Homesteaders and hobby farmers urged to plan for future extreme weather events

Homesteaders and hobby farmers on Prince Edward Island are being encouraged to prepare now for the next extreme weather event, based on lessons learned from post-tropical storm Fiona. 

The UPEI ClimateSense team is hosting an information session at the Farm Centre in Charlottetown this Saturday, along with the provincial government and others involved in emergency management, on the topic of small farm emergency preparedness. 

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Rebecca Cowans is with a group called P.E.I. Homesteading & Animal Husbandry, and has chickens and geese on her property on the Island's North Shore. 

"Small farmers don't have the access to the information that commercial farming would have," Cowans said.

"Homesteaders, we all have livestock and so just [need] a little bit more information on how to prepare for events like Fiona in the future, and even wildfires too — any type of emergency."

Cowans said she was without power for more than a week after post-tropical storm Fiona struck the Island last September, so was concerned for her animals. 

"When you have livestock, the biggest concern is getting water for your animals. They'll need fresh water every day. The other thing to consider is your feed, definitely making sure you have enough feed and shavings [for] bedding before an event," she said. 

"A lot of that stuff is shipped in from off island, so if there's problems with transportation, that's going to slow those things from getting here."

Small herds 

Staff from the provincial Agriculture Department will be attending the session and distributing small-farm guidebooks for emergencies that they have created.

The session will also include presentations from the provincial veterinarian, FireSmart Canada, and the Emergency Animal Response Team.  

Ron McConnell said his group was busy in the days following Fiona.  

Calls came in from "people that had no electricity but had small herds of cattle or horses, and they didn't have backup power of any kind. They didn't have a way of getting water to their animals or getting feed out to them," McConnell said.

"I ended up going out with 45-gallon drums of water to drop off at a couple of farms so that the cattle had enough to drink until Maritime Electric was able to restore power to the facility."

McConnell said there were also situations where animals needed to be moved from damaged quarters.

"If the building was compromised in any way and it wasn't safe for the animals, did they have to be moved somewhere and did they have the ability to move those animals?"

He thinks it will help next time if people are a little more aware of the potential challenges. 

"Not that we don't want to help," he added. "It's just that it makes our jobs a lot easier if they are prepared."

McConnell is among those expecting more severe storm events in the future. 

"Fiona was a huge wake-up call for the whole Island — not just the farmers and and response agencies, but for everybody," he said.

"With the change in weather patterns and everything else, [we'll have] not just hurricanes, but in the winter, we could get more blizzards. With the debris from Fiona that's on the ground now, a lot of it has not been cleaned up. That's just fuel for wildfires."

McConnell said he hopes this weekend's session for small farmers will help give them "a feeling of being able to help themselves, and knowing that there are groups and agencies out there that are ready to help them if we can, and knowing who to call if they need help.

"But more than anything else, knowing how to prepare, how to be prepared," he said.

What they always tell people: "[Be] prepared for the worst and hope for the best."