Earl Huebner longtime owner of Greenhouse Effect has closed the door on a landmark business permanently. The facility is being dismantled and repurposed overseas.
The work of the Lord will continue as the Greenhouse Effect comes down to serve a new community. Just south of Antwerp on State Route 49 the business has been operating since 1990. By the time it closed, it had over a half acre under roof and growing plants locally. Since its closure before the pandemic, Earl had been trying to find a buyer to keep the business going. However, he was not successful in finding a tenant to take over. Recently, Dave and Jenny Anibal of Reading, MI were driving through the area and noticed that the structures lacked their original luster and intent, but knew they could still be used and repurposed for a new community. Dave and his wife, Jenny, attend the Remedy Church in Michigan that created a ministry called “Moriah”, which also shares the same name as the Ethiopian mission group started by college kids 20 years ago to help with single moms and children in Ethopia called “Moriah Kids Ethiopia”. Dave and Jenni talked to Earl about the future plans for the Greenhouse Effect to find out what could be done with the building. Earl then realized that this could be used for a mission project to grow healthy and safe food in the country of Ethiopia, and decided to make this massive donation to their cause.
From watching television, you may think that Ethiopia is a desert; however, in the part of the country where the greenhouse will be going, it is at 9,000 feet elevation at Entoto Mountains, the region of the capitol, Addis Ababa. The mission is in the process of receiving land on a mountain top that will be used for growing food, providing job training and job creation. This part of Ethiopia is considered a rainforest with cool annual temperatures, and an average annual rainfall of 50”.
Pastor Jared Bignall headed up the project along with many volunteers from their church, and is making sure that all of this will get to Africa safely on shipping containers. Jared stated that it could take anywhere from a month to a year for the shipping container to arrive at its destination. He himself has been to Africa many times on mission trips, and two of his children are from Ethiopia.
Among the volunteers who were dismantling the facility, about 50% are from the church, and of the other volunteers about half were Amish, who had heard about this wonderful project to be a blessing to those brothers and sisters in Christ on the other side of the Earth.
The Greenhouse Effect was started by Earl and his family, with the first posts placed in the ground in February of 1990. The final hoop expansion took place in 1997 and served the community until the family leased the business and structures to various people between 2009 and 2018 when it closed permanently.
Country Wide Junk Removal & Dumpster Rentals volunteered their time to remove the remaining debris.
