Updated July 25 at 11:58 a.m.
ESSEX JUNCTION — After a late May frost decimated Paul Mazza’s strawberry crop for the year, it was a miracle that the Chittenden County farmer’s blueberry bushes seemed not only to survive but to flourish this summer.
That was until the Winooski River, which runs behind his Essex Junction fields, surged past its banks during this month’s catastrophic floods. The waters consumed all 24 acres of his Essex Junction outpost, claiming countless bushels of blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, apples, sweet corn and more.
“We took a beating,” Mazza said on Monday as he walked through his sodden fields. For Mazza and many other farmers in the state, the flood came at peak season — a key difference from Tropical Storm Irene, which made landfall in late August of 2011.
Trailing behind him were reporters and government officials — including Gov. Phil Scott, U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts and regional representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture — who came to survey the damage. They walked between rows of crops, through paths typically mowed and manicured, then piled high with sand from the river.
Despite the floodwaters — which, in parts of his fields, came up to Mazza’s head — hundreds of blueberries still clung to their branches on Monday. They looked tantalizingly ripe, just in time for the swaths of loyal customers who come to Mazza’s every summer to pick their own berries.
But having been consumed by filthy floodwaters, the berries were contaminated and unsellable.
“Almost ready for the picking,” Scott said as he trudged through the bushes on Monday, taking a branch in his hand. “If this had happened a week or two later, we wouldn’t be here.”
Two weeks had passed since the floods hit much of Vermont, and by and large, the federal government had flexed its full muscle to aid the state’s recovery. It took mere days for President Joe Biden to approve a major disaster declaration, opening the door to vast federal resources. Federal Emergency Management Agency responders arrived quickly, as did U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell — high-profile figures whose presence signaled the White House’s concern. Both FEMA and the Small Business Administration started dispersing aid to Vermont municipalities, residents and small business owners as the long process of recovery began.
But Vermont’s farmers are still, metaphorically, praying for rain.
When farmers suffer field losses due to extreme weather events, they are not eligible for individual aid through FEMA, nor for the Small Business Administration’s low-interest disaster loans. Any federal aid must come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture — or, for larger scale appropriations to the state, congressional approval.
As of Monday, the USDA had yet to authorize its own disaster declaration for Vermont in response to this month’s flood. Scott had formally requested aid from the department 10 days earlier in a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. That same day, Vermont’s congressional delegation spoke to Vilsack on the phone.
Last Friday, Vilsack approved a disaster declaration for losses the state’s farmers suffered during May’s deep freeze. By then, more than one month had elapsed since Scott requested that declaration, and two since the freeze itself.
USDA disaster declarations take longer to authorize in part because it’s on farmers to document their losses to the feds, according to John Roberts, a former dairy farmer who now serves as the Vermont state executive director for USDA’s Farm Service Agency. Roberts said farmers in any given county need to demonstrate at least 30% crop losses in order to qualify for a disaster declaration.
But documenting that damage takes precious time for farmers already constrained by Vermont’s short growing season and, now, mounting cleanup tasks. Even the thought of recording all of the damages seemed to overwhelm Mazza on Monday. He is leaning on his daughter, Kaity Mazza, who is entering her senior year at the University of Vermont, to help.
“I think asking farmers to sit still and document after these events can be really overwhelming,” Kaity. “I know working with my dad as a farmer, he’s kind of a go-go-go, get-it-done kind of guy. He just wants to repair the damages. Documenting it and sitting down and going through and really encountering the loss that way can be really heartbreaking and monotonous, almost.”
Asked by reporters on Monday to estimate his monetary losses due to the flood, Mazza shook his head. “A lot,” he said. “Too much,” Kaity added.
For Mazza, cleanup over the past two weeks has meant taking a firehose to his parking lot, which was caked in two inches of mud. It meant hauling out mountains of soiled and contaminated produce that can no longer be sold. It meant trashing the farm’s coolers, ruined by water, which housed the farm’s potato crops. (On Monday, Mazza apologized for the stench of rotting potatoes still in the air two days after the coolers were disposed of.)
Eventually, cleanup will also entail tending to his plants so they survive for future seasons. Mazza and his workers will hand-pick inedible fruit so it doesn’t rot — a time- and labor-intensive task, especially for small, tedious crops like berries. They will proactively treat plants for fatal fungal infections, which thrive in swampy conditions. And they will have to haul out all of that sand.
Mazza has fewer hands to help with all of the work. Cash-strapped, he sent 12 of his seasonal workers home to Jamaica. He’s getting older, and is feeling the toll of the hard work on his body.
In the meantime, he has no choice but to put in the labor every day, knowing it won’t bear fruit this year.
“It sucks,” he said of the conundrum on Monday. “We lost our shirt. I’ve never seen losses this big.”
Having tended to his fields for 38 years, Mazza’s farm is not just his livelihood. “It’s my life,” he said.
As farmers await a disaster declaration, crop insurance can help, but often doesn’t come close to covering farmers’ total losses — if a farmer opts for insurance at all. Many farmers, including Mazza, forgo coverage.
According to Roberts, a USDA disaster declaration would allow farmers to access loans with lower-than-usual interest rates and speed up loan paperwork and approval time.
In the meantime, the Farm Service Agency is able to dole out loans with normal rates. But in an email Tuesday morning, Roberts wrote, “(M)any farmers need revenue now, they have just lost their source. Unfortunately, that is not what FSA does, except if a producer has crop insurance.”
It’s Congress that could dole out money to farmers with the House and Senate’s approval. On Monday, Welch said there is a need for such a special appropriation for disaster relief not only in Vermont, but across the country, which has been pummeled recently with one natural disaster after another. He said he believes there is adequate support in the Senate — where a 60-vote majority would be required — to pass such a bill.
What may be Mazza’s saving grace are his other fields. He owns six more — in Colchester, Jericho and Williston — totaling roughly 250 acres. The damage varies field to field. Of all of his crops across the state, he estimates this season’s two natural disasters — the May frost, then the July flood — have claimed approximately two-thirds of his usual yield.
That still means he has one-third of his crop to sell. Buying what crops the farm does have for sale is the best thing customers can do to show support, Kaity said, and she has taken to social media to spread the message that her family’s farmstand is open for business. She has urged her dad to accept donations outside of crop sales, but he’s “too proud,” she whispered to a reporter.
Kaity is studying food science at the University of Vermont, and is considering taking over the family business once she graduates. This season was her first learning its ins and outs so she could get a feel for running it, both in the fields and in the office. Now, she’s thinking extra hard about whether she wants to take it on.
“Seeing the complete devastation and also just the heartbreak … it’s definitely discouraging,” she said. “I’m grateful that I have seen the farm in good years and really been able to enjoy it, but this year has definitely been a huge stressor. But I know that farming has a lot of beauty in it, too.”
Clarification: An earlier version of this story imprecisely described the function of a USDA disaster declaration and congressional special appropriation.
