(bright mellow country music) - [Narrator] In the heart of Vermont's White River Valley, you'll find the unincorporated village of South Royalton.

Among its 500 residents are Ashley Loehr and Antoine Guerlain who purchased Hurricane Flats farm in 2022.

It's 37 acres of farmland that stretches along the river's edge, ground that brings both opportunity and uncertainty.

- We sell our produce through a farm stand here on the farm.

We do a farmer's market in Norwich, Vermont, on Saturdays, and then we sell wholesale.

- South Royalton is a close-knit farming community that's resilient in the face of a great deal of change they've seen in recent years.

Changes to the weather, threats to their crops, even changes to the farmers themselves.

Geo Honigford used to work this land, growing popcorn and hay for nearly three decades before selling it to Ashley and Antoine.

Geo says the increasing unpredictability of the weather was a key factor in his decision.

- We're getting this wild extremes of weather much faster than anybody else.

Precipitation has increased, snowfall has decreased, - Drought, floods, hail, really extremely heavy rain, extreme winds, all those things are happening all the time, and could happen at any minute.

- Geo figured that younger farmers would have the passion and creativity to work with these evolving challenges.

- They're great young people, they're great farmers, they got a great family, they've been great community members.

I couldn't be happier that they took over the farm.

- Poppy, we're almost there.

Can we pick some vegetables?

- Yeah, we should.

- [Narrator] Ashley and Antoine and their two kids wasted no time getting to know the community, growing certified organic popcorn, produce, and hay, and working on ways to better prepare for the weather changes that they faced almost immediately.

- Well, our first of the three years we've been here, the first year was droughty actually, three years ago.

- Extremely droughty.

- Extremely droughty.

- Yeah.

- [Narrator] Ashley says New England was once considered a relatively stable location for farming; but she says it's now often at the forefront of weather disasters, from the extreme drought they faced in their early days of farming, to the extreme flooding they experienced in 2023.

- So that flood was weird, 'cause it wasn't a hurricane, it wasn't a storm, it wasn't a tropical storm, it was just a rainy day, after many, many rainy days.

So the river was already high, and then it started raining in the morning, and then it kept raining, and then the water came up out of the river and into the fields.

- [Narrator] And once flood water touches the edible portion of a crop, it can no longer be sold to the public.

Ashley and Antoine lost 75% of their projected gross income.

For farmers in the White River Valley, the flood brought back painful memories of Hurricane Irene, which devastated the region in 2011.

That was during Geo's time as owner.

- It just hits you, you work so hard to get that, and then just to watch it all get ruined; I mean thousands of pounds of onions, thousands of pounds of sweet potatoes, you just turn 'em into the ground, 'cause you can't sell 'em, and it breaks your soul.

- [Narrator] But there were some key lessons farmers took from Irene, and the tumultuous years that came after.

- One of the things we did was reorganize our fields, so that our units of management are narrower and longer, so that we can do strip cropping.

- [Narrator] During severe weather events, strip cropping allows a crop like knee-high corn to act as a buffer to neighboring crops that are in different growth stages.

- You know, if things are at different growing stages, different life stages, different stages of maturity; when you got a flood, you have a little bit more flexibility in terms of what might make it and what might not, and some things can protect other things.

- [Narrator] Now they plant high-value crops closer together in the areas less likely to flood, and grow more flood-resilient crops that require less labor.

They also increased crop diversity by planting a mix of long season crops and short cycle crops that can fill the income gap caused by extreme weather crop loss.

After Hurricane Irene, Geo worked with a non-profit group called White River Partnership to plant a buffer of trees and shrubs along the river - In a flood situation, they act as speed bumps, they kind of slow the water down.

And if you slow the water down, you take the energy and your power out of the stream.

- Not to stop the water from coming in, 'cause you really can't do that, but it makes it so that less stuff washes in when the water comes in, and we really reaped the benefits of that.

- [Narrator] Ashley and Antoine are now working with the White River Partnership to grow about a thousand tiny trees that can be transplanted to farms throughout the region.

- One thing that we're really lucky for is that a lot of people care about this place and this farm, and it's been a part of their lives, and because I think there's a lot of people that want food to continue to be grown here.

- You have to sort of have an adaptive attitude, like, I think there's been moments where we've thought like- - Yeah.

- "Oh, should we not be farming on a floodplain?

You know, should we be farming on a hilltop?"

- Then you have a year like this and this beautiful soil, and you think, "Ah, one more year, let's try it."

(Ashley chuckles) - Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- [Narrator] Farming has never been an easy path, but here in the White River Valley, farmers face each challenge the way they always have: by adapting, innovating, practicing sustainability, and leaning on each other.

(child laughing)