Disaster relief fund to help farmers living on the edge

Aug. 30--ALBION, Maine -- Farmer Katia Holmes had gone to bring the cows in for milking the evening of July 28 when she noticed dark, dramatic clouds overhead that made her think a thunderstorm was coming to Misty Brook Farm in Albion.

"I had just got the cows up in the barn when it let loose," she said recently. "Then it was more like being in a hurricane than a thunderstorm. We had plum-sized hail and 70-plus mile an hour winds."

The microburst lasted just 10 minutes, during which the damaging winds and torrential rains pummeled the farm "in all directions," she said. The wind and hail ripped the foliage off vegetables, destroyed the rye field, blew the roofs off their barns and smashed the animal shelters.

"It was very devastating to see the whole farm flattened," she said.

Then the storm was over, but taking stock of and repairing the destruction left in its wake had just begun for Katia and Brendan Holmes, who moved their farm to Albion from Massachusetts in 2013. They lost vegetable and grain crops, buildings and about 80 meat and laying birds. In the days after the storm they learned the damage not covered by insurance added up to about $60,000 -- a lot of money for a small farming family.

They weren't sure how to proceed, but they wrote about the farm's disaster on their website and asked for help.

"Our cash flow will suffer from the vegetable, crop, and livestock losses, but we have faith in our friends, customers, and the healing of time," the Holmeses wrote on their website.

One month later, it's clear to Katia Holmes their faith was not misplaced. So far, they have had a "wonderful response" to their plea, including financial support and a lot of volunteers who have helped clean up the farm.

"We haven't recovered everything we've lost, but we feel we've made a lot of friends," she said. "And the support has been wonderful."

Also, she is pleased the devastating storm that hit their farm has been the impetus to launch the Maine Farmland Trust's new Farm Disaster Relief Fund.

"I'm happy we were the push to get it going," Katia Holmes said. "It's a really great thing that's being set up."

The new fund is something the Maine Farmland Trust, a nonprofit organization that works statewide to protect farmland and support farmers, has been thinking about for quite awhile, according to Outreach Director Ellen Sabina.

"The recent storm at Misty Brook incited us to make it happen," she said. "With the small scale of Maine farms, there's not the safety net of a lot of federal subsidies or things like that. Small farmers are often living on the edge. An event like this that causes $60,000 damage and wipes out crops you're harvesting now can be a really big blow to a farm."

The Maine Farmland Trust has seeded the disaster relief fund with $10,000 from its cash reserves, and is looking to supplement that with charitable gifts.

"There is an application process for this," Sabina said. "We aren't going to be just hearing about a fire and throwing money everywhere. It's geared towards farms that really need it, and farms that are using Maine Farmland Trust services in some way."

She said that means about 600 farms in the state would qualify to receive disaster relief funds through the organization.

"It doesn't limit the pool a whole lot," she said, adding farms struck by disaster, including "freak storms, definitely fires, any kind of natural disaster, flooding, ice storms," would be eligible to apply.

According to Sabina, the relief fund has been getting some traction in the past few days.

"It's happening. It's growing quickly," she said. "We're excited to help in a more meaningful way than just sharing a farm's bad news. We can make a difference by leveraging our nonprofit status and our philanthropic community."

For Katia and Brendan Holmes, busy with their 6- and 8-year-old children and bringing their certified organic, diverse vegetable, dairy, grain, meat and egg farm back from the brink, they use simpler words to describe what the help has meant to them.

"We will weather the storm," Katia Holmes said.

___

(c)2015 the Bangor Daily News (Bangor, Maine)

Visit the Bangor Daily News (Bangor, Maine) at www.bangordailynews.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.