Vermont Braces For Flooding: 'I Don't Have Any More To Lose' (VIDEO)

When the rain-swollen White River rose up and overflowed, it laid waste to the 125-year-old Perley dairy farm.

Cows were carried away. Tractors and trucks were inundated with muddy floodwaters. The water took out a road, destroyed the first floor of the farmhouse, lifted a 6-foot long tank where milk is stored, knocked out power and smothered fields in the 10-acre spread.

"I don't know what we're going to do, but we're going to make it," said farm manager Penny Severance, 48, fighting back tears as she showed the damage to a visitor.

But help was already on the way.

On Sunday, more than two dozen volunteers donned gloves and protective masks to get to work ripping out the flood-damaged walls and floors in a bid to save the farmhouse. Farm owner Harland Perley, 81, had been moved to safety before the floods came.