Fortunately, Irene’s visit to us resulted in very little damage on our farm and hasn’t affected our operations. Jenkins Brook, which borders our farm on the south and west, overflowed it’s banks for the first time that we know of, we had some minor road washout, and some minor flooding out our Christmas tree fields. Our greenhouses also had some minor flooding, but no seedlings were affected.
The interesting thing about the visit from a tropical storm is that she was the 3rd “100 year” event in the past year and 4th true weather anomaly of year. Third snowiest winter on record; rainiest March and April ever, resulting in the record flooding of lake Champlain; tornadoes in Vermont!; and now tropical storm Irene, which caused extensive damage to anything that was near a river or large stream. I’m not sure I believe in global warming, but the climate is definitely changing to warmer and wetter in this area and we’re going to need to adjust.
