Irene Relief for Farmers.

Greetings from Fred Griffin, BFA Fairfax!

The small article attached does not do justice to the crisis these six
farmers in Rochester area face. There is no FEMA aid for farms. If
disaster relief goes through as desired they will not receive their
first checks until 2013! Meanwhile they must find a way to keep
going. Liberty Hill farm, where we worked on a cornfield, has been
been in continuous operation since the late 1700's, with only five
families as owners. The current owners are 5th (husband) and 9th
(wife) generation New England farmers. The owner of the Ketchum farm
where we picked rocks lives in the farmhouse he was born in.

Fairfax area churches and our school can best assist by raising funds.
Heather Darby of the Ag Extension service who organized our workday
yesterday, sits of the board of the VT Farmer's Watershed Association.
They are set up to funnel aid to farmers. We can restrict our
donation to the Rochester area farms. Money can be tracked. All will
go directly into aid.

Doing anything, however small, is infinitely preferable to doing
nothing. We need to act.

Fred

On Saturday, September 17th, cross-country runners Leah Stanley, Sam Lesnikowski, Marin Varney, Margaret Fitzgerald, Thomas Hakey, Clay Gerke, and Michael Groening traveled to Rochester, VT with coaches Fred Griffin and Martha Varney to assist area farmers with Irene clean-up. They joined a volunteer workgroup organized by Heather Darby of VT Dept of Ag Extension agency.

They began on a ten acre hayfield on the Ketchum farm that looked fine from a distance. Walking on it, however, proved difficult. Softball-sized and larger stones had been deposited by the raging White River in swathes and were littered in the grass. The runners picked stones for hours, tossing them into piles from which they could be bucket-loaded to the river bank.

After a lunch break, the Fairfax contingent joined a larger group picking debris from an 80-acre cornfield. The assorted debris prevents the farmer from chopping the field. The corn is not edible by his herd, but until the corn is gone and the field cannot be plowed for next year’s crops. Fifty gallon oil drums, remnants of beehives, dozens of tires, books, tree limbs, tree trunks, and countless pieces of firewood were found as singles or as part of “islands”. They were carted to field’s edge and bucketed away. The work was not close to being done when The Fairfax group began the drive home.

The dire need of these farmers was clear to all. They are facing winter without feed for their animals. Their fields are silt-covered, or gouged, or debris-laden. The Fairfax kids and coaches came home determined to find more ways to help these Rochester farmers survive this devastation.