Backstory: The July Flood Was Personal for a Reporter Who Recalls Her 'Wettest Work Week'

Downtown Montpelier during the July flood Credit: Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

This “backstory” is a part of a collection of articles that describes some of the obstacles that Seven Days reporters faced while pursuing Vermont news, events and people in 2023.

When the flood hit Vermont this summer, I found myself living a double life. During the day I was a breaking-news reporter, driving across the state to interview Vermonters affected by the downpours; my coworkers and I worked long hours to bring a last-minute cover story to fruition.

After work, though, I was dealing with my own flood-related trouble. The Intervale in Burlington — home to my beloved collective garden — was underwater.

My misfortune was admittedly small potatoes compared to the wrenching tragedies I was witnessing while reporting: flooded homes, destroyed cars, decimated downtowns. But losing Seedsong — the name of the garden I’m a part of — was personally devastating.

When I first arrived in Burlington to work at Seven Days, in June 2022, I didn’t have many friends. I found Seedsong while perusing volunteer opportunities through City Market, Onion River Co-op’s member-worker program. After just one garden shift, I decided to officially join.

Unlike community gardens — where individuals have their own box plots — Seedsong members share one large garden. Members of Seedsong work weekly shifts, have monthly potlucks and share the harvest, no matter how big or small.

It made me feel at home in Vermont. I spent hours after work each week in the Intervale, harvesting carrots and squashing cucumber beetles alongside my new friends. In the winter, we spent evenings planning the next season’s garden. We had big ambitions: rows of garlic, spinach and a new variety of potatoes. In the spring, we planted fragile starts in cold soil.

The weekend before the flood, we had gathered to celebrate the garden’s July abundance. Green tomatoes blushed pink. Peonies had popped. Oblivious to the impending storm, a garden friend and I worried about sufficient watering.

When we learned that the Winooski River would most likely breach, we rushed to harvest what veggies we could alongside other farmers and gardeners at the Intervale. I drove straight from Johnson, where I had spent the day interviewing sources affected by the flooding, to sort through vegetables.

An Intervale garden path after the flood Credit: Melissa Pasanen

The next day, the water came, decimating our crops. As we mourned the lost harvest, we wondered: Could we eat a squash that never touched contaminated water? What about a tomato that grew after the flood? How long until we could replant? In fact, could we ever replant in this same spot?

I pitched a story about post-flood gardening to our food team and got to work. Some of what I learned determined Seedsong’s next steps. We waited more than a month before returning to our plot and decided to forego harvesting for the rest of the season. We planted cover crops to restore the nutritional health of the soil and tested our garden for heavy metal contamination.

I’m not glad that Seedsong flooded, but my front-row seat to the flood helped me better understand its toll.

The original print version of this article was headlined “Wettest Workweek”