Flood Relief in Thurston County

Thurston County(south of Seattle, where Olympia is located)was hit hard by the heavy rain here a few weeks ago. While my basement has some minor flooding there were farms there with many feet of water rushing through their fields, barns, work vehicles, and houses. Many Western Washington residents rely on these farms for locally grown organic food.

(click link for more photos)

Larry Leveen sent me this first hand view of it earlier this month. He has been volunteering at Boistfort Valley Farm during his days off to help clean up from the flooding.

It’s hard to comprehend the exact impact of having say six feet of standing water on your property/in your house. I can’t believe how stressful that would be. I’d probably freak out.

Yesterday I was at Rising River Farm, where their vehicles were on high ground and their house was spared, but their outbuildings here hit hard. Still, an older tractor that was disassembled now has mud inside the engine case — how will that ever come out? Beats me. We built high storage shelves. a loft and put a second story on their pump house so the well and tank could be raised up 8 feet. There is a lot of help from the community. A downtown pizza place sent a bunch
of pies down to the work party and by the time I got home, there was a message from them offering to do that and for any future work parties on any local farms. The woman got my name from a mutual friend and she’s callling me to offer that. How cool?

Today we took pizza and hot coffee to a work party at our friend Diana’s place, Simply Life Farm where we demo’d wrecked greenhouses, clean and sorted things (trash, recyclables,salvageables). Diana lost a bunch,but has been busy helping other folks who have been hit worse. That’s the kind of people I am fortunate to know. It’s humbling.

Every night I have been dreaming of mud.

I’d have to spend about 3-4 hours of time in the car to go down and volunteer, so I’m helping out financially. Olyblog seems to have the best information on what is going on with the flooded farms. The Seattle Times also had an article on the Lewis County flooding and recovery yesterday.

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