Editor’s note: Last year’s historic flooding in Vermont caused millions of dollars’ worth of damage to farms across the state. This is the third of four stories chronicling how farms are recovering and what they are doing to plan for this year’s growing season.

Last year’s historic flooding was something that the owners of Maple Wind Farm in Richmond, Vt., never experienced before.

The farm lost more than 1,000 animals in last year’s flood. Animals are its lifeblood. Beth Whiting and Bruce Hennessey, the farm’s owners, don’t grow vegetables or fruit. They pasture-raise 50 hogs, 16 feeder cows, between 500 and 600 turkeys, 2,000 layer hens, and 16,000 broiler chickens a year.

For Whiting, the loss of animals hit hard.

“We’ve never seen anything like that before,” she says.  

A harrowing experience

Monday, July 10, was a cloudy, rainy day. It was also slaughtering day on the farm, one of the few in the state that has as on-farm, USDA-certified poultry processing plant.

Drenched from the rain and covered in mud, workers arrived at the farm ready to process 950 birds just before the forecasted flooding was to hit.

As processing finished, Whiting says she and her husband, and some workers, went to the farm’s bottomlands to check on pasture-raised chickens housed in a mobile coop. The forecast called for rising river waters that likely would have drowned the birds. So, using crates and some manpower, the 1,200 birds were moved to higher ground.

Nearby, hundreds of pasture-raised turkeys were also moved to a higher location. Whiting says she thought the turkeys would be safe based on the forecast.

The next morning told a different story.

“We looked down there, and we knew it was a lot higher than it was going to be, and the turkeys were going to be compromised,” she says.

WORSE THAN EXPECTED: The waters from the Winooski River rose to 11 feet above flood stage, much higher than forecasted, Beth Whiting says. More than 1,000 animals died. A tractor and trailer that her husband, Bruce, used to try and rescue some animals was lost to the floodwaters.

Floodwaters blocked the farm off on two sides. Nobody could get to work. Nobody could get off the farm. Whiting and Hennessey live on the farm, and their college-age son had stayed the night, along with an employee who camped on the property.

Whiting says the first thought was rescuing the turkeys. Using canoes, they went down into the flooded fields to see if they could get the turkeys out. Instead, she says they found a shocking scene.

Most of the turkeys drowned in the flood. Some birds were pulled out, placed in crates and taken up to the farm to dry off. They lost 400 of 600 turkeys.

“It was terrible. It was obviously a mess to clean up with decomposing birds, and we had to compost them all,” Whiting says.

Five miles away, on another farm she and Hennessey leased, two employees waded through water to try and rescue chickens that were in a mobile coop. It was too late. The mobile coop was lost, and 700 chickens died.

All told, the farm lost more than 1,000 animals.

A tractor and trailer Hennessey used to try and get animals out of the floodwaters was lost, and nearly took him. He had to jump out of the cab to get out of rushing floodwaters.

“When the water got to its crest, you could see a foot and a half of cab from the tractor, from the top of it,” Whiting says. “He got out just in time.”

Recovering from disaster

The farm lost more than $100,000 because of the flood, from lost sales, canceled chick deliveries and damaged equipment. The farm got assistance through the state’s Business Emergency Gap Assistance Program, or BEGAP. They were also awarded grants by Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, NOFA-Vt.

The loss of the turkeys was especially big, Whiting says. The farm raises hundreds of turkeys for Thanksgiving, and they are a big income source. Thankfully, a farmer friend from Virginia, Daniel Salatin of the famed Polyface Farms, sold them some extra birds he had on hand.

FEEDING CHICKENS: Bruce Hennessey, the farm’s co-owner, feeds chickens in one of his mobile coops on the farm. These coops, along with the animals, are planning to be moved this spring to a leased farm 5 miles away.

Hennessey went down to Virginia and picked up 200 9-week-old birds. The farm sold them in time for Thanksgiving.

“It was a cash outlay, but they did gives us a friendly price, and we had more birds to offer our customers and that was kind of the turkey story,” Whiting says.

But the recovery isn’t over. Whiting and Hennessey have tried getting help through the USDA Farm Service Agency Livestock Indemnity Program for their animal losses. They were initially rejected, she says, due to “poor management.”

Their first appeal of FSA’s decision was rejected. They plan on appealing again, claiming that flood levels rose 11 feet above flood stage and was much higher than was originally forecast.

“So, we made our decisions based on the flood charts, and based on those, our animals would have been safe,” she says.

What’s changing?

The biggest change the couple are making is taking the 30-acre parcel that was flooded out of production.

Animals are being moved to the other farm. The mobile coops are being dismantled and moved.

“The parcel may support some pasture pigs, but that’s about it,” Whiting says. “We are not going to subject ourselves to climate change. What if it happens again? Never say never. It seems like crazy happenings are more and more frequent, and we have to protect ourselves.”

Whiting and Hennessey have been on the farm for more than 20 years. They are first-generation farmers who met in Wyoming in the mid-1990s and moved to Vermont to pursue farming. They employ more than a dozen people in summer, their busy season, and pride themselves in hiring young people interested in the food business.

While they serve some wholesale accounts, 70% of the farm’s sales are direct to consumer.

FIRST-GEN FARMERS: Beth Whiting and Bruce Hennessey have been on the farm for more than 20 years. They are first-generation farmers who met in Wyoming in the mid-1990s and moved to Vermont to pursue farming. They employ more than a dozen people in summer, their busy season, and pride themselves in hiring young people interested in the food business.

But Whiting worries about the toll these weather events are having on the business. In a span of 13 years, the farm has experienced floods that were supposed to be 100-year events: the remnants of Hurricane Irene, and last year’s July flood.

Irene was bad, she says, but the loss of animal life last year was something they never experienced.

“We’ve lived through a barn fire, but there was not livestock in the fire. Last year was pretty bad for sure,” Whiting says.

With so much uncertainty over the possible effects of climate change and the increased risks farmers are taking, Whiting thinks the state should respond quicker to farmer needs through setting up an emergency fund that is easy to apply for and to get help.  

“When you’ve got losses like that, you’ve got to pay for cleanup, you’ve got to pay for replacements,” she says. “And a lot of farms just don’t have the funds sitting around to fix things in a matter of a couple of weeks. It’s hard on our cash flow and farmers need help.”