CA (ON): Couple rebuilds Prince Greenhouses
They'll take customers to see a greenhouse where fresh lines of vegetables are rising out of new soil. And more is growing in well cultivated gardens nearby.
The Brennemans also can show the 21 glass greenhouses and four plastic hoop ones that once were mainstays of Van Wees Roses. Now the glass is broken and some structures have fallen in.
The cavernous greenhouses were once responsible for the employment of many people in the Princeton area. The enterprise was the floral equivalent of working at the Massey or Cockshutt farm machinery factories in Brantford. Just about everybody worked there or had relatives who did.
But the owners sold out, and the property went through a series of turnovers with ideas that amounted to nothing. All the while, the weeds and scrub trees grew inside the greenhouses and around the property.
The Brennemans took a deep breath and bought the property as is in the fall of 2012.
They had a five-year plan to rehabilitate it with an adapted use - a community shared agriculture enterprise. Under that concept, people pay a fee to buy shares in advance in the year's crop, then get a weekly veggie box and some extras from late spring, through summer and into fall.
Read more at the Brantford Expositor