"Never mind, it's all under water now."

Photo: Mountain View Farm looks like they were heading
for a beautiful crop of peppers before the flood.

Re-posting this from Simple Gifts Farm in North Amherst. It's been a season (and the season is hardly over).

FLOOD DAMAGE RELIEF EFFORTS

At about 7:30 on Monday morning, David from Stone Soup Farm sent out an email to the Pioneer Valley Farmers list-serve entitled "Help us Save Our Garlic."  The Connecticut River was rising, swollen with water coming downstream from Vermont in addition to the 3-4 inches that fell in the Western Mass, and David was hoping some of their farmer friends could come and help them get their garlic harvested before the flood buried it.  Within a couple of hours, the heart-breaking second email came through: "Never Mind, it's all under water now.  It rose faster than I thought it would."  As the week has gone on, we have learned of more of our fellow farmers that have lost most to all of their crops in the flooding.  Mountain View had 45 acres of vegetables in Northampton that are all gone.  Natural Roots and Song Sparrow Farm lost their entire vegetable crop.  Farmer Dave has been doing a side job getting fields ready to plant at the All Farmers site in Springfield, and he was still unable to get to the field as of Wednesday, because it was all underwater.  We are feeling that maybe it's not so bad to grow on the sandpit soil that we have here in North Amherst.  My life as a farmer has centered around problem solving, persistence, optimism, and continuing to just put one foot in front of the other.  I find it hard to imagine having that perspective in the face of a total loss such as these people have suffered. MDAR estimates that at least 75 farms have been affected, and at least 1,000 acres.

Linked below are opportunities to donate to some of our farmer friends that have been flooded; please do what you can to support them.  

• Natural Roots Farm: https://gofund.me/d0f53dd2
• Grow Food Northampton: https://www.growfoodnorthampton.org/ways-to-help-with-flood-recovery/
• Song Sparrow Farm: https://www.gofundme.com/f/song-sparrow-farm-flood-recovery-fund
• Mountain View Farm: https://www.gofundme.com/f/mountain-view-farm-flood-damage-fund
• Stone Soup Farm: https://www.stonesoupfarmcoop.com/