The loss of animals hits hard

Editor’s Note: Last year’s historic flooding in Vermont caused millions of dollars in damage to farms across the state. This is the third of four stories about how farms are recovering and what they are doing to plan for this year’s growing season.

Last year’s historic flood was something the owners of Maple Wind Farm in Richmond, Virginia, had never experienced before.

The farm lost more than a thousand animals last year. Animals are his lifeline. Beth Whiting and Bruce Hennessey, the farm’s owners, do not grow vegetables or fruit. They raise 50 pigs, 16 feeder cows, between 500 and 600 turkeys, 2,000 laying hens and 16,000 broiler chickens on pasture each year.

The loss of animals hit Whiting hard.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” she says.

A harrowing experience

Monday, July 10 was a cloudy, rainy day. It was also a slaughter day at the farm, one of the few in the state that has a USDA-certified poultry processing plant on the farm.

Drenched in rain and covered in mud, workers arrived at the farm, ready to process 950 birds, just before the predicted flood.

When the processing was finished, Whiting said she and her husband, and some workers, went to the bottom of the farm to check on the pastured chickens that were housed in a mobile chicken coop. The forecast called for rising river waters that would have likely drowned the birds. With the help of crates and some manpower, the 1,200 birds were moved to higher ground.

Nearby, hundreds of pastured turkeys were also moved to a higher location. Whiting says based on the forecast, she thought the turkeys would be safe.

The next morning told a different story.

“We looked down and knew it was much higher than it would be, and the turkeys would be in danger,” she says.

WORSE THAN EXPECTED: Winooski River waters rose to 12 feet above flood level, much higher than predicted, Beth Whiting says. More than a thousand animals died. A tractor and trailer that her husband, Bruce, used to rescue some animals was lost to the floodwaters.

Floodwaters blocked the farm on two sides. No one could go to work. No one could get off the farm. Whiting and Hennessey live on the farm, and their middle-aged son had spent the night, along with an employee camping on the property.

Whiting says the first thought was saving the turkeys. They took canoes into the flooded fields to see if they could get the turkeys out. Instead, she says they encountered a shocking scene.

Most of the turkeys drowned in the flood. Some birds were pulled out, placed in crates and taken to the farm to dry. They lost 400 of the 600 turkeys.

“It was horrible. It was obviously a mess to clean up the rotting birds, and we had to compost them all,” says Whiting.

Five miles away, at another farm she and Hennessey rented, two workers waded through water to rescue chickens housed in a mobile chicken coop. It was too late. The mobile coop was lost and 700 chickens died.

All told, the farm lost more than 1,000 animals.

A tractor and trailer Hennessey used to pull animals from floodwaters was lost and nearly took him away. He had to jump out of the cabin to get out of the flowing water.

“When the water reached the top, you could see a foot of the cab from the top of the tractor,” Whiting said. “He got away just in time.”

Recovering from a disaster

The farm lost more than $100,000 due to the flooding, due to lost sales, canceled chick deliveries and damaged equipment. The farm received assistance through the state’s Business Emergency Gap Assistance Program (BEGAP). They also received grants from the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, NOFA-Vt.

The loss of turkeys was especially great, says Whiting. The farm raises hundreds of turkeys for Thanksgiving, and they are a major source of income. Luckily, a Virginia farmer friend, Daniel Salatin of the famous Polyface Farms, sold them some extra birds he had on hand.

FEEDING CHICKENS: Bruce Hennessey, co-owner of the farm, feeds chickens in one of his mobile coops on the farm. These pens, along with the animals, plan to move this spring to a rented farm five miles away.

Hennessey went to Virginia and picked up 200 nine-week-old birds. The farm sold them in time for Thanksgiving.

“It was a cash outlay, but they gave us a fair price, and we had more birds to offer our customers and that was kind of the turkey story,” Whiting says.

But the recovery is not over yet. Whiting and Hennessey have been trying to get help through the USDA Farm Service Agency Livestock Indemnity Program for their animal losses. They were initially rejected, she says, because of “poor management.”

Their first appeal against FSA’s decision was rejected. They plan to appeal again, claiming flood levels rose 12 feet above flood stage and were much higher than originally predicted.

“So we made our decisions based on the flood maps, and based on that our animals would have been safe,” she says.

What is changing?

The biggest change the couple is making is taking the 30-hectare plot that was under water out of production.

Animals are moved to the other farm. The mobile cages are dismantled and moved.

“The property might support some feedlot pigs, but that’s about it,” Whiting says. “We are not going to submit to climate change. What if it happens again? Never say never. It seems that crazy events are becoming more common and we need to protect ourselves.”

Whiting and Hennessey have been on the farm for more than twenty years. They are first-generation farmers who met in Wyoming in the mid-1990s and moved to Vermont to farm. They employ more than a dozen people during the summer, the busy season, and pride themselves on hiring young people interested in the food industry.

Although they serve some wholesale customers, 70% of the farm’s sales go directly to consumers.

FIRST GENDER FARMERS: Beth Whiting and Bruce Hennessey have worked the farm for more than twenty years. They are first-generation farmers who met in Wyoming in the mid-1990s and moved to Vermont to farm. They employ more than a dozen people during the summer, the busy season, and pride themselves on hiring young people interested in the food industry.

But Whiting is concerned about the toll these weather conditions are taking on the business. In the span of thirteen years, the farm has suffered 100-year-old floods: the remnants of Hurricane Irene and last July’s flood.

Irene was bad, she says, but the loss of animal life last year was something they had never experienced.

“We experienced a barn fire, but there were no livestock in the fire. Last year was definitely pretty bad,” Whiting said.

With so much uncertainty about the potential impacts of climate change and the increased risks farmers are taking, Whiting believes the state must respond more quickly to farmers’ needs by creating an emergency fund that can be easily applied for and accessed.

“When you have losses like that, you have to pay for cleanup and replacements,” she says. “And many farms just don’t have enough money to fix things in a few weeks. It is hard on our cash flow and farmers need help.”