Foote Brook Farm in Johnson was scrambling in the days after historic rainfall drowned its fields in early July, destroying 75% of its crops.
As owners Joie and Tony Lehouillier took stock of their fruit and vegetable crops and fretted over whether they’d have to lay off employees, another concern emerged. How could they maintain their farm stand and their community supported agriculture program?
“One of the first things that entered my mind after the flood was ‘Oh my gosh, how am I gonna carry out my promise to all these CSA members?’” said Joie Lehouillier, a third-generation farmer who considers helping marginalized and food-insecure Vermonters one of the pillars of her work.
The CSA — in which consumers subscribe at the start of the growing season and get food weekly from a farm — has a member list of 75 individuals, families and agencies, notably the food shelf in Johnson and Meals on Wheels, which delivers food to older adults across Vermont. The Lehouilliers’ farm stand is also one of two in the state that’s a member of the 3SquaresVT Farm Stand Match Program, an initiative of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, designed to maximize the use of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program dollars at local food markets.
“Anytime somebody has a (food insecurity) program, and I can be a part of it, I’m going to opt to be a part of it — even if it’s going to cost me money,” Joie Lehouillier said. “It’s not only the right thing to do, but it’s also a good business decision. If you can get people into your door, they’re gonna come back.”
Vermont’s farms play an important role in supporting food security efforts throughout the state, so when flooding hit them, it also imperiled the local food networks they help sustain.
Lauren Griswold, the food access programs director for NOFA, said her organization has heard from over 100 small to midsize farms that report having been devastated by the floods, with some unable to get food to market or having to cancel CSAs altogether. But Griswold said it “definitely isn’t the case” that the system as a whole is in a bleak place.
The pandemic brought unreliability and disruption to regional and nationwide food systems, she said, which underscored the importance of investing in local farms and foods for community and statewide food security.
“In a way, I think it’s an important time to celebrate these models that we have in place to support these really important farms in challenging times so that they’ll be around next year to feed our communities,” Griswold said.
She called the state of CSA programs and farmers markets “pretty flexible and responsive” in the wake of disaster, with Foote Brook’s pivot being the perfect microcosm.
‘Help from our community’
In the weeks since the deluge, the Lehouilliers’ community has rallied around them to help keep the farm stand and CSA initiatives up and running. West Farm in Jeffersonville and Deep Root Co-op, a 24-member farm collective in northern Vermont and southern Quebec, are two of the biggest sources of support, according to Joie Lehouillier. Both reached out in the hours after the storm to offer assistance and options to replace lost produce.
West Farm owners Angus and Holly Simpson also started a GoFundMe for Foote Brook, which has raised nearly $60,000 — something Lehouillier said “completely made me ugly-cry.” Volunteers also took to the fields to help clean up in the weeks after the flood.
Without that help, “we literally would have had to send everybody home, lay everybody off and close the farm stand,” Lehouillier said. “There’s no way we could have gone on even another week had we not had the help from our community.”
Like Foote Brook, other CSAs and farmers markets across the state have been propped up by farmers’ helping hands, with those on higher ground assisting hurting producers and helping Vermont grapple with record-high rates of food insecurity.
“It’s a beautifully Vermont thing to take care of our own in this way,” said Griswold, adding that the state’s agricultural community is looking inward to help deal with millions of dollars in losses from the historic July flooding.
That approach was on display at the Capital City Farmers Market, a weekly event in Montpelier, in the days after the flooding. The market had to relocate from its State Street location — which was under 4 feet of water — to the Vermont College of Fine Arts on College Hill. Water also seeped into its storage trailer, damaging benches, picnic tables and a PA system.
But because most Montpelier farm operations are on higher ground, farmers market inventory has largely remained unaffected, allowing the market to not skip a beat in one of the most drastically flood-affected towns in Vermont.
On July 15, the first market since the flooding, market Manager Keri Ryan said most farmers were giving away food on a donation basis to help out residents of the inundated capital. That practice has not continued, but she said almost all vendors have a tip jar solely dedicated to flood recovery efforts.
“I’m amazed at how so many market managers in the state of Vermont have been able to so quickly pivot the market operations in times of crisis, whether it was Covid or post-flooding,” Ryan said. “Like 99% of the farmers market managers in the state are volunteers, and they’re working with miniscule budgets. They’re just doing it out of a love for the local food supply chain.”
That commitment to the local food system has enabled the industry to persevere during the tumultuous post-flood period, according to Griswold.
“I think it’ll definitely adjust what things look like this season, but there’ll still be plenty of food to be had, especially in our local food access programs,” Griswold said.
‘Not a fun year’
Between freezes, floods and more rain, the 2023 agricultural season has brought a cascade of obstacles for Vermont farmers.
“Every day there’s a lot of highs and lows. Like, you think you’re winning something and then you find out you’re not,” Lehouillier said. “It’s not a fun year. I’m ready for it to kind of be over, honestly.”
The challenges have caused losses of between a third and half of all crops, according to early estimates from Vern Grubinger, the vegetable and berry specialist for The University of Vermont Extension. Though Vermont growers are able to fill most of the gaps now, the true impacts will emerge in coming weeks and months — when food markets typically see an uptick in quantity as more crops become harvestable.
For now, the specialists say, the best thing the average consumers can do is keep showing up for their local growers.
“We need our producers to stay in business, so there’s value up and down the supply chain,” Grubinger said. “So the best way to help farms right now is to buy products they do have.”
Funding is the next big domino to fall. Lehouillier is already exploring the idea of replacing some produce fields with sunflowers, so she can add an agritourism revenue stream to her farm’s balance sheet. She said lost equipment is the main obstacle in keeping Foote Brook at its pre-flood size.
NOFA is also requesting state funding to help expand its food access programs, as the demand that increased during the pandemic is expected to be amplified by the flooding. Griswold called it “a wonderful two birds, one stone” opportunity to not only provide food to Vermonters in need, but also to put cash directly into producers’ pockets.
“We’ve got this funding bottleneck that’s holding back a really strong growing market for producers and is also holding back food assistance efforts,” she said. “So that’s the case we’re trying to make: that there’s an incredible opportunity here to be very efficient with our funding and do a lot with it. … We just really need these farms here for this challenging future ahead.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story described the 3SquaresVT Farm Stand Match Program incorrectly.
