The Huss Project is getting a new greenhouse at its property at Eighth and Broadway Streets in Three Rivers. Huss is a project of Three Rivers nonprofit *culture is not optional (*cino). Its activities center on the rehabilitation of the former Huss Elementary School into a community center and the operation of a sustainable farming operation on the building’s grounds. Crops go to a farmer’s market in the summer, and toward a community food distribution program.

Executive Director Rob Vander Giessen-Reitsma said the greenhouse will provide the organization a number of benefits. Its main purpose will be to propagate plant seedlings in the springtime and to extend the farm’s growing season further into the fall. That, in turn, will allow for an extension of *cino’s food distribution program through partner organizations like United Community Assistance Program (UCAP), local food sites, and Trinity Episcopal Church’s Community Kitchen. Additional, available crop production will also help *cino to provide food benefits to its AmeriCorps volunteer service members, who live on a limited stipend.

Spring seedlings will include tomatoes, peppers, onions, eggplant, cabbage, kale, and other crops. In mid-summer, Vander Giessen-Reitsma said he’d like to start a cucumber and tomato crop in the greenhouse, where moisture regulation can better protect them from certain diseases. In the fall, the structure will permit greens and cabbages to grow later into the season.

The project comes amid rapid progress among the organization’s various component projects. Earlier this year, it finished renovation of the first part of the building, creating a new, multi-purpose community space inside called the Imaginarium and a pavilion outside. While that work was still being completed, the organization also hired its first onsite caretakers, who occupy an adjacent dwelling that the organization also recently purchased along with an adjacent, vacant lot. *cino’s summer and year-round staff capacity has also grown.

Proximity to the caretaker’s residence will help the onsite caretakers, Margaret Wenger and Dan Truesdale, to keep an eye on the greenhouse. Last week, Truesdale and AmeriCorps volunteer service member Brad Armstrong began tackling the job of assembling the premade kit parts that will become the greenhouse’s arched, galvanized tube structure and its clear polycarbonate plastic covering. When finished, most likely sometime next week, the structure will occupy a space 20 feet wide by 36 feet long and will be about ten feet tall at the center of the arch. The ends will also be enclosed, but will include a door, a 48-inch fan, and two 36-inch, square, louvered vents to help regulate the temperature in the summer.

Several black walnut trees around the greenhouse site have made the ground unhabitable to several of *cino’s crops, so the organization plans to replace the topsoil with a sheet barrier underneath. A mown grass lane will connect the greenhouse to the farm behind the former school building. Miscanthus grass plantings around sunnier the south and west sides of the structure’s perimeter will grow to a full height of about 12 feet next year, providing shade to assist with additional summertime temperature regulation inside the enclosure.

A $5,300 gift from the Three Rivers Area Community Foundation (TRACF) covers the majority of the structure’s cost of about $9,000. The cost includes several add-ons, and Vander Giessen-Reitsma said the structure will now be larger than its original 20-foot by 20-foot planned dimensions. The grant does not require a match, but *cino is covering the remainder of the structure’s costs.

Vander Giessen-Reitsma said the greenhouse has been under consideration for the last four or five years, but availability of additional property recently, along with the availability of TRAC funds, moved the idea forward. “It seemed like a logical, good next step,” he said, “especially because due to the pandemic, food benefit needs are going to be increasing, and especially as (Federal pandemic benefits) start to wind down.” Vander Giessen-Reitsma said the need for food distribution relates both to quality and to volume, so the greenhouse’s added capacity and utility will be helpful.

The pandemic has impacted a lot of things, including a sizable part of TRACF’s available funds, which Vander Giessen-Reitsma said he understands have been diverted toward local pandemic relief efforts. In light of that, he said, he was pleased and grateful to receive the full, requested grant amount from the foundation.

Dave Vago is a writer and columnist for Watershed Voice. A Philadelphia native with roots in Three Rivers, Vago is a planning consultant to history and community development organizations and is the former Executive Director of the Three Rivers DDA/Main Street program.