’t big, but it was something.

Despite the hand that Irene dealt them, Ryan said, “I still think we made the right decision moving here.

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Harlow Farm (Westminster Organics), Westminster, VT

By mid-August of last summer, Paul Harlow thought the only problem Westminster Organics was going to have was where to get enough bins to put all the crops when he and his family harvested their 150 acres of organic produce.

“Up to that point,” he said, “we were having a great year.”

Then Tropical Storm Irene arrived.

At first, it seemed as though the flooding would miss the farm, despite the fact that it is a short distance from the Connecticut River. And even though flooding was likely, the Harlows had some time to prepare, moving low-lying pens containing nearly 700 chickens and harvesting what crops they could.

But by Monday, August 29, the river — full from the rains that had inundated Vermont and New Hampshire upstream from Westminster— backed into fields full of pumpkins, cabbage, parsnips, winter squash, peppers, and collard greens. Soon nearly 30 acres of crops that had been nearing harvest were underwater and lost. It was the first time the Harlows’ fields had been flooded on that scale since the summer of 1973.

The Harlows, whose family settled in Windham County in the late 1700s, had to plow the crops under and scramble to recoup the losses, which Harlow estimated to be about $250,000.

Aid came from the Vermont Community Foundation’s Vermont Farm Disaster Relief Fund, Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, and a zero-interest loan from the Vermont Farm Fund established by Pete’s Greens. The Harlow Farm has also begun selling Vermont Farms T-shirts to try to close the gap.

Now the farm is in the process of harvesting the lettuce, kale, beets, rutabagas and turnips that were untouched by the flood. And if you stop by the Harlow Farm farmstand on Route 5, you’ll find it surrounded by big, beautiful orange pumpkins. Unfortunately for the Harlows, they had to buy the pumpkins from other farmers, who escaped Irene’s wrath.

A thank-you note from a farm that received a Vermont Farm Disaster Relief Fund grant.

Herring Family Farm, Berlin

“Farming’s a good life,” says Michael Herring, “it’s just a hard one.” That was never more true than when Tropical Storm Irene flooded Herring’s fields in late August, sweeping away 10 acres of corn, five acres of vegetables, and a new greenhouse. 

The Herring farm, in the narrow Dog River Valley between Montpelier and Northfield, has been in the family for three generations. In between the hills that rise above the river there is room only for Route 12, a few houses and fields, the river, and the railroad tracks on which Amtrak’s Vermonter clatters by every day. When his father died seven years ago, Herring left his career as a builder to keep the family farm going and coax a living out of the land with a produce stand; sales of chicken, pork, and beef; and additional work as an excavator.

When Irene hit, he went about a half-mile downstream to help his neighbors at M’s RV Sales deal with the flooding. The river soon cut off the road back to his farm and he didn’t make it home until 3 a.m. after hitching a round-about ride with the National Guard.

The next day, on two hours of sleep, he began to assess the damage and rebuild what he could. First came fences to hold the 15 beef cows in, then the work to clear the fields of debris. “If I don’t have fences, I don’t have cows,” he said, “and if I don’t have fields I don’t have feed for the cows.”
The washed-out corn field was going to be a corn maze in the fall and then feed for the cows. The greenhouse had been built in the spring. The crops of lettuce, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, squash, beets, radishes, and spinach were going to be mainstays of the farm stand. The destruction of all that left Herring scrambling to pay bills without a season’s income. A $7,000 grant from Community Foundation’s Vermont Farm Disaster Relief Fund helped buy feed for his animals and will help with the costs of spring planting.

“We’re going to keep working on things and if we get through this year, we’ll recover,” he said.

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Cross Vermont Trail Association,  Montpelier

The concept of the Cross Vermont Trail is simple: a public, multi-use, four-season route 90 miles across the state from Lake Champlain to the Connecticut River via the Winooski River and Wells River valleys.

For the dedicated group of professionals and volunteers that make up the Cross Vermont Trail Association, making the concept a reality is more complicated. Their efforts to maintain and expand the trail involve working together with many local groups to stitch together pieces of existing public trails and paths, raising funds to build new sections, and developing signs and routes on public roads to connect the trail.

So when flooding from heavy rains hit last spring, the fabric was torn in several places along the 30 miles of already completed trail. The organization went to work to repair the damage and made good progress. Then, last August, Tropical Storm Irene smashed culverts and washed out other drainage areas, taking out 4.5 miles of trail in five towns.

The good news was that repairs made from the May flooding held up. The bad news: to avoid problems in the spring, the new washouts had to be repaired before winter.

Over the fall, with a $5,000 Special and Urgent Needs grant from the Vermont Community Foundation, the organization worked with partners like the Town of Groton, the East Montpelier Gully Jumpers and Barre Sno-Bees snowmobile clubs, and groups in Richmond to complete the rebuilding. By mid-November almost all the gaps were repaired. In the spring, the association will organize groups to finish the work by planting vegetation at the sites.

“The Community Foundation grant opened up all those closed miles of trail,” said Cross Vermont Trails Association trails program coordinator Greg Western. Up-to-date information on the trail’s status is at www.crossvermont.org.

The Ice Center of Washington West, Waterbury

Cleaning the mud and silt out of your house after a flood is bad enough, but what if you happen to own a 3,000-square-foot hockey rink? 

That was exactly the problem facing the Ice Center of Washington West in Waterbury in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene. 

The Ice Center is a year-round skating facility serving youth and adult hockey players, figure skaters, and recreational skaters in central Vermont, and even though it was late August, the center was open — until the swollen Winooski River overran it, submerging the building. Flood water three feet deep destroyed the ice and left the center buried under a layer of silt and mud, damaging everything less than four feet off the ground.

Drywall had to be ripped out and replaced. The mechanics of the ice rink — pumps, circulators, and refrigeration equipment — had to be replaced or rebuilt. The snack bar and its freezers and their contents were ruined. Cabinets, all the office furniture, 70 pairs of rental skates, and lots of personal gear owned by skaters was lost. 

On the bright side, on Monday morning, the day after the flood, a flood of volunteers showed up and the rebuilding work began. People came from the area, from out of town, and from among the central Vermonters who had built the center in 2003 as a community effort. 

“All the skating community said ‘What can we do?’ ” said Kelly Lilly of Stowe, the center’s manager. “People pitched in wherever they could. However they could pitch in, they did.” 

Working with aid from the Vermont Community Foundation’s Special and Urgent Needs Fund as well as help from Revitalizing Waterbury, the Vermont Irene Flood Relief Fund, personal donations and that flood of volunteers, the center reopened 48 days after Irene devastated it. This winter it will serve approximately 4,000 skaters in five youth hockey organizations, nearly 10 adult teams, and other recreational groups.

Friends of Burlington Gardens, Vermont Community Garden Network, Burlington

Gardens tend to thrive next to waterways: the soil is often better there than elsewhere, there’s usually good sunlight, and the land is fairly flat, a real bonus in a hilly state like Vermont. 

But when rivers and creeks flood, it’s a different story, as Friends of Burlington Gardens (FBG) knows well. Flooding from Tropical Storm Irene devastated the Tommy Thompson Community Garden in Burlington’s Winooski River Intervale, destroying the crops of about 150 households. Irene also wiped out gardens in Hardwick, Chester, and Woodstock and damaged many other plots that are among 200 gardens in the Vermont Community Garden Network, which Friends of Burlington Gardens leads. 

One of Friends of Burlington Gardens’ responses, through a $5,000 Special and Urgent Needs grant from the Vermont Community Foundation and additional support from the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont, was to set up a mini-grants program for flood-damaged community and school gardens around the state to help pay for soil tests to determine if gardens have been contaminated by flood waters; to provide soil amendments, fencing, and other materials; and for technical assistance to get damaged gardens ready for the growing season. 

In March, FBG awarded flood recovery grants to eight community and school gardens around the state. Gardens in Chester, Hardwick, Montpelier, Quechee, White River Junction, and Woodstock will receive up to $1,000 each to help rebuild or relocate secure food production sites. 

“The grant program will help the gardens that were destroyed by Irene continue to feed their communities,” said Jessica Hyman, FBG’s executive director. “It will help them rebuild infrastructure, replenish soil and do critical testing to ensure that it’s safe to grow food.”

Central Vermont Community Action Council, Berlin, VT

Tropical Storm Irene pushed many struggling low-income Vermonters—by some estimates 40 percent of those displaced by Irene were low-income—closer to the economic edge. And the storm may have forced some who have not needed assistance before to ask for help.

So Irene meant a sudden increase in demand for the services of the Berlin-based Central Vermont Community Action Council, which serves about 18,000 low- and moderate-income Vermonters a year in Lamoille, Washington, and Orange counties; surrounding towns; and through statewide programs. CVCAC had already been forced by federal spending cuts to lay off staff but found itself recalling furloughed workers and extending hours for others, spending money that wasn’t in its budget.

The numbers are daunting—more than 800 displaced people and more than 200 destroyed homes across the organization’s multi-county coverage area. Almost all low-income housing in Waterbury, one of the hardest-hit towns in the state, was in the downtown area that was flooded, putting apartments and mobile homes out of commission. Some families had to move five times in five weeks due to changes in funding and in the availability of places to stay.

A 73-year-old woman who has lived in Waterbury for 50 years exemplifies the problem. She lost her apartment and needs to find an accessible rental unit in town. “There is nothing,” says case manager Cecile Johnston, working out of the FEMA center above the Waterbury Fire Department, trying to help the displaced cope with Irene’s aftermath.

“It’s a real double whammy,” said CVCAC’s community outreach director Liz Schlegel. “You’ve lost a place to live and you have no place else to move to.” Waterbury’s experience was echoed in other flooded towns, and CVCAC, with financial help from the Vermont Community Foundation, National Life, Green Mountain United Way, and Union Mutual, among others, continues trying to help the victims of Irene find the resources and the strength to get past the storm.

Home Share Now, Barre

Rosemary Sprague is looking for a new place to live.

On the afternoon of August 28, she was sitting at home in Northfield in the mobile home she has rented for 15 years. She had just returned from her shift working at the dining hall at nearby Norwich University. She said she felt “calm and cool,” ready to ride out Tropical Storm Irene. But that changed in a hurry. Water from the Dog River, which is normally about 100 yards away but was already flooding, began spilling into her yard. Soon it was rising over her porch and she watched her garbage cans float away. She called 911 and within a short time two EMTs were escorting her out of her home through cold, chest-deep water, one on each side. “Don’t let go!” she told them.

She was able to stay with a neighbor overnight and then moved in with her mother in Northfield Falls. But she had lost all of her appliances and other belongings and she knew she’d have to find another home.

At work, where she missed only one day because of the flood, a co-worker mentioned Home Share Now, a Barre non-profit that matches people seeking places to live with others who have space in their homes. Home Share Now is one of the organizations that has received a grant from the Vermont Community Foundation’s Special and Urgent Needs flood-relief program to help it meet the additional workload anticipated because of people displaced by Irene.

Rosemary is beginning the process through which Home Share Now matches people and living situations. “I’m hoping that Home Share can help me find a place I can afford,” Sprague said. “In Vermont, people help people, in whatever way they can,” said Home Share Now Executive Director Christina Goodwin. “Each and every staff member of Home Share Now is working outside their job description to help people like Rosemary connect with people who are looking for ways to help.”

Boys and Girls Club of Brattleboro

Swollen with rain and debris from Tropical Storm Irene, Whetstone Brook rampaged through Brattleboro on Sunday, August 28. When the debris — trees, parts of houses, other buildings, and who-knows what else — hit a downtown bridge it caused a sudden dam that sent water backing into low-lying streets like the aptly named Flat Street, home to the Boys and Girls Club of Brattleboro.

Soon muddy water filled the basement of the club, which serves nearly 1,000 kids ages 10 to 19, and covered the floor under its ping-pong tables and in its basketball court and skate park. In the basement, camping equipment, holiday decorations and other odds and ends floated in chest-deep water.

When the water receded on Monday, the clean-up began. Staff, kids, parents, and other volunteers filled endless buckets with mud and carried them out to the street. Even when the mud was gone, it took as many as 20 washings of the floors to get rid of the silt. Sheet rock had to be cut two feet up from the floors and dumped; the wooden floor under the basketball court and the ping-pong tables had to be yanked out and thrown away. The mats from the climbing wall were soaked and couldn’t be dried. Into the dumpster they went, along with the camping equipment and the contents of a freezer and a refrigerator. And the appliances went too.

Five commercial dehumidifiers ran for a week, each filling about half of a 30-gallon barrel a day with moisture extracted from the air and the building. A large dumpster, a dump truck and a smaller dumpster soon filled with what had been key parts of the club’s work.

In addition to parents, help has come from the Boys and Girls Clubs of America and Home Depot, the Brattleboro Rotary Club, the employees of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant — a longtime supporter of the club — and employees from GPI Construction. Brattleboro’s World Learning/School for International Training made a substantial financial contribution. The national press — CNN, the Weather Channel — had shown up the day after the flood and checks (mostly small, a few larger) came in from around the country.

The repair work will continue for months, but the staff believes the club makes a difference in kids’ lives and they wanted to be sure it was open again as soon as possible. “For every hour we’re closed, we lose a kid,” said Ricky Davidson, the unit director.

The club opened again on September 9, about two weeks post-Irene.