After Chemical Burn, Farm Owners Worry About a Cherished Way of Life

ENON VALLEY, Pa. — Even with the trees still barren, Pam Mibuck could picture how the seasons would unfold on the land her uncle bought decades ago: a field of sunflowers in the summer, fresh apples for the horses and pie in the fall, and a tranquil place for her sons to come home to no matter the time of year.

But when officials decided two weeks ago to burn off the toxic chemical cargo of a derailed freight train a few miles away, sending a huge plume of smoke to blanket her farm and many others along the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, the sense of safety Ms. Mibuck had long felt there was upended.

After the chemicals were released, Tina, the amiable white turkey that she bought less than a year ago for $3, was put on antibiotics for respiratory problems, and her chickens laid eggs with an unsettling purple hue, Ms. Mibuck said. Her son in California is urging her to move away, offering to build a barn on his land for her two horses, Samuel and Razor. And Ms. Mibuck, 54, who works as a custodian at a university, is seriously thinking about leaving the 14 acres that she considers a slice of heaven.

“I don’t want to give up — I don’t want to walk away,” she said recently, keeping an eye on a nearby bubbling vat of maple sap in her yard. But as she ran through the questions she had about planting a garden, eating the fruit from her trees and letting her horses drink from the nearby creek in the wake of the chemical burn, Ms. Mibuck conceded: “I don’t feel completely safe doing that. I hate that.”

When the Norfolk Southern freight train careened off the tracks this month and left a fiery heap of wreckage on the outskirts of East Palestine, Ohio, a town of roughly 4,700 people, it upended an area where generations of families could afford to buy acres of land, raise horses and plant gardens, hunt deer and birds and build lives undisturbed by the chaos of bigger cities nearby. Although farming provides only a small number of jobs in the immediate area, many residents say that raising livestock and working the land are profoundly important to their way of life.

Through a long global pandemic, national political tensions and the stress of inflation, the land, the water and the fresh air had been a source of comfort and safety. But the chemical threat spreading through the region has shattered many landowners’ confidence. Vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate and ethylene glycol monobutyl are among the substances that were released into the air, surface water and surface soil, the Environmental Protection Agency said.

Officials said that the chemical burn was necessary to avoid a more harmful explosion, and that initial tests so far had found the air and water to be safe. But even for those determined to weather the unknown, there is fear about whether their customers will continue to trust their product.

Such is the case at Sutherin Greenhouse, first built near the outer limits of East Palestine in 1947 to sell geraniums and now owned by Dianna and Don Elzer. The first year was bumpy and filled with learning curves, as with most new businesses; during the next three, the couple had to navigate the pandemic and a dysfunctional supply chain that delayed shipments of pots and plants.

The Elzers had predicted that this would be their first normal Valentine’s Day. Even when they were required to evacuate for a few days, driving to Pittsburgh, they came back daily to water and care for their plants — the palms, the herbs, the succulents — and returned as soon as they could.

On Feb. 14, they had one customer: a man who bought a single red hibiscus tree.

“No one wants to come here,” Mr. Elzer, 67, said, adding that he was debating what changes to make to the couple’s stock in anticipation of long-term environmental changes. “There’s no way to counterattack the publicity and perception.”

Ms. Elzer, 55, while showing off the fledgling fiddle leaf fig and monstera plants that had just arrived, echoed her husband’s concerns. “We’re fighting against the perception,” she said, “and 10 years from now, that perception might be true.”

Some business owners and farms have started circulating a rallying cry: “East Palestine: The greatest comeback the world has ever seen.” Perhaps, they have hoped, the national attention to the town’s plight could jump-start economic investment, bringing a glimmer of hope from what has been an overwhelming tragedy.

But it is hard to imagine that happening without the residents, and the broader region, trusting that their land and water are safe. For now, that hope of trust has vanished in the haze of unanswered questions, nagging medical symptoms and fear of the unknown.

As a child, an ill-fated encounter with his great-uncle’s bee hives left Michael McKim, now 43, somewhat disillusioned with the barbed pollinators. But as he grew older and felt regret over the missed opportunity to adopt a family trade, Mr. McKim sought out training as a beekeeper. Now, he shares his admiration for the ingenuity of the queens and the loyalty of their drones with anyone who asks, cupping his hands together to show how the bees hibernate and teaching his daughter, properly attired, how to pluck honeycomb safely from the hive.

Beekeeping also became a key element of a business dream he shared with his wife: an affordable destination winery in East Palestine, with some of the wine sweetened from the honey he collected. He had also been toying with the idea of making mead. The winery’s grand opening is still set for St. Patrick’s Day.

Yet the family business has been rattled by the derailment: Most of the bridal showers, wedding receptions and events scheduled for this year have canceled. Mr. McKim has also yet to check on his beloved bees across 30 hives, and does not know whether testing will find them safe and their honey usable.

“It’s a tragedy,” he said, sitting in his empty main hall, a line of dump trucks now visible from his front window. “I could make the best wine in the United States, in the world, and someone could say, ‘Hey, isn’t that where the train derailed?’”

He, like other parents in the region, had also taken pride in building a life that allowed his children the freedom of being outside, basking in the sunshine, getting dirt under their nails, foraging for mushrooms and fishing with his father. Now, a few streets away from his winery, government air monitors hang under a stop sign and a yellow sign warning drivers that children are at play.

“It’s a little tainted,” Mr. McKim said, calling it “a forever scar.”

Sonia Early, 53, built her life around horses. But since the train derailed, she had to yet to go riding and was still wrestling with the worrying logistics of keeping her herd of 11 horses safely hydrated and fed.

Still, on Saturday, she prepared Ro, her largest and gentlest horse, for a surprise. In the days leading up to her 91st birthday, Ona Kitt had told her family that she had one thing on her bucket list — to ride a horse one more time — and Ms. Early, a friend of one of her relatives, had promised to make it happen. The train derailment was not going to change that.

“In all this catastrophe, you get a half-hour,” Ms. Early said, her voice trailing off as she raised her hands toward the ceiling of her barn, where sunlight shone through the windows.

Nearly two dozen members of Ms. Kitt’s family filed into the barn, days after some of them had evacuated and begun arranging tests to make sure their water and homes were safe. Despite the stress, they had not entertained the possibility of missing a chance to surprise Aunt Ona and see her on a horse again on her birthday, evoking the years when she barrel raced and rode right up until she gave birth to twins. Life, they agreed, goes on.

With Ms. Early and Ro quietly standing in the center, a few of the men carefully helped Ms. Kitt onto the horse. As Ro began to walk in a circle, Ms. Kitt broke into a wide smile, waving her hand above her head like a pageant queen as her family whooped and cheered, filming her on their phones.

Beaming from a chair afterward, as she watched other relatives take turns trotting around the barn, Ms. Kitt summed up what the ride had meant, as her family forgot about the stress the community was experiencing.

“It felt,” she said, “like being young.”

Kitty Bennett contributed research.