seedlings in a cooler, robert mcmahon,
southern fresh farms owner, plants
them in a bed on oct. 10. hurricane ian
drowned the blooms, but they regrew in
the florida chill.
(florida climate institute\/katie delk)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
back at their farm, robert leaned over the cherry picker bucket lift, hammering each timber one slab at a time. a-rat-a-tat-tat<\/em>, an echo of the woodpeckers on the oaks surrounding them. johnson and jake stevens, another friend of the mcmahons since his childhood, stood nearby, the two swapping turns directing the crane and clamping down the wood. manure encircled them, musky, but they didn\u2019t seem to mind. the pair joked that they were dating. stevens had come by with a pack of ale the night before, and \u201cnot many people show up with a cold beer for no reason,\u201d johnson said. johnson\u2019s wife, michelle, swept away glass shards by the farm\u2019s central market, where visitors sit on wooden benches and buy harvested crops. the three of them, in cream cowboy hats, guffawed like father and sons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n hurricane ian trampled over 5 million acres of agricultural land in florida. the storm ranks among the top storms in u.s. history. for small, family farmers, the recovery is a long season, a brutal winter, fruitless. they face flooding, scattered debris and long-term crop losses. sea water deposited salt in some soils, parching the plants, making them impossible to nurture back to life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n southwest florida\u2019s barrier islands are familiar with the walloping winds and waters. in 1926, a hurricane choked sanibel island farmland. farmers gave up seeding fruits and vegetables like tomatoes on the island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n the loss is also palpable for fruit orchards, especially the state\u2019s citrus industry, which leads the nation in growing oranges for juice. hurricane ian uprooted the trees, and with them, years of growth. once oranges tumble to the soil, they cannot be sold<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n the mcmahons, 15 miles from the beach, were far enough from the bay that salt didn\u2019t inundate their five acres. robert and shelly moved onto the land in 1980, the year they married. in 2014, they stacked rows of pots in vertical towers, tall as longleaf pine saplings. lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and green beans sprouted from those towers, with some, like hops and watermelon, embedded in the earth. a spaghetti tube wove through the lined containers, irrigating them with compost. the mcmahons scattered seeds of education in the soil, welcoming students to learn agriculture. they became an agritourism park and offered paper cups of chopped carrots and kibble to feed the livestock and fish. the livestock shuffled in the grass, the chickens squabbled. the hens were too old to lay eggs, but they cracked up the guests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n in that first weekend after the storm, robert prioritized the roof over replanting. he did so to shelter the animals from rain. the goats, donkeys, sheep, chickens and cows braved the category 4 hurricane, except henry, a bulking mass of 2,200 pounds. the steer’s hoof, matted by mud, had cracked under his weight and the sloshing waves. he was on medication from blue pearl, the only pet hospital that was open in the storm\u2019s aftermath. shelly and robert had bought him when he was only an hour old, 30 pounds. they saved him from the butcher block and coddled him with gatorade and milk replacement, after he left his mother. he had laid his spotted head on shelly\u2019s shoulder, dwarfing her. he snoozed in her lap. now, henry’s eyelids hung heavy, as though to conceal the fractured farm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n the five acres, once orange with marigolds and sunflowers beaming up at the sun \u2014 gone. the mcmahons had planted the flowers just days before ian. but the storm drowned them in its current. perhaps the marigolds, called flor del muerto in latin culture, foretold the death to come. <\/p>\n\n\n\n as the swirling winds approached at 8 a.m. on sept. 28, robert and shelly huddled at home with their daughter and son-in-law and their two children, aged 13 and nine. forecasters had predicted the storm would hit tampa bay, so the mcmahons didn\u2019t bother to shutter the windows. they didn\u2019t do too much to prepare. they left the farm in mother nature\u2019s palms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n but then the storm swerved south. and mother nature didn\u2019t spare them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n robert said he recalls looking out the windows and saw the roof insulation trickle down, like fluttering snow. the wind rustled, tousling all the crop towers, round and round. the children played games on their ipads and sat idly by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n they lost power at 11 a.m. still, robert assured everyone everything would be all right. as the grandfather, he said he felt the paternal tug to protect, later recounting that he said, \u201cwe\u2019ll get through this,\u201d to his family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n robert said that he thought the roof might upend as the wind roared, louder than a groaning tractor. he told everyone to grab their shoes and a flashlight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cwhy?\u201d blake, his grandson, asked him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “just put your shoes on. let\u2019s be ready,\u201d robert said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n he remembers clenching his boots and the kids their tennis shoes. no thoughts of other possessions flashed in his mind, only getting his family to safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n hours went by. time wavered, flickering unsteadily. robert said he felt helpless as time passed, only able to watch as the roofs atop the market and animal shelter blew away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n finally, at 2:30 a.m. the hurricane bands receded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n at first light, the family walked outside. shelly wept. hurricane ian had wiped away everything they had built. within hours, their livelihood \u2013 lost. the hydroponic crops, the lettuce a week away from harvest, smothered and withered. the seminole pumpkins, which had crept up a wire trellis, hung brown and shriveled. the golden sunflowers, once on fire under the sun, submerged and floated away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n at the time, shelly thought they were “screwed.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n she figured the farm and upcoming seventh-annual fall festival were over. every year, the mcmahon’s welcomed vendors and locals to the farm where they sold animal feed, pumpkins and vegetables in woven baskets and offered hay rides. the festival raked in much of the family’s profit. she had no idea how they would survive without their fruits and blooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n they spent three nights in darkness without power. shelly had collected oil lamps for years, one of the many memorabilia and handmade creations stashed in the home. now, they had utility. she lit them in the darkness, cradling the orbs aglow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n over the next week, her fears were extinguished. dozens of folks from neighboring areas arrived, some bearing only the clothes on their backs. they had lost everything themselves, but they had come to help the mcmahons rebuild. the farm meant so much to them over the years, especially during the pandemic. an alcove, a nature trove brimming with vegetables, chirping birds and mangoes. those gleaming sunflowers blazed in their memories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n robert remembers when the surrounding neighborhoods, like paseo, were sleepy areas. his father first bought the land in 1978. daniels road, now six-lane daniels parkway, was still one-lane and dirt. their mailbox was in town. at the time, the farm had some cows and a couple of horses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n robert mcmahon sr. farmed most of his life, tending to mums and gladiolus with his wife, lillian, in iona, florida decades before. they were truck farmers, driving the crops to the packing house, and didn\u2019t live on the land. across the river near paseo, the family later leased the land and grew red potatoes. their farm was on the upland; no wetlands drained. with the sprawling housing developments built since, hurricane floods clog the homes, robert said, rather than sloshing through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cdo i go along with the climate change thing? i don\u2019t know. i\u2019m not that guy,\u201d robert said, as he dragged a hoe across the soil, digging up weeds. \u201call\u2019s i can tell you is what i\u2019ve seen in my 63 years of being here, and what i see is development, what i see is concrete, what i see is asphalt, what i see is roofs. and to me if you want to blame something, that\u2019s the thing to blame.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n gravel slabs, spread by human machines, harbor heat. and he\u2019s felt the blaze of hotter days on his nape since his childhood, even since the \u201890s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n david zierden, state climatologist, said that the number of hurricanes has not changed, as many climate change deniers point out. the intensity has. the heating atmosphere, increased sea surface temperatures and sea level exacerbate the storms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cthe rising global sea level is getting close to about a foot now in the last 100 years,\u201d he said. \u201cso now you\u2019re adding a foot more to the potential storm surge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n rapid intensification, as seen with ian, has also risen, zierden said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cwe can\u2019t say that hurricane ian would not have happened without climate change, but we could certainly see the fingerprints,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n the climate, of course, is not the only thing changing for florida\u2019s farmers. brad hawkins, a fellow farmer who robert said will one day run southern fresh farms, comes from a multi-generation farm family. his father helped robert back when he grew solely red potatoes. hawkins said he searches for answers on google, such as solutions for ravaging rabbits. as a kid in the \u201860s, robert gathered with farmers at a southern restaurant on weekends at 5:30 a.m., where they sat at a big table, ate breakfast and shared what they knew. lee county is not the same, robert said. everyone knew a farmer back then, with six to seven million farms in the u.s. from 1910 to 1940<\/a>. now, there are about two million<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n robert and shelly have felt the farming struggles in their relationship, each ding to their livelihood. they met in high school, shelly at cypress lake and robert at riverdale, when robert hosted a toga party. shelly arrived in sheets and said she immediately knew that she wanted to speak with him when she saw him at the door. from there out, he became her partner, her protector. she laughed with johnson\u2019s wife, michelle, saying she only got drunk a handful of times and never smoked. she had no need. she was content with life with robert on the farm. she grew up, after all, going to her grandparents\u2019 illinois farm and was accustomed to dirt under nails. <\/p>\n\n\n\n the mcmahons are the kind of family who wake up with the sun each day and sometimes crave chicken gizzards from a gas station. they call themselves rednecks proudly. they are entwined with their land, as sure as the mycelia woven below. they certainly were not the kind to be stopped by a hurricane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n a wooden gazebo, once washed up from the swirls of hurricane charley, still stands. robert found it toppled over on sanibel island while cleaning up from that 2004 tempest. the arches have overseen weddings and birthday parties. and it survived hurricane ian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n but their pond and a mango tree did not. after a couple years of growth, it had finally begun bearing fruit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n the first steps were to scrap the losses and hack the fallen trees like the mango, just as farmers once took to the woods with a trusty backhoe. clearing and cleansing the land prepares it for new plantings.<\/p>\n\n\n\nthe arrival of hurricane ian<\/h2>\n\n\n
changing climate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
hacking losses and sowing seeds \u2013 recovery<\/h2>\n\n\n\n