Gildrien Farm

A few weeks ago we had a clean-up day to deal with the aftermath of the flooding. Honestly, we'd been pretty depressed about the whole thing - losing that field this year, plus the winter plantings we can't plant, plus the potential of having it happen again, plus the thought of all that food going to waste - and we took up the offer that Annie Harlow made to put our clean-up day out to the ACORN network because we figured if we got a few more hands, we could get it over with more quickly.

Well, we sure got some more hands.

Those hands included the entire Middlebury College men's soccer team, several of our CSA members, some friends, and a couple of folks hardly even know. It was humbling and gratifying to watch all the energy that these people brought to the work of tearing out plants, pulling up plastic, hauling potatoes, and making the biggest compost pile we've ever had.

It was also incredibly efficient - in literally an hour and a half, our team of 30+ people did what would have been at least two weeks of work for Jeremy and Brian. And it was almost fun! Such an amazing gift to receive from our community.

We've also been touched by all the people who stopped by our stand and the market to ask how we're doing and buy an extra squash or two.

As climate change makes big weather like Irene more likely and alters the patterns of the seasons, farmers are going to have to adapt in a lot of different ways. Perhaps that gorgeous river-bottom soil will have to be limited to orchards or pasture. Clearly diversification is going to be increasingly important - if we'd been growing only winter squash, we'd be totally screwed. And I think community is going to become more and more important as well - for work parties, for investment in new ideas, for moral support.

So the good thing about having lost our field was that we got to see our community in action. And that was pretty great.

(Thanks to Annie Harlow for the photos.)

And we will be at the market this week! Come give us a hug. :)

We just went out to the field this morning to assess the possible damage from Irene.  We both had hopes it wouldn't be too bad because there was no damage to our house or greenhouses.  Well we were certainly wrong.  The New Haven River tore through our field.   The tomatoes, tomatillos, cucumbers, hush cherries, greens, basil, and carrots were all wiped out.  The potato hills look unaffected and the melons and winter squash are still there.  The peppers are holding on too.  The fall broccoli and cauliflower look like they will recover.  However, due to food safety concerns we might need to trash everything in the field... more to come as we find out if anything can be salvaged.