The Flood of 2024: Message from Our Board of Directors
To Our Wonderful Members,
We are deeply appreciative of all of you, members new and old, who are partnering with us to grow wonderful organic food this summer. This past week has been quite challenging, but we are continuing to find great hope in our community through your support.
Your Uplifting Membership
Your membership is supporting the continued stewardship of our Intervale soil and the surrounding natural habitats. We are confident that our fields, with a fertile and meaningful agricultural history, will rebound to produce bountiful harvests once again.
Your membership is ensuring that we'll continue donating free and highly nutritious food to people in our community who otherwise might go without, through the Vermont Foodbank, Feeding Champlain Valley (formerly Feeding Chittenden), the Intervale Center, Food Not Bombs, NOFA VT's Senior Farm Share Program, and the People's Farmstand.
Your membership supports our hardworking staff who have been cleaning up, rebuilding and replanting to bring you as much delicious food as possible, all according to the strictest state and federal food-safety guidelines.
Your membership, for the long haul, is supporting our Farm's adaptations to climate-change challenges. With other Vermont farms, we are learning how to keep growing wonderful food while building the emergency systems for harvesting flood-threatened crops, diligent soil testing for ensuring comprehensive food-safety, and restoring the land and replanting crops for the best possible outcomes.
The Value of Your Food
For many years, the food you've been receiving has had a value of at least twenty-five percent higher than what you paid for, and even after last year's flooding, what you paid for matched the value of the food you received.
However, as this season's summer harvests will be less than expected, if this will meaningfully impact your household's food security, please do not hesitate to ask for a pro-rated refund. We will provide automatic pro-rated refunds for our Supported Share members.
Helping Intervale Farms
We can use your help to renovate plants and clean up! If you’d like to come out and help us pick up muddy things, you may join us as a volunteer. For dates and to sign up, click here and scroll down to see the Intervale Community Farm options
All the farms in the Intervale are dealing with huge crop failures and other flood-related losses. In the spirit of pulling together in this very challenging time, we hope that those who have the financial capacity to do so will donate to the Intervale Farmer Recovery Fund. All donations to the Center's Recovery Fund are tax-deductible.
The Intervale Center is the nonprofit stewardship organization for all the Intervale farms including our Intervale Community Farm, Diggers Mirth, Hallow Herb Farm, June Flower Farm, New Farms for New Americans, the People's Farm, Pitchfork Farm, and Sugarsnap. One-hundred percent of the funds raised will go to these farms including our Farm. Because of this support, we will not be doing a Go Fund Me fundraiser this year.
Together We Can
As your Board members, we are completely committed to the Intervale Community Farm Cooperative and what we can achieve going forward. In honor of our staff and of you, our members, we're in this for the long haul. We thank each of you so much for being ICF members and forming such an uplifting community!
Gratefully,
Abha Gupta
Bonnie Acker
Caroline Hauser
Jacob Holzberg-Pill
Lis Mickenberg
Maja Smith
Mark Twery
Mieko Ozeki
Pamela Kraynak
Members of the Intervale Community Farm Board of Directors