The Baker FFA chapter has had to trim back its springtime offering of flowers and vegetables after heavy snow and ice caused the large greenhouse at Baker High School to collapse this winter.

The metal frame of the greenhouse roof buckled and bent under the weight of the snow and ice in one of the worst winters in recent Baker County history.

Bibiana Gifft, FFA adviser and agriculture science instructor, said most of the damage is not covered by the District’s insurance because the greenhouses are not considered permanent structures. One smaller greenhouse used for storage is covered because it is made of a different material.

Gifft credited a brother- and-sister team who live near the high school, Ashlee and Brice Brinton, with saving the medium-sized greenhouse where plants are displayed for sale this spring.

“They came in over Christmas break and shook the snow and ice off of it,” Gifft said.

Unfortunately the large greenhouse was among many other greenhouses, barns, roofs and buildings throughout the county and the region that were damaged by the heavy snow and ice that held on longer that usual because of the long siege of below-zero temperatures that accompanied the heavy snowfall.

As a result of losing their largest structure, the student greenhouse managers had to rethink their growing plans this season, Gifft said.

Managers Bracken Wilson, Alicia Maldonado and Calli Ward, all BHS juniors, worked with Gifft and Deb Bronken, a plant broker with Horticulture Services of Hubbard, to develop a new plan.

While 300 hanging baskets were offered to customers by the traditional Mother’s Day opening last year, that wasn’t an option this spring.

There just wasn’t adequate space to allow baskets to hang and bedding plants to spread out and flourish in the smaller greenhouse, Gifft said.

So instead of selling baskets already assembled, the students offered empty baskets that they helped customers fill with plants of their choice.

Although they had ordered plants for the hanging baskets in September to have them delivered by January, students were able to change their order for the revised plan.

“We have 70 percent less plants because of the loss of the large greenhouse,” Gifft said.

Still, students are working to get the word out that the greenhouse is open.

“Our big main goal is to get the big greenhouse up again,” Gifft said.

The current 23-year-old greenhouses were built by students in 1994.

See more in the May 17, 2017, issue of the Baker City Herald.