GREENFIELD — Franklin County farmers are sharing how climate change has impacted their operations as part of a short new documentary called “Rising River’s Edge” that had its first screening at the Greenfield Public Library last week.
The 31-minute film produced by The LAVA Center aims to “bring awareness to drastically changing weather, and that by supporting our local farms, we can keep Franklin County strong, profitable and healthy,” according to the center’s website. The documentary features interviews with employees at Clark Brothers Orchards in Ashfield, Red Fire Farm in Montague and Granby, and Just Roots in Greenfield as they share how extreme weather has threatened their livelihood.
In particular, the film focuses on the 2023 flooding that directly inspired the film. These floods, along with late frosts and sudden cold snaps, made 2023 a costly year for the farmers featured in the documentary, with Just Roots having entire fields flooded, Clark Brothers Orchards suffering an estimated $250,000 worth of weather-related damage and Red Fire Farm losing $450,000 worth of crops, according to the documentary.
“Every year I wonder, ‘Is this the year we don’t get to market?’” said Naomi Clark, a fourth-generation farmer at Clark Brothers Orchards.
The emotional weight of the farmers’ losses and uncertain future was personal for The LAVA Center’s Humanities Coordinator Matthew Barlow, who was president of the Just Roots board of directors at the time of the 2023 floods.
“I walked through those fields on the morning of the flash floods,” Barlow recalled. “It’s one of the most depressing things I’ve ever had to do.”
But, Barlow, speaking to those gathered at the Greenfield Public Library, emphasized the need for community support to help local farms as they navigate severe, unpredictable weather.
“As the farmers pointed out [in the documentary], if there’s crop loss in 2023, they’re still feeling it in 2025,” Barlow said. “So, that’s exactly when we have to go support them. We should be supporting them anyway, but that’s especially when they need our support.”
The film project, funded by a $20,000 Expand Massachusetts Stories grant from Mass Humanities, was initially conceptualized by Barlow and The LAVA Center’s Projects Assistant Clara Witty in the spring of 2024. They were later joined by Rebecca Rideout, owner of Told Video who serves as a video consultant on the project, and videographer Hugh Finnerty. Barlow said the team began working in earnest in December and “began actual filming in April.”
“We finished up filming in July,” Barlow said, “and then Hugh and Rebecca worked non-stop from there.”
The crew hopes that the film will reach a diverse audience.
“I hope we’re not preaching to the choir,” Rideout said.
Finnerty also thought the personal nature of documentary filmmaking would help spread knowledge about the issue.
“You see something like this, and you see all these [farmers] and you just think, ‘It’s real to them,’” Finnerty told attendees at the library film screening. “It’s hard to deny it.”
Finnerty also encouraged the audience to reframe how they think about the higher cost of local products.
“What are you getting for that dollar? If it’s going to your local community … it’s going to keep farmers in fields, it’s going to keep people fed, it’s going to keep you healthy,” Finnerty said. “You just list all these things until, maybe it’s not so expensive, or maybe you can find a little more room in your budget.”
According to Witty, “Rising River’s Edge” will be screened again on Thursday, Oct. 9, at the LAVA Film Festival before being uploaded to YouTube.