Joe's Brook Farm

Joe’s Brook Farm in St. Johnsbury, VT actually suffered two major flooding events in 2011, the second of which was Irene. With decreased income and extraordinary expenses, a VFF Emergency Loan enabled Eric and Mary to purchase supplies, seeds and propane so that they were in a position to start fresh in the spring.

Eric and Mary Skovsted began farming in 2008 with less than a quarter acre in production and a single 28’x44’ tomato greenhouse. In 2011 they had four greenhouses and two acres in production. They are an organic, but uncertified vegetable and berry farm. Their main crop is greenhouse tomatoes, which they market through the St. Johnsbury, Danville, Lyndonville, and Littleton Farmers Markets. They also have a 25 member CSA and supply a number of wholesale accounts including the Littleton Co-Op and the St. Johnsbury Co-op.

We were actually impacted by two exceptional floods in 2011.   The first was the May 26th Flash Flood.  This flood impacted a small swath of Northern Vermont and was caused by a series of incredibly intense thunderstorms that formed and then took the exact same track over our town. When we awoke the morning of the 27th our newly planted 1.5 acre field was under 3 to 4 feet of water; plastic, hoops and row cover were buried by inches of silt and sand; and one of our greenhouses was damaged by a tree that had floated into it.  Six to seven inches of rain had fallen in the span of four or five hours, causing a tremendous flash flood.  We lost all of our initial plantings of field crops in this flood.  The only crops spared were potatoes, garlic, pumpkins and our two early tomato houses, all of which were located in a higher field.  It took a week and a half of excavating plastic, hoops and fabric before we could even begin to work the soil again.  After we dug out, we had a window of dry weather and we were able to reseed and plant the thousands of transplants that were generously donated by other farms.

After the first flood, we knew the year would not be what we had hoped for, but we were still in business, buoyed by our tomato sales and the eventual emergence of some crops after the late season start.  Then Irene came and though the damage was not as extensive in Barnet as some towns, we still recorded 7 inches of rain in a 24-hour period.  This flood was not as bad as the first, with only a foot of water in our field.  Many crops were fine when the water receded but we destroyed them as we were told to do.  We immediately experienced approximately a $500 a week drop in our market sales and had to end our wholesaling of everything but tomatoes.