[gentle upbeat music] - Hi, I'm Leo and, well... - Wait, Leo, wait, wait.

Start over.

Hi, I'm Emma and that's my sister, Leo.

- So this is a sorghum maze.

- Sorghum is... - We're going into the sorghum field, - Sorghum is just, it looks exactly like, pretty much like corn, except it doesn't have corn cobs, it has these seeds on the end.

Hmm, let's keep going.

The seeds of the sorghum, if you're wondering, they look like that.

The red stuff is dry and this is wet, the green.

You can see the difference.

- [Emma] To be a farmer, you have to depend on the weather, and when the weather isn't cooperating, you can't do anything about it.

Lately, climate change has made farming really hard.

[pensive music] [quiet, upbeat music] - When a storm hits, I worry about it 'cause a lot of people get their house damaged.

Lately, the weather here has caused a lot of problems.

[pensive music] [reflective music] [traffic humming] [birds chirping] [crow cawing] [Emma laughing] - I've lived here 11 years, which is my entire life, and so has Leo.

- Like a carrot.

- This farm occupies a very special place in my heart.

[pensive music] It's been in the family for 163 years.

Leonora and Emma are sixth generation and I'm the fifth generation farmer here on this piece of ground.

- Farming is a lifelong commitment and there's always more work to be done.

It felt really good to see the quantities coming off the land.

[pensive music continues] - [Andy] We were shipping a lot of stuff by the pallet.

Sold a lot of wholesale or direct to grocery stores.

Things were going pretty well.

- [Melissa] But steadily things just kind of started going downhill.

What are you doing, Leo?

- I'm watering potatoes.

[Melissa laughing] Wow!

- [Melissa] Mom, Leo and I are watching the greenhouse while Dad's gone.

Don't worry, Andy.

It'll be okay.

[pensive music continues] - This year now, the farm has changed a lot.

This was all like crops and so it was all the way back to the hayfield with crops.

Carrots, eggplants, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cabbage, Romanesco, kale, red kale, chard, rainbow chard, sweet potatoes, potatoes, squash, watermelon, cantaloupe, garlic, onions, red onions and a lot more.

[pensive music] There was a lot of stuff.

- So we're sitting on almost two acres of carrots that are pretty much ready to come out of the ground and why do we not have them?

I'm gonna dig a few carrots, but the ground is so tight and muddy that when you lift them up, that's what you get.

We have not dried out since September 1st.

In a normal year, we would've easily shipped 50 to 60,000 pounds of carrots by now.

- The weather has been changing, so we had like a huge drought and then there's a ton of rain for like a week or two, and then it just goes back to being dry.

- We need some help muddying carrots out of the ground before it freezes.

Or we have eight degree temperatures at the end of October and then it's 60 in January.

It comes up like concrete blocks.

We've lost a whole bunch of carrots that just froze in the ground.

We got ice crystals all the way down to there.

- [Melissa] To have a bad year two or three years in a row with the severity that they were, it's just kind of unheard of.

- And you can't grow the crops with that happening.

- We started the greenhouse late this year because of the cold weather.

I'm not saying agriculture should be super predictable, but it's difficult to take on that risk personally if you know you're up against it like that.

- We've had to borrow money in order to keep going and we assessed the situation and we just decided like it's time to figure out a new plan.

[wind whipping] - With climate change, it'll be like almost impossible to farm, and if we can't farm, we'll have a ton of open space that I don't know what we'll do with.

[pensive music] [traffic humming] - So today we are in my motel room.

I am here with my mom and my cousin, D'landria.

So over here is the microwave and the mini fridge full of a lot of things.

Like these things.

This desk is where I do my school every day.

My school books and stuff over here, and then I got my paint set, and I try to move stuff so I can have a space to eat.

[item clunking] When I sit here, I feel like I have a little privacy.

I sleep on this bed with my cousin.

My mom sleeps on this bed.

My name is Mariah and I'm nine years old.

I've been living in this motel for about 3 1/2 months.

[traffic humming] [pensive music] - I like living in Markham, it's quiet, it's country.

[chuckling] This is where I was born and raised.

- Say cheese.

Growing up here feels like a safe place.

It's really familiar.

We know probably half of our town, so we're all close.

It just feels like home.

Look at the ducks.

I live here with my little cousin, Mariah, who's like a sister to me and my grandmother.

Me and Mariah have lived together like all of our lives.

- They my granddaughters, but I've had Mariah since she was two days old, so I'm more like her mom.

- Mariah and D'landria are my nieces.

Ready?

Everybody get in.

I'm five minutes away, so I'll always come and help out.

[traffic humming] We're on the gulf.

Hurricanes are always coming through.

It's normal for Mariah to hear the word evacuation and know what to do.

When I was her age, I didn't really have to prepare for hurricanes like this.

- [D'landria] For the past five years, we've had to evacuate more often.

- Because of climate change, hurricanes have gotten a lot worse.

[dramatic music] [waves crashing] - [Reporter 1] A monster named Harvey.

- [Reporter 2] Hurricane Harvey is closing in on the Texas Gulf Coast and could hammer the area for days.

- [Reporter 3] Thousands of people are under mandatory evacuations.

- I was 10 when Hurricane Harvey hit.

- I was 15 at the time.

As Hurricane Harvey started approaching more and more, we started packing up our bags and having to leave and board up things.

I was really scared.

- [Reporter 4] Along the Texas coast tonight, people are leaving store shelves empty as they stock up on food and water.

- Get all of food and drinks you can.

- [Sharon] Get your grocery, canned goods, gas up.

- We're ready to go.

We're packing up, we're leaving.

- I went to get my mother and we decided to go to Houston and we went to my sister's house.

- There were eight people at the time in the apartment.

- And when the rain started, it just poured.

- Really warm Gulf waters feeding this system.

- It went from a category one to category four.

- [Weather Reporter] The monster storm is also unleashing tornadoes.

[wind roaring] - The wind was howling and it just like kept raining hard.

[thunder crashing] The lights would just keep on going on and off.

[thunder crashing] - You'd be thinking, you know, your window's gonna blow out or the tree going to come over and hit your windows or the house.

[storm roaring] - We all just like tried to pack together.

- [Mariah] I covered my head under the blanket and slept with my mom.

- I was just praying everything would be all right.

[wind roaring] - [Weather Reporter] The biggest threat now is the catastrophic flooding.

[pensive music] - [Ednika] After the hurricane left, we were stuck there for about two weeks.

[pensive music continues] - When we were driving back, we just kept turning around and turning and going on back roads until we got home.

- When we finally arrived to her house, we were shocked.

- We got in there and we saw the light.

- The shingles was out the house.

The water came through and we didn't have any lights at all.

- You could see the literal wires.

- Water had been sitting in places for a long time and so it did smell bad.

- It was sad.

My mother was born in the house.

She cried.

I cried because she was crying and Mariah cried and I was like, "You need to move, you need to get outta here.

This is unsafe, this is unhealthy."

But she was like, "Well, where am I gonna go?

This is my home."

[wind gusting] [gentle music] - [Melissa] When we built this house, we built it with the intention of growing old in it.

- My card.

[microwave door slamming] [pasta machine humming] - You always say try new things.

- But we came together as a family and we said, "This is where the finances are."

So we recently listed our house for sale.

The goal is to sell the house and the acreage around the house and then be able to retain the rest of the farm.

- We can retire most, if not all, of our farm debt.

We wanna keep the farm in the family.

The family history is there and the sacrifices of previous generations is there.

- Then we can move forward in a new path.

I don't know.

I don't know.

All right, let's go, people.

Let's go, look at you.

You little munchkin.

- [Emma] Any kid can tell when their parents are stressed out.

My mom got really stressed, and my dad, he was stressed, and then Leo and I got stressed.

- [Melissa] Leonora kind of goes inward a little bit when this stuff hits.

Emma, I think she sees how hard it's been.

She's a sensitive little soul.

[pensive music] - [Emma] I don't want to move.

- Emma, maybe we can connect your path, to this path right here.

- But it'd give us enough money to pay off like a lot of our debts that we used for farming.

I wanna stay here, of course.

[pensive music continues] [railroad crossing beeping] [pensive music continues] - After Harvey, we lived in the house for three years with the damages still unfixed.

- I didn't have the money to fix it myself, so I applied to a program for victims of Hurricane Harvey and it took a long time, but I got in there.

They said the best thing to do was to go and demolish it and rebuild.

- I was kind of happy and kind of sad because my grandfather built that house and I lived all my life there.

- It was my grandparents' house and they raised all of their children there and then we were raised there, so you can imagine all the memories that you have to say goodbye to, but it's for the better.

They're rebuilding it now, so that's why we're here.

[Mariah laughing] [pensive music continues] - [Mariah] Which side do you want?

You want that one?

- Yeah, I want that.

- I don't like living in a room without a kitchen in it.

I miss my mom's home-cooked meals.

I'm pretty sure she has her own recipe for spaghetti because her spaghetti is purefection.

- That's appreciation.

- [Mariah] What I miss about being home is that I can have like more room to do my stuff and quieter space.

[Mariah laughing] - Let me see what you laughing at.

Did you hear me say turn that one off?

- [D'landria] Living in the motel can be loud at times.

- [Mariah] No!

If you want- - You're doing the voice again, you're doing the voice again.

- [Sharon] Look.

[Mariah laughing] [pensive music] [marker scratching] - [Mariah] I drew a lot of water in my drawing and a lot of rain and a lot of thunder.

- [Ednika] The water start coming.

Well, the water came down and we thought it was over.

- [Mariah] I saw a lot of water.

- [Ednika] Do you remember the water, Mariah?

- Mm-hmm, it was like high.

People were on their houses.

- [Ednika] Do you remember that, Mariah?

- Yes.

Was Hurricane Harvey the worst hurricane you had?

- Harvey was the worst, but it's like every year there's becoming more and more hurricanes.

Do you see how many hurricanes they had this year close to us?

This year we had five, five in a row.

- That's what we gonna have to do is just go and evacuate every year.

- [Daughter] I know, but every year you're taking a chance.

- [Sharon] Mm-hmm.

[intense music] - Like when is another Harvey gonna get here?

That was scary.

[intense music continues] [intense music continues] [drill whining] - Normally this time of the year, we'd all been here starting new plants and they've been doing that since they were born.

[tools clunking] - We're in an okay spot now.

- [Andy] Here's the screwdriver.

- [Emma] My dad has a job now.

- [Andy] I would say almost all options are on the table.

[drill whining] We're considering retrofitting the packing shed into a living space.

We're also considering moving away from Grinnell, Iowa.

We just kind of feel like there's so many things up in the air that is so difficult to plan, [drill whining] but as long as we're together, we'll be fine.

[drill whining] [traffic humming] - So today we're at my new house and I'm gonna give you a little tour.

So this is my room.

[hopeful music] Here's my beautiful closet.

Shirts, pants and dresses.

This is my bathroom and something new is I get one of these things.

These are my glasses, sorry, my fake glasses.

[giggling] And over here's gonna go where the table and the seats are gonna be.

It looks really cool.

The light is like a good kind of light.

This area is the kitchen.

This is a backyard patio.

My friend's house is over there.

- I felt so good when I first saw my new house.

It's wonderful, really.

You couldn't ask for much more.

[laughing] It's raised up so if it floods, it won't come in the house, hopefully.

- When I hear a hurricane is coming and I have to immediately leave my home, I feel like, "Oh my gosh, not another one."

And I worry about our house getting damaged and how expensive the cost will be if it was because we don't have a lot of money like that.

- I do worry that the house might get damaged, but it's nothing that can't be fixed.

I have insurance right now, so you know, it probably will be rebuilt.

- I wanna move.

The only thing that's holding me here is my mother and I'm trying to talk her into moving, but she refused.

But you know, if you move into another area, the same thing could be happening.

The climate is changing everywhere.

[reflective music] - My mom has a vision for this land to do a educational outdoor school.

We could create a place where kids could learn about nature and be outside.

- [Melissa] We just need to give them more of an opportunity to kind of engage, see, feel, smell, and enjoy nature because I think that will then allow them to advocate for it.

- Whoa!

Whoa!

[reflective music continues] - It feels great to be in my new house playing board games and stuff.

Okay.

I hope another hurricane like Harvey won't happen again.

- Me and my family are more conscious of the weather.

I hope people take climate change seriously.

In the future, I don't want my kids and their kids to have to worry about storms or natural disasters getting worse.

- I think if other kids knew what climate change was and what it affected, they would wanna help try and stop it.

- Climate change is affecting a lot of us because it's happening right now.

We can't go on with life the way things are going.

[reflective music continues] [upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [gentle music] [upbeat music] [gentle music]