 This program will be discussing the effects of climate change and flooding on farming in Vermont. Here we are in West Berlin, where during the Irene hurricane effects where we stand was six feet underwater. This is the entrance to Slayton Farm, the farm that we will be discussing today. And here on the Slayton Farm we have crops that were pretty well ruined during the last flood of the end of June this year. A month later after the recent flood these plants look a bit stunted, but I believe they will make it. Today it's the most lovely summer day. Colemanous clouds in the sky, very, very nice. And here the summer cottage. And just south of the cottage is the area where the organic gardening is being done, and which we'll be talking about since it was flooded last month. Well hello there ladies. Hello. Here is Gail Harris, the owner of the farm, and Lisa Morrison, expert gardeners. Let's first have a little background here. How long have you two been doing this together? Here. It's been 30 years. Every summer for 30 years. 30 years? Yeah. Every summer. Every summer. Amazing, amazing. What would be the most outstanding difference in before and after the flood? What do you think? I think the soil has changed a lot, and we live in a rainforest now, more than we did. And a lot of silt was deposited. Yeah. So sometimes you're not sure what's in the silt. Yes. Okay. Well now that sounds like a good thing to focus on. The soil in relation to the fact that we've had two floods on this property. Would you explain the timing on those floods? Yes. We actually had two floods in 2011. In May, that was not a flash flood, which was Hurricane Irene. That was a flash flood, and that devastated my property and devastated the garden. It took me probably a year and a half of working every day to have a yard and to regain any semblance of sanity on my property and in the garden. And the soil was really damaged by that. And we have recently had another flash flood, which is really disturbing in the end of June of this year. So 2017. And that came up even faster than I think in Hurricane Irene. It was frightening, really frightening. What can we say in general about the difference in the floods of six years ago and the one that we just had one month ago? You mentioned flash flood. So tell us a little bit about how fast this last recent flood, how fast the water rose. You saw some of the floods earlier when you were here. You know they would come in down at the end of the field kind of slowly. Kind of into their way. I noticed because I live out in the cabin in the woods, I need to cross a creek. And the quickness within about an hour that that creek you can no longer cross because of the power of the water coming through. And it's really scraped up that landscape. I mean it's been like geological changes I sense in the formation of the land. In recent years. So I've been here long enough to see that that was a very bad shift. The shifting point because we had that May flood in 2011 which was you know the typical flood that we have here where it kind of inches its way across the field. And we had a lake and I was very gentle. The water wasn't moving. It was like having the river reroute itself through my house essentially. And it was terrifying and deeper than I've ever seen the water get. That was the turning point. And since then I haven't seen a flood here that hasn't been a flash flood. We've had two. They've both been flash floods. Could you say something about this phenomenon of the Japanese also text that we are experiencing these days. Walking down along the river to the cabin used to be all sorts of wildflowers different native plants. You can see the river the whole length of the path. And now for the last I'd say at least 10 or 15 years there's a monoculture of Japanese knotweed that has completely invaded and doesn't permit anything else to grow underneath. And so it's sort of strangling the river sides. Yes. There's no way I really don't see unless just inch by inch to dominate something like that. It's just it's very successful species. Yeah. So it's very difficult to get rid of. Oh yeah. Very difficult. And it's it's around now it's since that flood it's around the foundations of my houses, my barn. Yeah the flood pulls it up higher than the river bed. Yeah. And how tall does this get? Around the barn it's up to almost 20 feet. 20 feet? Really? Yeah. I think it is. I think it is. Yeah. 15 and 20 feet. And if it gets near your foundations what could that be like? Rip it out. If it get the roots get underneath they pull the foundation out. It reduces the integrity of my foundations and it's very hard to get rid of. Very hard. I don't know another way to get rid of it other than to mow over it which I can't do in certain areas. It sounds like the pestilence. The ticks. And the ticks are also a problem because they came up I noticed them a couple of years after Irene. I don't know if that I don't think they came in on Irene but I think that was an indicator of the change in climate was Irene that flash flood phenomenon that we started to see and it just said the climate is getting warmer. And ticks like warmth and so here they are and we have to do tick checks now and we know that ticks bring terrible diseases. It's not fun. We had discussed how the flooding waters affect the soil and the roots and also the leaves. So what do you say we go over to your garden now and then you can point out some of the effects of last month's flooding. Okay. Okay here we have your organic garden and I would like you to tell us what you have planted roughly how old it is and what you had to do after the flood to recoup. I have arugula these are beets with their beet greens these are collards collard greens southern vegetable Swiss chard and most of the vegetables were cut this whole garden was covered in water about two and a half to three feet of water and so that everything here was covered and once the water went down we had to Lisa and I took a hose and washed all the leaves off because plants get oxygen two ways through their leaves and through their roots and so we had to immediately get all the dirt and the silt off so they could breathe and so they didn't catch diseases from the water that had been on them so we did that. That was within probably under 24 hours after the flood went down and the next thing that we needed to do because the soil got very compacted and very hard by all that water being on it we had to go through and scratch all the soil up and make sure that it was kind of fluffy so they could get some air down into their roots because otherwise they would just turn yellow and they did turn yellow for a while. I thought we were going to lose a good portion of what we had planted but we managed to hold on to most of it. I think most of it came through pretty admirably considering because we scratched everything up all the soil. We washed them off a couple times and aerated two to three times and everything is looking pretty good now. And what do we have over here to your left? Tomatoes started them from right here. These are my babies and they made it through the flood. They almost died but they didn't. These are beans, green beans, some of them are bush beans, some of them are pole beans because I harvested all the seeds last year from my last year's crop and I mixed them up. I didn't know which was which. And nice flowers over here. We have cruciferous things, some cabbages, some brussel sprouts. These are broccoli, that's some more brussel sprouts. And at the end we have cucumbers. All right. Now maybe we can go over to the other garden which suffered, I think, a little worse and we can make a comparison. You can see they're pretty bug-eaten. It usually happens when a plant is weak. The bugs just take over the weak ones. I don't know why. It's like that with people too, I guess. So those point very closely to the ones that we're speaking of? The ones that I did not dig around and like really very well and really aerate. Still hard. The soil is, I can barely get my finger down in there. I went through yesterday and actually dug around a little bit but it still needs more work because the soil is like so hard that you can barely move it around. And now you say the ones over here and here and down here. Look how much bigger they are. Those are bigger because I dug around them two or three times. And see the soil is a lot nicer. It's dry right now because we haven't had rain but it's much looser and they can breathe. And 30 to 35 percent of a plant's oxygen comes through its roots. So when that flood came through and compacted it, now that then they only got 10 percent. So that's a quarter of their oxygen that they weren't getting because they couldn't breathe through their roots until we came through and scratched them up. And then what about the leaves? Well, oxygen comes up through the root system, through the stem and nourishes the leaves as well. They get sun but they can't do their photosynthesis unless they have some oxygen inside them to help. And so the muddy film that gets on the leaves, you have to take that off. We had to spray that off and that was a different process. Scratching the soil is really important because the soil gets kind of bashed down by all that water being on top of it. We figure three feet of water on top of this garden is a lot of weight. It packs our fluffy soil down and turns it into almost like rock. Our carrots haven't been doing too well this year because they're root vegetables. Especially the carrots, the beets did pretty much alright because they were large enough when the flood went through and we got to them soon enough, I think, so that they came through okay. They struggled for a while. The carrots, we've got carrots planted in several different places. None of them have done particularly well. I don't think we've pulled the carrot out of this soil this year and that's unusual because the soil is so compacted root vegetables really need to be able to stretch down, you know, put their roots down into the soil and they can't do it. They just can't push down hard enough to get through that very hard compacted soil that the flood has given us. Yes, Gail is the owner of the farm. You sort of explained to me how the idea of flooding is terrifying and stressful and particularly because you've been here 60 years and this is a new phenomenon. So could you sort of elaborate on that please? Sure. Well, we moved up here when I was seven years old after my mother died and it was a very different place. It certainly wasn't a different bunch of houses but it was a different environment behaved in general and winters there was lots of snow, there was not a lot of ice, they were long. I see the river start rising and I see the water coming down and what's going to happen? I get very stressed out. I can pretty much say I get terrified because this is all I have. I don't have a ton of money and I don't have stocks and bonds but what I have is my place. And I love this place. This was like the mother that I had lost when we came up here in 1957. I roamed everywhere on this property and I know that that's pretty much all I can say about it. Thank you very much Gail. It's been inspiring and interesting and a learning experience to follow you here on your farm. Thank you Steve. And we will look forward to eating with you one day. Here above from the bird's eye view we can see how the dog river forms an S shape as it flows north. At the first bend flood waters force a pathway right over to the houses and then the water spreads out to make a lake which extended to the trailer park just north of the farm. I remember witnessing people from the trailer park swimming ashore to higher ground at 3 o'clock in the morning during the flood of Hurricane Irene. There below is a research work boat named Sled designed to study water quality in Lake Champlain. The sled was built here on the banks of the dog river on the Slayton farm where the owner Gail Harris has been so helpful and accommodating in this project of studying climate change in Vermont. Also we can see Zach Xorn, expert drone operator and editing specialist from the production department of Orca Media. Also there beside Zach stands bearded Steve Lobb designer builder and captain of this experimental vessel who produced this program. Now we can see Gail looking up to the sky wondering what the weather will bring tomorrow and how it will affect her farm. And whatever the future weather may bring there is the next generation, Clancy Harris, her son to carry on with the Slayton farm. Finally to end the story here today is Zach controlling the drone camera bringing it back down to earth.