Help Still Life Farm Rebuild Their Greenhouse
Today (Dec 3, 2019) we LOST our largest and most important greenhouse at Still Life Farm. The greenhouse collapsed after a succumbing to an estimated 30-36" of snow and high winds. After weathering the first round of this storm just fine with 12" of snow, we felt confident that all would be well with our greenhouses working off the assumption that we were only expecting an additional 4-6" of snow. However, we received an additional 20" of unpredicted precipitation over the course of the night - so there was no way to prepare for this kind of disastrous, unpredictable weather.
This is loss is pretty devastating for our farm, given the time of year AND the importance of our primary greenhouse. This greenhouse is currently planted with 60% of our winter greenhouse greens, intended to get us through the winter season of farmer's markets and Winter CSA. During the summer months, this greenhouse houses our cherry tomato crop, our most important grossing farm crop. This loss seems even more acute based on two factors. Firstly, we were counting on a bountiful winter market season this year, in order to off-set the last two years of poor sales caused by the 2017 drought and the 2018 flooding. And secondly, Curt and I are expecting our first child in January 2020, and have been working to financially balance this new addition to the farm.
Due to the type of collapse, we will most likely need an entirely new 150' greenhouse, which we estimate to come in price-wise around $15,000. We still need time to determine if any of the winter greens will be salvagable to use for farmer's markets and/or Winter CSA boxes.
The sooner we are able to order and install a new greenhouse, the better. We may be able to salvage part of the winter growing season and we will be able to get off to a more promising start this coming spring.
Anything you could donate would be greatly appreciated and would help to relieve an enormous amount of stress from your farmers' shoulders. Thank you all for your consideration and generosity. Curt and Halley Stillman of Still Life Farm, Hardwick, MA.
