E.B. Flory’s voice broke several times on Friday describing how exceptional dedication in different parts of the dairy supply chain kept milk losses to a minimum this week.

Despite catastrophic flooding and road damage across the state, most of what Vermont’s farmers and their herds produced made it to a processing facility, the dairy section chief at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets said, even if it was not their usual one.

“Our cows, goats and sheep in the state, they don’t stop milking, and we have to get that milk, we have to get where it needs to be to be processed,” she said. “This has been a very stressful week, but we’ve had a lot of unexpected things come together that made things work in a successful way.”

The amount of milk that farmers and processors have had to dump was much less than everyone feared on Monday, agency Secretary Anson Tebbetts said during a press event on Friday. There also had been no reports of large-scale loss of livestock to flooding, he said.

Milk buyers within Vermont and in other states did not expect to see the volume of milk that arrived after news of the deluge and its aftermath had spread, Flory said. But from the farmers to the milk haulers to staff at processing plants and her own staff, many people worked around the clock to save the majority of the supply.

“We really only had a handful of instances where milk couldn’t get picked up because farms were inaccessible,” said Amber Sheridan, spokesperson for Cabot Creamery and the Agri-mark dairy cooperative. “It was really a small volume, given the magnitude of flooding.”

Flory and Sheridan gave milk hauling companies and their drivers a great deal of credit for that. 

With main state routes blocked, it took much longer for haulers to drive their regular routes, and more trucks and drivers had to be brought in quickly. Haulers and their dispatchers, who Flory compared to air traffic controllers, worked long hours and communicated frequently about which routes were creating the greatest difficulties. Flory said she was able to communicate those locations directly to the Agency of Transportation, which put them onto the priority list. 

For Agri-mark and Cabot, the biggest challenge was the closure of Route 2, which largely reopened Thursday afternoon, Sheridan said. When a truck could not reach the Cabot processing plant, the driver would be rerouted to Middlebury, or, when Interstate 89 closed on Monday, down to a plant in West Springfield, Massachusetts, so the milk cargo would not be wasted. 

In the background, there were the new larger, more energy-efficient bulk tanks that many farmers across the state were able to buy as part of a federal grant through the Northeast Dairy Business Innovation Center, based at the state agency. Farms that had upgraded were able to keep milk cool between pickups for three days, rather than two. 

“That was a really big deal,” Flory said. “They made a difference.”

An emergency waiver from the Food and Drug Administration allowed processors a bit more leeway in how long they could hold milk before dumping as well. Product testing still ensured consumer safety, she said.

Beyond that, it was all about the people. 

“It’s been all hands on deck with many different sectors trying to get this done,” Flory said. 

Haulers were incredibly dedicated, creatively trying to get to farms in whatever way possible, she said. “They had their own crises at home, you know. Their basements were flooded, and they were on the road getting the milk,” Flory said. 

And it wasn’t just drivers. In the Northeast Kingdom, agency milk inspector Eric Perkins decided he would help them, going ahead in his car to the next farm to scout the best route to avoid backups and turnarounds. That initiative was so successful that the state’s other inspectors adopted the practice in the other corners of the state. 

“He stepped up and did something really innovative that we’ve never done before, and it really worked,” Flory said. 

Evaluating flooded crops and fields

While damaged roads were the immediate crisis to overcome, they are becoming more passable by the day. Now farmers are turning to evaluating flooded crops, hayfields and stored bales to determine how much damage the rains caused to what their livestock needs to eat. 

“In our hilly state, some of our most fertile farmland lies in the river valleys,” Tebbetts said at the Friday morning event. Across Vermont, “countless fields of corn, hay, vegetables, fruit and pasture were swamped and buried,” he said.

Heather Darby, an agronomist with the University of Vermont Extension service, is visiting many of them. On Friday, she traveled from Swanton to Hardwick by car to lend her expert eye. She helped write two different informational sheets for farmers on flooded corn and flooded forage.

So far she has been pleased to see that most of the corn and soybean fields she has examined appear likely to recover. Unlike Tropical Storm Irene, which occurred in late summer, those crops are younger and should regrow and bounce back. 

“Corn does have the ability to sort of stand itself back up, so it’s really a watch-and-see game for a lot of the fields right now,” Darby said. 

Hayfields are another story. They are her biggest concern right now. 

Most farmers had been waiting to take the second or third cut of this year’s hay until after the latest bout of rain. Where a field was flooded, that entire cutting is lost. 

“They’ve got to chop it off and get it off the field so that those grasses can regrow,” Darby said. 

If farmers want to try to save it, the crop should be stored separately from non-flooded silage and tested repeatedly for bacteria and toxins produced by fungus or mold. 

At the farm she was headed to in Hardwick, flooded by the Lamoille River, even that may not be possible. 

“The fields have so much debris on them, and there is so much silt on the fields, so we are not sure if the grass will die,” she said. She is going to try to advise the owners on whether they need to replant entirely. 

For bales and other stored silage that got wet, the future is questionable. Some may be usable, but also need to be repeatedly tested. If hay was fully submerged for several days, it’s unlikely that it is safe for animals to eat, even if wrapped, Darby said. 

Jane Clifford, who runs an eighth-generation dairy farm in Starksboro with her husband, said her farm was spared, but she has close friends in the region who had hundreds of active acres underwater. 

While the losses are large, and dairy farming has unique challenges, farmers are aware they are just one of many small businesses who are reeling right now, she said. 

“It’s frustrating. It’s hard. But for those of us in the industry, it’s a business,” Clifford said. “I look at all the businesses in downtown Montpelier or Barre that were impacted. I look at it that we are all kind of in the same boat.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s dairy industry saved majority of milk supply during catastrophic storm.

On Tuesday morning, Vermont Language Justice Project released a series of informational videos about flood safety in 16 languages, including Maay Maay, a primarily oral language spoken in Somalia. 

The video was independently produced with local interpreters, using grant funding the organization received last year from the Department of Health. It was subsequently shared by state agencies including Vermont Emergency Management.

But Alison Segar, the language project’s director, argued the effort left too many Vermonters behind the curve in an emergency. An estimated 8,000 Vermonters’ primary language is not English and more than 30 languages are spoken in the state, according to state and federal data, including among growing immigrant and refugee communities from Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

Concerns about the forecast grew over the weekend, heavy rainfall began pelting the state on Sunday night and Vermonters awoke to dangerous conditions on Monday.

“When it comes to emergency management, I feel like we’re always one step behind,” Segar said on Tuesday.

The video series was not commissioned by any state agency, she said, but rather a community effort that was turned around in 24 hours in response to the severe flooding. 

“We could have been proactive as opposed to reactive,” she said. “We’re a day behind.”

Segar noted with optimism that the Vermont Emergency Management website has flood-related advice available in nine languages, and acknowledged the high cost of translation work. But she wondered how many people were able to even navigate to the website to access that information, given disparate levels of internet access and other barriers.

Some languages are oral rather than written and some people are not literate in their languages, she added. 

“I think that’s a really good start,” she said. “But it really doesn’t address the problem.”

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 1.3% of Vermont’s population, or some 7,700 people, speak English less than “very well.” That figure doesn’t account for refugee resettlement in the fiscal year of 2022, which totaled 387 people, according to the State Refugee Office. 

In a statement to VTDigger on Tuesday, Vermont Emergency Management said it “has been working on enhancing our ability to communicate with non-English speakers for some time and it continues to be a high priority for us.” The agency highlighted the Vermont Language Justice Project videos, as well as an emergency preparedness workbook on its website. Available translations vary by topic and range between nine and 15 languages, including Burmese, Dari, Kiswahili and Russian.

As officials move into recovery efforts, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will have translated materials and “backup interpreters” available, the state agency said. 

“(Vermont Emergency Management) has a contractor that does our translations, and we plan to add more information and languages,” the agency said in its statement. “The turnaround time is not sufficient to translate emergency messages in a timely manner during an event, so we do all we can to educate everyone ahead of time.”

Ahead of the rainfall, the Department of Health said in a statement, staff had “emailed some of our materials to their list of health equity partners, including those who work with non-English speaking populations.” The department said that it continually updates multilingual resources on its website. 

‘People need to know’

The dearth of translated materials has made access to information insufficient for thousands of Vermonters in this emergency — and other potential rapid-onset disasters like a chemical spill, said Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden Southeast District, in an interview. 

Under federal law, federal agencies are required to implement a system so that people who speak other languages can still have “meaningful access” to their services. 

“People need to know about shelters, evacuations and road closures,” Ram Hinsdale said. 

She noted that interpreter services are available when dialing 211 and 511. She also pointed to the Department of Health website, which offers flood safety tips in 14 languages. 

But, “it’s static,” she said. “It’s not any kind of information about what’s happening right now.” 

The state’s Office of Racial Equity issued a language access report at the start of this year, outlining the various gaps, including that most of the state’s emergency communications are not available in any language other than English and “are seldom translated into (American Sign Language) or other signed languages.” 

The state senator said she has pushed for a multilingual contract with Everbridge, the vendor that powers the state’s mass notification system VT Alerts. Alternatively, she said the state could liaise with community partners to get live emergency information relayed in Whatsapp groups that local Somali and Nepali communities already use. 

Some cities already have initiatives in place. Paul Sarne, a spokesperson for the City of Winooski, said in a statement that a city staffer had been in communication with multilingual residents through the texting app Whatsapp.

“The state has been working on their own language access plans, but I’ve been (saying) you need an emergency language access plan,” Ram Hinsdale said, arguing that the state should have kept the Vermont Language Justice Project “on retainer for this moment.” 

Xusana Davis, the state’s executive director of racial equity, said that in addition to at least 34 languages spoken in Vermont, there are at least 70,000 people in the state who are affected by hearing loss. The conversation around language access is “inextricably linked to disability rights and accessibility in the state,” she said.  

In what Davis called “a milestone,” the state budget, which was approved in May, carved out $2.3 million for translating existing vital documents and $700,000 in maintenance and ad hoc needs. But when producing translated content in a time-sensitive manner, there are myriad technical considerations. 

The urgency of translated emergency communications is not lost on Davis. 

“For those of us who come from immigrant families,” she said, “this has been a struggle and a challenge and a fear for all of our lives in the states.” 

‘Not a single alert in any other language’

Organizations who serve communities on the ground said they understand the challenges of providing translation services. 

But this is “life-saving information,” said Amila Merdzanovic, director of the Vermont field office of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. 

“All the alerts were sent out in English,” she said. “Not a single alert was sent in any other language.” 

Merzdanovic was encouraged by the close cooperation of the state with community groups during the pandemic and said that with “continued dialogue and coordination … progress follows.” 

​​Merzdanovic and two other leaders in immigrant communities — Will Lambek, of Migrant Justice in Burlington, and Joe Wiah, director of the Ethiopian Community Development Council in Brattleboro — said their teams are in contact with their members to ensure proper guidance if anyone is affected by the severe rainfall. 

“We always put it this way: We’re building this ship as we go,” Wiah said. “The state and other providers have really stepped up; it’s just we all collectively haven’t gotten there yet.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, Vermont Language Justice Project’s website had received at least 2,800 views in the prior 48 hours, a substantial jump from its daily average of 150 views. Segar pointed to those numbers as reassuring evidence that their videos are reaching their intended audience. Her team is now working on a video series about contaminated drinking water. 

“We’re just doing what we think is the right thing to do,” she said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Advocates bemoan ‘not a single alert in any other language’ at flooding’s outset.

VTDigger reporters and photographers captured scenes in the flooded capital on Tuesday, as many waited anxiously for news of whether floodwaters would recede, or whether Wrightsville Dam would pass its capacity and send more water into the city.

Click on any of the smaller photos below to enlarge. View our photos from around the state on Monday, submit your own photos and videos and follow our latest coverage.

Read the story on VTDigger here: PHOTOS: Vermont’s capital under floodwaters.

At Northern Stage in White River Junction, crew members look at the weather forecast every morning to figure out if, between heat and rain, they will be able to work outside. The outdoor stage first built to adapt to the Covid-19 pandemic has become a permanent part of the setup. 

When a reporter visited, the crew was busy setting it all up for the opening of “Sense and Sensibility,” the play the company is performing until July 9. All the sets were built in house, but that may not happen again. For the next play, “Twelfth Night,” which opens Aug. 1, half the sets are being built on site and half are being built a three-hour drive away by Upstate Scenic, a company in Chatham, New York, that constructs sets for theater and film. 

Next season, the theater company will work with the contractor to figure out what makes sense to build on site and what makes sense to contract out. 

The company experimented with this approach in March, with its production of “Sweat,” and “it went extraordinarily well,” said Jason Smoller, Northern Stage’s managing director.

Northern Stage decided to outsource its set construction because space is tight and staff is hard to find, said Brian Sekinger, director of production. Upstate Scenic also works with Weston Theater Company and other local companies, he said

A lot of people, particularly in set construction, “pivoted to other careers”  during the pandemic, Sekinger said. “They either went into more industrial construction or building houses or just sort of left and did something totally different.”

Set construction is just one of the ways that theater companies across Vermont have adapted in permanent ways to changes imposed by the pandemic. They have outsourced the work on sets, let theatergoers pick their ticket prices, and performed more outdoors in summer as they try to regain audiences that have yet to return to pre-pandemic numbers.

“The pandemic isn’t over,” said Cristina Alicea, managing creative director of Vermont Stage, which is based in Burlington but also produces a summer outdoor play at Isham Farm in Williston. “We’re still dealing with audiences not fully back yet.”

Reconstructing career pathways

Like Northern Stage, other companies have moved outdoors in summer. 

Lyric Theatre Company in South Burlington adapted to outdoor plays for young audiences during the pandemic, and those have become part of the company’s regular programming, said Erin Evarts, the company’s executive director. In June, the company performed outside at three public libraries and at the Shelburne Museum.

Weston Theater Company also took its programming for children outside in 2021, and never went back. And, the company is also performing those plays in towns beyond its home. 

“It’s now a free tour for audiences all over southern Vermont,” said Susanna Gellert, the company’s executive artistic director. The troupe perform for free outdoors in Grafton, Brownsville, Springfield and Rutland, transforming a show that used to reach about 800 people to one that reaches more than 4,000.

But the workers employed in the field of building those sets are fewer and farther between.

Sekinger said that, nationwide, about 30% of theater technicians went into other careers during the pandemic. 

“So we’ve been starting to rebuild,” he said. “There just aren’t the same number of people that there were before.”

Early-career professionals, Sekinger said, did not get the same hands-on experience in college during the pandemic they would have before. For instance, they were not able to produce in person, on stage, because so much theater was on Zoom.

Between the shortage of experienced people and the lack of experience of new people, he said, the alternative to contracting work out would be to have staff members work 60 to 80 hours a week.

Full houses

The housing shortage is another factor leading to a dearth of technical professionals, Sekinger said. To alleviate housing costs for its employees, Northern Stage has bought some properties in the area and leased others, he said. 

“During the pandemic, everybody moved up from New York, bought up all the housing and sort of stayed, which means there isn’t as much housing in the area for new people coming into the organization,” he said.

Smoller concurs: “It is becoming increasingly difficult to hire. It all comes down to housing.”

Weston Theater has taken another direction toward lowering housing costs for members of the company, at least in summer. It has formed a partnership with a company that in winter houses staff at Okemo Mountain Resort in Ludlow. That housing was not being used in summer, so Weston Theater is renting it. 

While outsourcing set construction, Sekinger said Northern Stage retains creative control over those sets.

“We just send them drawings and paint renderings and research images and say: ‘This is how we want it to look,’” he said. “And then it just shows up here.”

Josh Davis, Northern Stage’s technical director, goes to the shop in New York to make sure that it is building what was drawn, and to answer questions.

“And making sure that if they’re supposed to be painting something blue and we’re building something blue and those blue things touch each other, then it’s the same color blue,” Sekinger said. 

Material differences

It’s a pretty significant shift in the industry right now, Sekinger said, for small regional theaters to acknowledge they cannot staff up the way they would pre-pandemic. 

Sekinger said Northern Stage is adapting in other ways because materials are hard to get or cost more than they used to. He points to the painted plywood made to look like tiles on the floor of the outdoor stage set.

“We do a lot of painting wood to look like other other materials because it’s cheaper or easier to get wood than it is to get some of those other materials,” he said.

Another adaptation, Smoller said, is that Northern Stage is paying closer attention to what its audience wants. That change came about after the company staged “Spring Awakening” last year. The musical is about loss of innocence, abortion and teenage suicide.

“And the feedback we heard from people was it is just too difficult and too sad for this moment,” Smoller said. “So we thought oh, no, we can’t do sad plays anymore.”

Smoller said the company’s artistic director, Carol Dunne, considered pulling the next play, “Sweat,” but the company, proud to put the play on, decided to go ahead. The play deals with hard social issues, such as loss of jobs, poverty and addiction.

“This play deals with real issues, too,” said Smoller. “It is not about teen suicide, which is very difficult to grapple with.”

Smoller said it was universally well received. 

“Our audiences loved it,” he said. “So many folks told us: ‘That is the best thing I have seen at Northern Stage.’”

The response reaffirmed that the company’s audiences still want challenging theater.

“They don’t want sad theater, necessarily, but it’s not that they just want to see ‘The Little Mermaid’ or ‘A Christmas Carol’ again,” Smoller said. “So what has changed for us permanently is we are really conscious of what people are looking for, and the season we are offering next season doesn’t have any ‘sad’ titles.”

That said, Smoller said, some people do want “A Christmas Carol,” and Northern Stage will offer a new adaptation of the play this year. 

A push toward youth

If the pandemic led adults to avoid depressing plays, Smoller said young people are just looking for more in-person connection and belonging after years on Zoom, and so he is seeing increasing interest in the company’s intensive youth ensemble studios. 

The studios offer students an opportunity to learn on the stage of a professional theater company, with professional actors, designers and directors. 

In addition, he said, high school students are looking for inclusivity and belonging, and are drawn to theater by virtue of the fact that it is not closely associated with a particular gender.

“We don’t run a men’s lacrosse team,” he said. ”Even in high school, students who are grappling with their identity have to choose: ‘OK, if I’m going to be on the swim team, it’s the boys’ swim team or the girls’ swim team.’ And theater isn’t that. You never have to opt into one or the other.”

Teens tell him they find an inclusive place at Northern Stage, he said.

What does a ticket cost?

Another change brought about by the pandemic: Audiences are buying tickets at the last minute, said Evarts, at the Lyric Theater. She said the national trend is that tickets are being bought in the last week to 10 days before a show, and the Lyric is finding that, as well.

Alicea said Vermont Stage also contends with waiting for last-minute ticket purchases. 

Last year, Weston Theater brought in another big change. Having trouble persuading people to buy subscriptions, it started letting patrons pick the price they want to pay for one. The company offered three prices for exactly the same seats. As a result, Gellert said, subscriptions doubled last year, and this year, the company had already sold more subscriptions before the season started than it did during the entire year last year.

This year, Weston Theater is also letting people pay what they will for previews — performances before a show is reviewed. 

“You can choose to pay zero,” said Gellert. 

Last year, Vermont Stage found that subscriptions dropped by half, and “I’m finding that a lot of people are still hesitant to sign up for a full year,” said Alicea. She believes the experience of the pandemic is leading people to wait and see before making long-term commitments.

“My hope is that people don’t wait and see too long, because it could spell trouble for our organization and others,” said Alicea. 

This year, Vermont Stage, too, is letting people pay what they will for both subscriptions and individual performances. The company is letting patrons pay one of three prices — $24, $44 or $64 — for a general admission ticket. If people pay $64, they are helping to subsidize the people who pay $24, said Alicea. 

The company also offers three prices for subscriptions, with the same number of shows for each and also for general admission: $89, $149 and $209.

Based on early sales of subscriptions, most people are paying $149, Alicea said, which is what she assumed would happen. But the company thought the second-largest group would be people who paid $89, and that has not turned out to be the case. Instead, more people are buying at the $209 price, a sign that patrons want to support the organization, she said. 

“They’re definitely showing up for us in that way,” Alicea said. “It’s deeply appreciated.”

Alicea said she was inspired to offer the pick-your-price model by Andy Butterfield, the marketing director at Weston Theater. Sharing information about what works is how theater companies hope to rebuild their field, she said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: The Covid-19 pandemic has brought lasting changes to Vermont’s theater companies.

Defying the predictions of abortion advocates, providers and state lawmakers, the number of out-of-state patients who traveled to Vermont to obtain abortions did not increase, but in fact dropped, in the year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade case precedent, according to preliminary data from the state Department of Health.

When the court’s conservative majority issued its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision last June, the country became a patchwork of disparate reproductive health laws. In states with so-called trigger laws, abortion was severely restricted or outright banned once the decision was issued. Other state legislatures, emboldened by the court ruling, worked quickly to impose new restrictions on the procedure in their respective states.

Vermont lawmakers had seen a post-Roe future coming, and proactively worked to expand access to abortion within Vermont’s boundaries — not only with Vermonters in mind, but also for out-of-state patients who they foresaw traveling from their respective states to obtain the procedure.

Experts never expected a tsunami of out-of-state patients, largely because Vermont is a remote, rural state that can be difficult or cost-prohibitive to travel to from far distances. When the high court issued its Dobbs decision, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England predicted a modest 10% increase in out-of-state patients.

But according to preliminary data that VTDigger requested from the Vermont Department of Health, even that didn’t come to pass. As of this week, the department reports that from June 24, 2022 — the day of the Dobbs decision — through early June 2023, a total of 925 abortions were completed in Vermont. Of those, 154 were performed on non-Vermont residents — roughly 17%. (Due to reporting lag time, the department was unable to provide data from the latter portion of June 2023.)

By comparison, in all of 2021, 215 out-of-state patients obtained abortions in Vermont, representing nearly 21% of the 1,033 abortions completed in the state that year.

Since 2018, the proportion of out-of-state patients who obtain abortions in Vermont has remained relatively stable, hovering between 17 and 22% every year. But mirroring national trends, the total number of abortion patients in the state — both those who hail from Vermont and those who don’t — has trended downward.

In the year since Roe fell, a handful of patients traveled to Vermont from far-flung states where an abortion is difficult to obtain: Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and Texas, to name a few. But most out-of-state patients traveled from nearby states, where access to abortion is, in theory, about on par with Vermont: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island. More than half of all out-of-state patients came from New Hampshire, mirroring past years’ trends.

Vermont’s clinics had anticipated such a trend, according to Lucy Leriche, vice president of Vermont public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. “There are a lot of reasons why people from out-of-state are getting an abortion in our region,” she said, speaking of Vermont as well as New Hampshire and Maine.

Sometimes northern New England is where the patient has a family member or support system to assist in the process, Leriche said. Perhaps they are fleeing a domestic violence situation. They could be attending college here, but a legal resident elsewhere. Maybe they just want more privacy. Or perhaps, if they hail from a nearby state that has more patients, such as New York or Massachusetts, they couldn’t get an appointment at home. A domino effect in appointment availability can ensue, Leriche said.

Planned Parenthood — the largest provider of abortions in Vermont, and nationwide — declined to provide state-specific data on its own out-of-state patients, citing concerns over patient privacy and safety. But in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont combined, the organization earlier this month reported a 12.5% increase in out-of-state patients “seeking abortion at our health centers,” according to a June press release.

Beyond patient data, Leriche said the impact of the Dobbs decision was palpable in other ways. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England’s call center was “inundated” immediately after the ruling was made, she said. Online, the organization’s website had its largest one-day spike in web traffic on June 24, 2022, the day of the court’s ruling. “That is, I think, a really strong indicator of the response,” Leriche said.

The Dobbs decision “is very destabilizing and very anxiety-producing, and causes a lot of confusion and anxiety and fear and panic,” Leriche said.

Leriche said the organization is trying to keep its messaging on target, emphasizing that abortion remains legal in Vermont. This legislative session, state lawmakers passed landmark shield laws protecting Vermont-based abortion providers — and to some extent, patients who travel to the state — from out-of-state abortion prosecutions or investigations.

Read the story on VTDigger here: In the year after Roe fell, out-of-state abortion patients did not flock to Vermont.

This story by Patrick Adrian was first published by the Valley News on July 5.

WEST LEBANON, New Hampshire — With berry season underway, Upper Valley farmers said their pick-your-own patches could use more sunshine to offset June’s rainy days and cool temperatures. A mid-May freeze also killed or damaged many fruit blossoms.

While the impact may not be as noticeable to customers, the problems have been especially acute for strawberry growers. But a lack of sunlight and warmth also is causing delays to the start of raspberry and blueberry picking at many farms, as well as some anxiety about the weather to come.

“This has been a spring and early summer to forget,” said Becky Nelson of Beaver Pond Farm in Newport, New Hampshire. “We, like everyone else, are waterlogged. … We are hoping for some sunshine soon to sweeten the berries, as too much rain and not enough sunshine affect the taste.”

Newport saw nearly 5 inches of rainfall in June, the most for that month since 2015, which recorded 5.7 inches.

This amount of rainfall is not unprecedented, several farmers said. Since 2010, there have been five years where the Upper Valley accumulated at least 4 inches in June.

However, this past June the rain mostly occurred during the final two weeks — the heart of the strawberry-picking season.

On Tuesday, Wellwood Orchards in Springfield, Vermont, announced a sale on its PYO — or pick-your-own — strawberries of $1.99 per pint, a discount of 60%.

Linda Friedman, co-owner of Wellwood, said the end-of-season strawberry sale is intended to “clean up” the harvestable berries that remain in the patches.

“There are a lot of soft or rotting berries because of the rain, but there are a lot of good ones, too,” Friedman said. “And if people are making jam, they don’t care if some berries are soft.”

In previous summers, the strawberry picking might have continued an additional week, though the wetness and the lack of sun are limiting the season to three weeks, which is just within the low end of the average season duration, according to Friedman.

What has most impacted Upper Valley fruit growers this year was the brutal cold snap in May, which not only impacted early varieties of raspberries and blueberries but fruit trees including apples, peaches and cherries.

Wellwood, whose PYO apple orchard is a popular tourist destination during the fall, lost nearly all its apple blossoms — as well as its peach, plum and cherry blossoms — when the low temperature on May 18 plummeted to 23 degrees.

As a result, Friedman said that strawberries, raspberries and blueberries are Wellwood’s only pick-your-own fruits this year.

“That’s the really serious storyline,” Friedman said. “We’ll be lucky to have enough apples to put on our store shelves. We will have to try to be creative with our events in the fall.”

Friedman partly attributed the freeze’s impact to bad timing, in that it struck right when many fruit trees and bushes were blossoming.

“If it had happened a few days earlier or a few days later,” the freeze might not have such an issue, Friedman noted.

Keith and Kristy Brodeur, owners of Bascom Road Blueberry Farm in Newport, New Hampshire, said the freeze killed the blossoms on their early-variety blueberry bushes.

“Farmers in the last 50 years haven’t seen it get that cold that late into the season,” said Keith Brodeur, who researched historical records to determine the rarity of the freeze.

Brodeur said on Monday his opening date for pick-your-own blueberries will be about “a week to 10 days” later than past years.

“We were tentatively hoping to open this (coming) weekend, but we will need multiple days of sun (to fully ripen the fruit),” Brodeur said.

Pete Bartlett, of Bartlett’s Blueberry Farm in Newport, New Hampshire, also said his opening this year will be later than his “average” start date in recent years, which has usually been around the second week of July.

Bartlett noted that blueberry production in recent years has been ramping up slightly earlier than 30 years ago due to warmer temperatures in the growing area.

Nelson, of Beaver Pond Farm, who hopes to open her pick-your-own raspberries later this week, said the cold snap did some damage to her early-variety raspberries.

“The blueberries look good, and the raspberries seem to be starting out OK,” Nelson said. “We are beginning to see some frost damage, or ‘winter kill,’ in the raspberries where they seem to be forming a full crop, but then the vascular structure can’t keep up with the vascular damage. They look great at first, but then they wither and die before the berries are pickable.”

Pooh Sprague, owner of Edgewater Farm in Plainfield, New Hampshire, noted that the impacts of this season’s weather — including the cold snap — will differ from one farm to the next, based on their crops and operation.

While Edgewater provides pick-your-own strawberries, the majority of Sprague’s strawberries are harvested for wholesale — which relieves some of the stress about leaving berries exposed in the field to heavy amounts of moisture or about rain driving away customers to pick the berries.

“Pick-your-own is nice, but it’s not a dependable way to get rid of your crop,” Sprague said.

The rainfall has its benefits, Sprague noted. It helps the blueberries “size up,” for example. And despite the rain, the strawberries this year have been surprisingly flavorful.

But the rain needs to be balanced with sunshine, growers said.

“The biggest problem with the excess wet in any fields that have swales or dips is the potential for a waterborne fungal disease called phytopthora root rot,” Nelson said. “We lost an entire planting to it in the past, so we are hoping it doesn’t make a resurgence, as it can destroy entire raspberry plantings and affect other crops planted in that space down the road.”

“There is no amount of cultivating practice or chemical spray as a remedy when you’re dealing with this much wet and mugginess,” Sprague said.

The current weather forecast looks more promising than previously anticipated, with several fully or partly sunny days projected between today and July 14.

“I think it’s going to be an average year for us,” Brodeur said.

“But it’s hard to say until the season’s over.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Slim pickings: Little sun, too much rain slowing Upper Valley berry season.

The Bennington Rescue Squad and the Turning Point Center of Bennington have launched a new kind of partnership to reach people with substance use disorders who have so far been falling through the cracks. The Vermont Office of Emergency Medical Services calls it the first collaboration of its kind in the state.

Whenever the rescue squad responds to a substance-related call – many of them nonfatal opioid overdoses – emergency responders offer to take patients to the local emergency room, where volunteer peer coaches with the Turning Point Center are on standby to talk about paths to recovering from substance abuse.

But of the 20 to 30 emergency calls the squad receives every month, at least 25% of the patients refuse to be taken to the hospital, said squad director Bill Camarda. For those five to 10 people, emergency responders can only leave them with opioid antidote kits and printed information about where to seek help.  

“They really don’t want to have anything to do with the health care system,” Camarda said. “But at the same time, they’re not in the right mindset to be like, ‘I really need some help right now.’”

He said those patients are deterred by several factors: the stigma attached to drug use, a belief that nothing can help them, or preoccupation with getting their next dose, which will get rid of withdrawal symptoms.

After seeing dozens of local residents with substance use disorder fall through cracks in the system each year, the two Bennington nonprofit organizations decided to partner on another way to reach them. 

Starting June 9, when someone who shows signs or a history of substance use disorder refuses to be taken to the emergency department by the Bennington Rescue Squad, Camarda said paramedics on scene ask for written consent to share the patient’s name, contact information and case summary with the Turning Point Center.

If patients agree, peer coaches will visit them within 24 to 48 hours and discuss the resources available in combating substance use disorder. 

“We have the opportunity to potentially get ahead of some of these crises,” said Margae Diamond, executive director of the Bennington Turning Point Center.

Like they do at the hospital emergency room, the coaches may discuss medication-assisted treatment, psychotherapy, recovery coaching, support group meetings and organizations that can help with finding work or a new home.

During these home visits, Diamond said, recovery coaches will pair up with a local mental health professional from United Counseling Service, in recognition that substance use and mental health are often closely linked.

On top of the growing number of opioid overdose deaths, the Bennington recovery center is also concerned about the pervasive use of alcohol. The state Department of Health has reported that last year in Vermont, excessive alcohol use was associated with nearly one in four deaths among people ages 20-34 and nearly one in five deaths of those ages 35-49.

ALCOHOL-RELATED DEATHS AMONG VERMONTERS

“The ricochet of problems that develop from long-term alcohol use is something that we’d like to be able to identify earlier and provide some connection to resources,” Diamond said.

Since the partnership’s launch in June, however, only three patients have allowed the rescue squad to share their information with the recovery center. The leaders of both organizations say they’re working on strategies to increase participation, such as fine-tuning how their staffers communicate with patients.

Still, the state EMS Office lauds the initiative, saying it’s a model for other Vermont communities. 

“The seriousness of the opioid crisis and increasing number of overdoses and deaths necessitates innovation and locally developed solutions,” said Bambi Dame, the state health department’s emergency medical services chief.

She said some groups in Chittenden County are already discussing setting up a similar partnership.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Bennington ambulance service and recovery center team up to reach drug users.

Susan Ladmer first wrote to a reporter in early June, asking for help.

“I am currently housed in a homeless motel. I am a 77 year old woman who suffered a stroke in December. Despite tremendous efforts to find out where I will be in July, at the end of the emergency housing program, no one can tell me,” she wrote at the time. “Just the stress of trying to find out and of trying to make certain I have somewhere to live is presently life threatening.”

Ladmer would not get clarity until last week. Two days before she was initially set to be booted from a pandemic-era program sheltering homeless people in motels, Gov. Phil Scott signed a measure that gives her and nearly 2,200 other people the option to stay where they are until April. (Participants will need to leave sooner if the state can identify alternate shelter for them.)

That extended help comes with new strings, including the requirement that motel residents begin paying 30% of their incomes toward the cost of their stays. The rule mirrors one that was included in the state’s pre-pandemic shelter program, as well as the federal standard for Section 8 vouchers. 

Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, who played a key role in negotiating the new law, argued it’s only fair to ask households to begin paying in.

“There has to be some reciprocity here between the household and their responsibilities and the publicly funded benefit,” she said.

But this latest news, which Ladmer received only days before she was told she would have to pay, has left her panicked and infuriated. She said a state worker calculated that she’ll owe about $300 a month, a third of her monthly Social Security check.

“I’m out of money now. I mean, I’m at the end of the month, and that was with the $300,” she told VTDigger last week. “I don’t see how I can manage without it. I mean — I know I can’t.”

Ladmer noted that those who are eligible for vouchers until April, such as herself, qualified for the help in part because they met certain special criteria. They are elderly, receive federal disability benefits, have children, are pregnant, or are fleeing domestic violence, for example. 

The state is “putting the load of handling the motels on the vulnerable people,” she said, “as if that answers the money problem, when the money problem is created by the overpayment to the motels.”

Back when the federal government was picking up the tab for the program, Vermont did, for some time, allow motels to name their price, although state officials later capped the monthly rate at $5,250. The state is now paying for the program, and the latest legislation instructs the Agency of Human Services to negotiate further reduced rates with motels.

But motel owners don’t necessarily have to accept lower rates. Ladmer, on the other hand, is now required to give a third of her income to maintain her shelter. She filed an appeal but predicted it will be an “exercise in futility.”

Ladmer’s road to the Rutland Quality Inn where she now lives with her two dogs has been long and winding. Born in New York, Ladmer once worked as a museum administrator and, later, a horse trainer. But a chronic pain condition called complex regional pain syndrome largely took her out of the workforce in the late 1990s. 

She found a doctor who helped her manage the pain through hypnosis, and, after relocating to New Hampshire, tried to find work again. But employers wouldn’t hire her, she said, because her medical condition threatened to spike their insurance premiums. 

Struggling to finish paying off her home and property taxes, and seeing no other options, she took out a reverse mortgage — a move she said she knew was a bad deal, even at the time she made it. She tried to supplement her income by selling antiques, but couldn’t make enough, and lost the house.

“I have accomplished things in my life, many things I’m very proud of. And it’s hard now to be stripped of everything,” she said. “I thought I could get out of it.”

Last spring, she moved to Vermont with her dogs, attempting to make it work in an RV on land in Cavendish. But then came the fall’s cooler temperatures, and in November friends insisted she move into a local hotel, where the state was sheltering people experiencing homelessness.

Her initial plan had been to return to the camper after the winter. But it has no running water, no electricity, no sewer hookup, and no cell phone service. Still recovering from a stroke, which struck her in December and hospitalized her for nine days, Ladmer no longer thinks she could survive in the RV.

But neither does she think she can afford what the state wants her to pay. Between car payments, financing on the camper, credit card debt she took on during the move, insurance, and food, all of her money is already budgeted.

“Believe me, I tried every which way to make this thing work out. And as I’m sitting in this situation, I just wish there was some other way to make it work out because I hate this,” she said. “I truly, truly hate this.”

As she spoke to a reporter over the phone, a friend’s husband stopped by to drop off forms she needed to fill out to apply for housing and services. She paused for a moment to begin leafing through the stack of paperwork.

“God. You know, I used to write grant applications for the museum. And I swear they weren’t as involved as these applications are,” she said. “They were for a lot more money, too.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘I don’t see how I can manage’: In Rutland, a motel resident struggles with uncertainty.

This story by Tommy Gardner was first published by the Stowe Reporter on June 29.

“Rush hour” has long been a grossly inaccurate way to describe making a left turn off West Hill Road during the afternoon commute. Now, drivers have the green light.

Last week, workers finally flipped the switch on Stowe’s very first tri-colored traffic signal, located at the corner of Route 100 and West Hill Road, one of the town’s worst intersections.

“All the feedback I’m getting from locals has been positive, although I do wonder how some of the people from the northern part of the county are feeling,” Stowe public works director Harry Shepard said this week. “There’s no doubt that the people on West Hill can more practically make a left-hand turn.”

Stowe police Detective Lt. Fred Whitcomb said Wednesday shortly before press deadline that, in the traffic light’s first week in operation, there hadn’t been any vehicle crashes. Police did nab one person for running a red light, but Whitcomb said no one has been busted doing it on purpose.

“We’re just trying to make sure people stay patient with the biggest traffic pattern change in Stowe in some time,” he said.

Years of increasingly large traffic buildups on West Hill Road caused by people trying to make a left turn onto Route 100 spurred the town in 2016 to hire a consulting firm to study the best way to solve problems at the intersection, and it was determined a traffic light was the best way.

According to the 2016 study, there were 17 crashes at West Hill Road and Route 100 during the five prior years. Six were broadside crashes, the type most linked to sight-line restrictions.

The traffic light construction started last year, but only included the road work necessary to widen Route 100 — also known as Pucker Street — north of West Hill Road and Maple Street south of it. That’s because supply chain problems caused a backlog on the actual signal components.

Shepard, an engineer by training, said traffic signal technology has evolved over the years. Gone are the days of waiting for a traffic light on a static timer to change when you’re the only one at the intersection.

“Pre-emption is an important part,” Shepard said.

Whitcomb said he has already seen one promising change in traffic patterns — more people are abiding by the 25-mph speed limit on Maple Street. He thinks that’s because drivers who get stopped at a red light are not approaching the village at 40-plus mph. Now, they are accelerating to reach 25 mph, not having to brake to do so.

“That’s the other thing I’m looking at, the constant pressure on Maple Street,” he said. “Hopefully, they won’t have that running start anymore.”

Now that the latest state highway project in Stowe is finished, Shepard is looking forward to the next big one on the list: the intersection of Luce Hill Road and Route 108. There, the state Agency of Transportation plans on widening the highway, adding a left-hand turn lane, and doing away with the Y-shaped intersection.

The state over the winter fast-tracked the project, with legislators in January citing in part the increased traffic along Mountain Road in recent winters caused by skiers and riders bound for Stowe Mountain Resort.

“This (traffic light) has been a long process, and hopefully Luce Hill can be done quicker,” Shepard said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Stowe flips the switch on its first traffic light.