Local business owner stays optimistic after storm damages property

ITAWAMBA COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – Storms that hit the area Sunday night caused damage in parts of the viewing area.

WCBI reported Monday, June 12 that a mobile home in Chickasaw County was destroyed as well as a few greenhouses in Itawamba County.

Owner of Waltons Greenhouse, Marty Walton, said this isn’t the first time he’s seen storms hit near him or damage his product.

“Certainly we’ve seen this it’s nothing new and I guess it’s come to be expected we go through that season, I have to say in June though I’ve not seen it so much in June,” said Walton.

Walton said he and his staff are going to rebuild, but it’s going to cost them some money in the short term.

“We’re not insured we’re self-insured we had insurance years ago and had a couple of claims and they dropped us because let’s face it they’re not the best structures in the world to withstand storms and we understand that we take the risk,” said Walton.

Although three greenhouses are completely gone, Walton said there could be an added bonus when it’s time to get more greenhouses installed.

“We may actually end up adding a greenhouse after we repair these and replace the ones that are destroyed we were already actually talking about it prior to this happening expanding our growing operations we may end up adding at least one more greenhouse,” said Walton.

20 of the 23 greenhouses are still functioning, but the damage didn’t impact what was inside of them.

“We were fortunate that we didn’t lose any product, we did have a house go down that did have some product in it, but we were able to crawl in and got all of our employees it and got all of the product out, put it on trucks yesterday and sent it out to the stores so were blessed,” said Walton.

Walton said this isn’t the first time he’s had to deal with getting his greenhouses back together after storms.

He knows it will be a process to get things back up and restocked but he’s thankful the storms hit where they did.

“We have an office building, and then our homes are right here too, my home is on the north end of the farm my mother and father’s home is on the south end of the farm our homes weren’t bothered so hey we’re blessed,” said Walton.

Walton said he’s thankful that his staff wasn’t at work the night of the storms either and feels that operations will run smoothly as they work to get more greenhouses.

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