Hi! I am LaVonne and I am a friend of Seann and Allison Rooney. They own Cloud Nine Farm near Wilsall, MT. I have a tiny bit of experience with this site having done a couple of other fundraisers for a barn fire as well as my brother's near-death health scare in 2024. Seann and Allison grow food. Real food for real folks. Anyone who grows food knows there can be many variables and this year they got hit with a triple whammy. Three hail storms in a row have wiped out their crops completely. The last storm ensured that there will be no harvest. Please consider giving to their repair fund to help them gain their footing again. Here is an excerpt from Cloud Nine's Facebook page. This is their livelihood! After two separate extreme cold events last winter, plus a vole population boom, which killed or killed back 90% of our acre-sized planting of food forest, plus the three hail storms and two late-season hard freezes, our farm is at the lowest low it’s ever seen in 17 years of trying. We lost all our storage onions, shallots, cauliflower for Giardiniera and many of the tea herbs for the winter markets for real this time. They had been bedraggled by the previous hail storms, but this one was the last straw. The brand new greenhouse covers were pockmarked and the shade covers were as well, but not ruined. The air conditioning unit on our food trailer was destroyed, our sheds have cosmetic damage to the tar paper, and one greenhouse end wall polycarbonate covering was shattered. Unfortunately, our insurance doesn’t cover damage to the high tunnels, and they wouldn’t cover the food trailer for some obscure reason, so we’ll have to cover the damages out of pocket, probably around $5K. The loss of the winter crops means our annual income just got cut short by about $6K as well. The orchard losses, I haven’t calculated yet. Such a bummer! We aren’t big enough to afford specialty crop insurance, so the crops are just a loss for us. It really does mean a lot to have people say supportive and kind things during this kind of episode as a farmer. No matter how much one practices being stalwart in the face of such natural smackdowns in farming, it’s never easy to watch months of work be obliterated in minutes. Months of work and months of income. The funds will be used to pay for damages to our 3 greenhouses and food trailer, along with helping us make ends meet while off-farm employment is sought, to cover the income shortfalls that we expect to occur over the coming winter months. We thank you for all of the care and support you’ve offered us over the years as patrons of our produce and herbal goods, and thank you deeply of you are able to contribute to this fundraiser. From the bottom of our tired and battered hearts, we thank you.
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