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Last Friday, I volunteered at Kilt Farm in Longmont, CO, where my daughter is employed as a seasonal Greenhouse Manager and farmer. With temperatures exceeding 95 degrees, I spent the day getting my hands dirty—harvesting and coring greens, transplanting cabbage, seeding lettuce, weeding rows of beans, and more. It was incredibly hard work.

The experience gave me an appreciation for the intensive labor that goes into producing, harvesting, and distributing fresh, local, and organic vegetables.

It also gave me a firsthand insight into the havoc the climate crisis is wreaking on farmers.

Farmers in Colorado are dealing with extreme weather events, including record high heat, drought conditions one week, followed by damaging flooding from heavy rains the next. Water is scarce, and can be expensive. All this under the haze of smoke from not-so-distant wildfires ravaging farms and forests to the west.

Of course, many of these conditions are not unique to Colorado farmers. This week the CT Mirror published an excellent piece written by Jan Ellen Spiegel describing how climate change is impacting Connecticut farmers. It’s insightful and absolutely worth a read.

I left Colorado feeling incredibly proud of my daughter and her co-workers. They are not only farmers, but also young activists committed to righting the wrongs inflicted on our environment and making the world a cleaner, healthier, and better place for us all.