Vermont farmers take stock after losing crops to flooding two years in a row

abcnews.go.com:

Exactly one year to the date of last year’s severe flooding in Vermont, Joe’s Brook Farm in Barnet was flooded again by the remnants of Hurricane Beryl

BARNET, Vt. — Exactly one year to the date of last year’s severe flooding in Vermont, Joe’s Brook Farm was flooded again by the remnants of Hurricane Beryl.

This time it was worse. Workers were able to harvest some of the produce before last week's flooding, but the family-owned vegetable farm still lost 90% of its crop in fields and greenhouses.

“When we got hit twice on the same day two years in a row it’s pretty hard to recover from that,” said Mary Skovsted, who owns the farm with her husband.

Around the state, and especially in hard-hit central and northern Vermont, farmers are again assessing their losses and trying to figure out how to adapt and make it through the season and next year.

“We are going to have significant damage,” said Vermont Agriculture Secretary Anson Tebbetts. “You’re going to have areas that have been hit twice maybe three times in the last year.”

There's hope that some of the feed corn crop for livestock could bounce back but it depends on the weather, he said.

When Tebbetts visited Sparrow Arc Farm, a potato farm on the Connecticut River in Guildhall last weekend, farmer Matthew Linehan had to take him out in a canoe to see the fields still inundated by floodwaters days after the storm. The water has receded and the damage is worse than last year. Nineteen of the farm's 52 acres were flooded, pushing the total loss to 36%, Linehan said.

“The crop has just melted into the ground. It’s toast, absolute toast,” he said.

Fourteen acres were under 8 feet (2.4 meters) to 10 feet (3 meters) of water, and five acres were under 3 feet (almost 1