When the floodwaters of Tropical Storm Irene drenched the village of Schoharie in the summer of 2011, more than 90 percent of the homes experienced some form of damage and many were outright destroyed, but one farm managed to serve as a community oasis in the days after the storm.

Fast-foward 10 years, these days it’s business as usual at the Carrot Barn.

“Our lunch rush is pretty crazy, a lot of people come in and get sandwiches,” 16-year-old Mandi Williams said as she prepared order after order.

Williams only began her job this past spring, but she’s already no stranger to the usual rush of customers arriving for sandwiches, cider donuts and plenty of other farm-fresh products.

“My favorite part is how different people like their sandwiches,” she said Thursday afternoon. “Some people don’t like meat or they don’t like cheese, so they kind of make their own little thing back here. It’s pretty cool.”

Three decades have passed since Richard Ball opened the popular store and cafe on his 200-acre Schoharie Valley Farms.

“There isn’t a better feeling in the world than when you take a seed and turn it into a crop and are able to not just feed your family but feed others,” Ball said. “It is very satisfying.”

As peaceful and idyllic as the fertile ground looks today, it was a much different scene 10 years ago this week when Tropical Storm Irene gut-punched the Schoharie Valley.

“We saw a prediction that Hurricane Irene was going to hit the New York City area so we thought we were going to have a windy, maybe a wet day,” Ball recalled. “We picked a lot of crops in the morning just to be on the safe side.”

That expectation would prove devastatingly false.

“Everyone in town lost most of their belongings and they were coming back into town to find that they had 5, 6 or 7 feet of water in their house,” said Ball, who grew up in the region.

Largely protected due to its location on high ground, the Carrot Barn would emerge as a safe haven in the days after the storm for those impacted and the many who rushed into town to assist them.

“At that point it was all-hands-on-deck, let’s try to figure out how we go forward,” Ball said.

At one point Ball says there were more than 1,000 volunteers scattered throughout the village; many of whom passed by the farm before moving along to help clean out flooded homes.

“It was so gratifying that the pain and the hurt for so many of us, especially the people in town who lost their homes, that we were overwhelmed with the kindness of other people,” he said.

Ball, who became the New York State commissioner of Agriculture and Markets three years after Irene, routinely makes the one-mile drive from his farm into town.

“There was about 3 feet of water on this road right here,” Ball said as he drove south on Route 30.

Passing buildings that still bear the scars of flooding, he says the memories of the struggle will likely never fade.

“I think in the midst of it we all questioned whether we were up to it, but I think we all pretty quickly came to the conclusion we were going to get through it,” he said.

Williams was just 6 years old back then, but can’t shake the memory either. While her home was spared, she says her family hosted several relatives whose houses were flooded.

“We had a friend that got flooded and we helped them clean out their house and it was really muddy,” Williams said. “It was pretty crazy.”

A decade removed, Ball says more than anything, Irene’s aftermath taught everyone here a valuable lesson about the power and value of community.

“I heard so many times people saying, ‘it is never going to be the same,’ and I knew that was true, but I think we all came to know that that doesn’t mean it can’t be good again,” Ball said. “It will never be the same, but we can get through this and we can get through this together.”