History of Flooding

I've been learning more about the history of flooding on our farmland by talking to long-time locals and looking up historical data. The Connecticut River flooding that destroyed so many of our crops a few weeks ago was not actually that high in terms of historical crests since 1930 (it's only about #12 on the list). But what stands out and makes it so devastating for this growing season is the time of year. Most floods happen in the winter or early spring because of snow melt, there's only been one other July flood in the last 100 years and it was in 1973. July is the absolute worst time because almost all of the inputs have gone in, and almost all of the crops have not been harvested yet. There are a few other comparable events: a late May flooding in 1984 and a late August flooding in 2011 (that was Hurricane Irene, which happened the year before we started using our current farmland at the Porter Phelps Huntington Museum in Hadley).

Coming right on the heels of several very dry years within a short period (when having the river right there was very handy!) it's obvious that while these floods have happened in the past we're at the cusp of an era where climate change will cause more and more extreme and unpredictable weather to happen more and more frequently.

I'm determined to keep our small organic farm alive! Although before 2023 we had twelve great seasons on the same land, that's no guarantee that flooding or some other catastrophic event won't happen again next year (or the year after that). Now that it's apparent I've been keeping too many eggs in one basket, I can see that I really need to rent more land starting next year (our farm doesn't own any land, it's all rented). This is very attainable; there's likely one or more small parcels available near to us, and big picture it's not very expensive to rent farm land (it's about $300 per acre per year, so definitely not one of our biggest expenses on the farm). We've been making do with about 10 acres, so if I can find another 3 to 5 acres in a less flood-prone part of Hadley it will make a huge difference in future seasons. While this approach is a bit more expensive and time consuming because of the increased land management, the side benefit is that it allows us to rotate in more full-season cover cropping, which is beneficial for the soil (currently we've only been cover cropping our farm land for part of each season).

And along those same lines, a small side-benefit to this year's flooding is that since we're not allowed to plant the flooded soil with crops until next year (because of possible bacterial contaminants in the flood water), I've already plowed most of our field and soon it will be seeded with cover crop for the rest of the year, so the soil at Porter-Phelps will get some rest.