Greene County flower farm recovering from greenhouse fire
Family, friends and former employees have joined in on the cleanup crew after a fire Sunday night at a long-running flower farm in Greene County.
The fire at Shields Herb & Flower Farm damaged the central building of the longest greenhouse, which was housing wine barrels and seedlings for the coming growing season.
The cause of the fire has not officially been determined, but owner Leigh Shields thinks one of the greenhouse heaters may have blown up.
Shields first learned of the fire while checking a camera on his computer while his wife was watching the Oscars.
“It was about 9 o’clock at night, and I look and I go, ‘Why is the parking lot all lit up like it’s daylight?'” he said.
As he walked out to his porch, he heard a repeated “boom” that sounded like gunfire. Instead, it was 150 cases of empty bottles, each exploding in the fire.
“I come around the corner of the porch, and I see this thing is 20 feet high with flames,” he said.
Shields searched the greenhouses for hoses while contending with black smoke and crawled up a steep embankment to turn off the gas, he said.
“I kept on falling down,” he said Tuesday, standing on a path below the remnants of the greenhouse. “I burned my hair, so I wet my head down, and I crawled up there, and the third time, I got the thing and turned it off. Then I came around here, climbed up on the deck and started with the hose.”
Six local departments wound up being called out to fight the blaze, which was extinguished around 1 a.m., Shields said.
The plants inside were “cooked,” he said, including early tomatoes in a gallon pot, hanging baskets and a citrus plant he’d had for 40 years.
“There’s one orange left — black,” he said.
The total damage could be around $50,000 — or more than $100,000 in the worst-case scenario where none of the wine can be used, Shields said.
About 150 barrels of wine were in the greenhouse. About 30 were singed; hopefully, only half a dozen wind up being too damaged, Shields said. He plans to powerwash the barrels and inspect them for leaks.
Sunday night, Shields told the firemen, “Come back in two weeks. We’ll have barbecue wine,” he said.
“It’s unusual wine,” he said. “It’s made with honey, so it’s pretty much indestructible by cold or heat. It’ll be the first wine drunk on the moon.”
A big delivery of seedlings arriving this week had been intended for that greenhouse, but will have to be moved to another one. The flats — 200 trays with soil — had all melted in the fire, Shields said.
Adjacent greenhouses took on some smoke damage and soot, but should be OK, Shields said.
“We won’t know for a couple of weeks,” he said. “We don’t sell them until April, so we have enough time. And the tomatoes, we’re just going to do them over. We’re seeding right now.”
The greenhouse wasn’t insured. Shields had sworn it off after the company he’d used refused to pay him after the farm was robbed, he said.
“Up until this point, we’ve been in business for 44 years, we eat it,” he said. “We’ve had floods, we ate that. We just fix it and roll. But this is one of the worst things we’ve ever had. I didn’t think something like that would ever happen. It makes me worry, because I’ve got 13 more heaters.”
An online fundraiser has been set up to help the farm cover the costs of rebuilding. The page, at gofund.me/4f0fc47d, had raised nearly $8,300 as of Tuesday afternoon.
People have already been helping however they can.
Some have been contributing their expertise in electrical hook-ups. Two employees who had been with the farm when it first opened came back to volunteer. The Veterans of Foreign Wars dropped off a $300 check. Other people have dropped off complimentary hot dogs and pizza.
Shields has taken loads of debris from the wooden structure up the hill for a controlled burn, and buried the damaged glass.
And the new heaters are on their way.
“We’re going to try to recover this whole section,” he said. “I’ve got to clean it, but hopefully by Sunday. I don’t expect it, but that’s what I’m aiming for.”