Schoharie Valley
sastyk | September 12, 2011
A number of you have requested information about where to donate to in order to help folks in the northeast who are recovering from the floods. Please do donate if you can - there's a lot of need out here, some of which is evolving as it finally dries up and the sun comes out! There's a long slog ahead of a lot of folks here.
For Vermont Farmers, NOFA VT has put together a farmer emergency fund to provide grants for farmers who lost crops and livestock.
(BTW, I'm more than a little stunned that NOFA-NY has absolutely nothing on their website about NY farmers, flood relief or anything else…
sastyk | September 9, 2011The first thing you need to know is that no one ever complains. I've seen a few people cry, mostly about lost pets, but what they say is "we're so lucky."
They say "We're so lucky" as elders in their 80s and 90s put all the possessions of a lifetime out on the street to be hauled away as trash. One couple told me "We're so lucky - we saved our wedding album and one picture of all the grandchildren together." There wasn't time for more before they evacuated. "We're so lucky - the kids lost all their toys, but we're staying with friends who have girls the same size as mine, so they have…
sastyk | August 31, 2011Yesterday afternoon we put our work aside and drove down into the Schoharie Valley, at least as far as we could go. We wanted to check on friends in the area, and we had called down to Schoharie Valley Farms to see how they were doing and also ask about the status of the flowers I had ordered for a bar mitzvah this weekend. Despite the fact that just about everything else they had was destroyed, the flowers were unscathed. Moreover, they told us that since no one in the town had power, lights or time to preserve, we could come down and buy anything they had to preserve. So down we went,…
sastyk | August 30, 2011Thought you might want to see what the storm looked like from here. Let me note that this is a pretty minor situation - the farms in the valley that we rely most heavily on lost *all* of their crops - the whole thing was swept away by the storm.
Still, I admit, I broke into the chocolate the first time I saw my garden under the water.
You can see my poor flattened corn up there and a few cheerful echinacea flowers that at least for now have survived the flood. The back beds are wetland native herbs and plants - they at least will probably make it.
You can see the raging torrent that…