A Critical Relationship - Living and Working with Nature, Our Home
Thoughts from Theresa, Salvation Farms' Executive Director
As I reflect on the soggy summer season Vermont is experiencing – it is like no other that I can remember in my lifetime. The flooding our communities experienced in July was almost unimaginable, significantly impacting lives and livelihoods across our small state. I can’t help but think about the farmers who not only lost crops and acreage due to river flooding but all farms that maintain relentless strides in what is becoming a never-ending uphill battle – the reality of feeding people, farming, and running a land-based business in the era of increased climate instability and unpredictable, extreme weather.
This year’s late May frost and the summer’s endlessly saturated soils – it is a sign that we must take more care in thinking about and changing how we work with and respect nature on a grand scale to ensure that we can feed ourselves, in addition to having clean air and water – all essential for our wellbeing and survival.
Every “growing season” is now different here in Vermont. That is a new reality that has become increasingly obvious in the last dozen years. This year, instead of the drought we’ve been in for years, farmers aren’t able to cut hay for their animals, crops are drowning in soils absent of the air critical for roots to work their magic, and plant diseases and pest, well, they’re literally having a field day. To be a farmer was already hard, but now it appears that our friends, neighbors, and partners who work with the land and cherish the gifts that it provides are stuck in a situation so unpredictable and unstable. And while many within our communities are not farmers, we all are stuck in this same situation, whether we recognize it or not – because we eat.
Farmers are hardworking, resilient, and some of the smartest people I know. If anyone is going to figure out how we get ourselves through this mess - our disassociation with our interconnected reliance on nature – it will be, in part, farmers. They hear first-hand the cries of the earth, the asking from the earth for our hand in partnership to ensure we – all living beings – are cared for and respected. A relationship of reciprocity.
There are numerous organizations across Vermont sharing resources to support our communities and our farmers impacted by this year’s extreme weather, I hope that you’ve been able to access information from some of them. It has seemed most prudent for Salvation Farms to watch, bear witness, and see where, if anywhere - outside of our mission focused on increasing food system resilience through managing farm surplus food - we are called upon in these moments of our communities’ despair.
What we’ve done, in addition to providing our staff paid time to volunteer where they’d like in response to July’s flooding and facilitating a modest collection on behalf of our staff to donate to the Vermont Farm Fund, we have continued our work, serving farms, helping them maximize their harvest and ensure their neighbors have access to the fruits of their labor even in this hard farming year.
I ask you to support Salvation Farms crucial work. We are not only working to help farmers feed their communities today, our mission works toward a future where more communities are fed by local farms by putting to use more of the edible food our farms produce. To maintain and increase the impact of our mission and vision, in the short and long term, we need your support now.
In closing, I’d like to share links to two past blog posts that also offer reflections in moments where we have collectively faced significant upset across our communities.
2020 blog – Seeds of Hope – Soils of Regeneration
2012 blog – Surplus Solutions
And, here are two pieces of recent news speaking to this year’s impact on farmers.