My Introduction to Farming at Towering Heights

Johnne and her border collie, Kip

I'd like to introduce you to our neighbor Johnne Smalley, owner/operator of Towering Heights farm in Colfax.


When we moved across the road and down the hill from Johnne five years ago, we were transplants from the "big city" of Eau Claire. My experience with farming was about as minimal as you can get, though Jon had farmed in the past. Still, both of us felt welcome at Towering Heights.




Beef Master calf

The reason was Johnne. She has a generous, inclusive spirit. She likes having people come over and participate in her farm... especially if they're willing to roll up their sleeves and do some work. This includes children, so it wasn't long before my daughter Emma and another neighbor girl were watering plants in her greenhouse.

Emma "helping" with the hay

Johnne is a retired educator, so no surprise that she takes a brainy (though practical) approach to working out problems. Besides keeping up with the daily grind, she's always thinking ahead to the next project... and most of her ideas are pretty ambitious.


She spends a lot of time working, but also takes time to laugh and enjoy people. It's important to her that she do things ethically. When possible, she recycles old materials into things she can use in a new way. She doesn't use pesticides and she's been working with alternative energy since the 1970's. She speaks to her cows in a pleasant, civil tone.

Variation in egg sizes

Leila & me back from the greenhouse, with a bucket of lettuce

After five years in the country, we've learned a lot. We have a big garden of our own, raise  chickens, and do what we can to cultivate our  land. But we also still make regular trips up to Johnne's. I grow a few things, mostly lettuce, in a small section of her greenhouse. Jon helps out on a more extensive basis with things like baling hay, roof repair, tree removal, and so on. In return, he's been paid in "cows", and Johnne lets us board our horse at the farm.

Hurlburt family preparing to plant corn

Anyway, since I refer to Johnne every now and then in posts on this blog, I thought it would be fun for family and friends to "meet" her and hear some background about how her farm started and the way she runs things.


The first thing you need to know about Johnne is that she built her own house.


In the early 1980's, Johnne was a professor at UW Stout. She taught environmental science, anatomy, physiology, and biology. She wrote several curriculum books about saving energy.

Johnne harvesting lettuce from the gutters

In 1983 she approached a bank about getting a home loan. She had already purchased an 8 acre chunk of land and had over $25,000 in savings to put toward a down payment, so thought she was a good candidate for a loan. The bank, however, disagreed and turned her down... single women were not typically given their own home loans back then.


Undeterred, Johnne began seeking out information on how to build the house herself. A book called How To Design and Build Your Own Home Your Own Way became her primary guide. After a lot of research she drew up her own house plans, and by 1984 started building.


The lot she wanted to build on was full of brambles, so she set her goats, two steers, and a dairy cow out to graze. They cleaned the lot up nicely.

Johnne's house

There were things she hired professionals to do. An excavator dug the basement out and specialists poured the concrete foundation. She also had help with the roofing. But most of the other work-- from laying the floor to plumbing to most of the electrical-- she did herself. And along the way, friends and family chipped in with their help.


So instead of ending up with a home and 30 year mortgage, Johnne ended up with a home paid for in cash, PLUS a wealth of experience and confidence gained because she had learned to do most of the work herself. That experience and confidence would serve her well in the years ahead, as she developed Towering Heights farm.


Johnne bought the 70 acres next to her property. It included fields, woods, running water (which she later developed into ponds for her cows), and the remnants of an old apple orchard.

Jon baling hay

From 1984 - 1996 Johnne worked at UW Eau Claire in the registrar office. She designed the on-line transcript program and supervised the records department. I found that timeline very interesting because it overlaps with time I spent at UW Eau Claire as a student... I started in 1987 and was there "for awhile" because I did not graduate right away in a 4 year time slot. So Johnne and I probably crossed paths-- or were at least in the same room as one another-- a few times, not knowing we would end up neighbors a decade or two later.


While establishing her farm, which eventually included Beef Master cows, goats, border collies, and chickens, Johnne became a foster parent. Over the years she helped shelter dozens of young people, giving them peace, kindness, and simple farm life for awhile.


In 2006, while helping in the construction of her sister's home, Johnne suffered a serious fall and broke her back.  She had to take it easy and do as little as possible for at least six months. During that time her job at UW Eau Claire was eliminated. Johnne started looking ahead to the next big project. She began reading books about greenhouse construction, and when the six months of recuperation were over she once again had a plan.

The greenhouse

Johnne approached the shop teacher at the local highschool about hiring a couple of students for a greenhouse construction project. He referred her to two interested students who ultimately did much of the manual labor in building the 3 story, solar-powered greenhouse. When the construction was finished, she invited people from the school to tour the building, and the shop teacher was amazed: he thought his students would be putting together a kit greenhouse, not helping construct something so large, complex, and original.

A view of the lettuce gutters on 1st and 2nd floors

Johnne's greenhouse is powered by sun and water (with a wind generator in the works, someday). Rain water hits the metal roof of the greenhouse and runs down into gutters; the water then pours inside the building through a system of pipes. All the water ends up in a big plastic swimming pool on the first floor. The pool never overflows because Johnne devised a system of "floats" to plug the drainage pipes once the water level is high enough to float them above a certain height. The floats are simply empty Power Ade bottles that happen to be just the right diameter to plug her pipes. It took some experimenting to find the right size bottles, and she's proud of that little innovation.

Rain water collection and heating system for the pool

There's no electricity at the Towering Heights greenhouse, but you'd never miss it. Solar panels help run the pumps that push pool water through a system of hoses, so plants anywhere in the greenhouse are easily watered. Sunshine provides the light and heat.


Solar energy powers motors that blow air from the hot third floor of her greenhouse down to the beds on the first floor, greatly extending her growing season. The warm air is pushed down plastic pipes that run along the bottom of her planting beds. There are holes drilled into the pipe where it meets the bed, so the warm air can blow out into the soil.

Planting beds under construction and a view of my 2nd floor gutters

Johnne keeps chickens on one side of her greenhouse in the winter. They are kept relatively warm inside the building, and also their body heat contributes to the overall warmth of the greenhouse.


The planting beds on the first floor are framed with wood, then covered with landscape plastic. A layer of Styrofoam insulation is placed over that. Plastic pipes for warm air run along the bottom of the beds, but also short perforated pipes (with holes drilled through) are stood up vertically in the beds and left so their open tops stick out of the dirt. The perforated pipes are stuffed with peat moss, and that serves as a wick to keep the soil in her beds moist.


Flat shale rocks, collected from around her property, are laid on top the Styrofoam insulation, for drainage. Then soil goes on top of that.

Flat shale rocks line bottom of planting beds

Another places where plants are grown is in her system of hanging gutters. They are simply plastic gutters hung with ropes above the planting beds. The gutters are filled with soil, planted, and watered. They are great for smaller-rooted plants like lettuce.

Gutters filled with lettuce, hanging above the planting beds

I have a row of gutters on the second floor. Every morning I walk up to the farm, and usually Johnne's in the greenhouse watering. I water my plants and we talk... every now and then I bring an empty ice cream bucket upstairs and cut myself a bunch of lettuce, kale, or whatever I need. The leaves grow back and in a few days I can harvest again. Eventually the lettuce "bolts" and goes to seed, but Johnne is showing me how seed pods can be saved and used to grow things another year. Also, if plantings are staggered, the crops of lettuce don't bolt at the same time and you're ensured a continuous supply of yummy salad material.



Right now you can buy Johnne's lettuce at Fat Bottom Glass located at 123 Banbury Place (Building 13) in Eau Claire. She has various types available. It's all organic and reasonably priced.


In the future I'll write more about other aspects of Johnne's farm, like her beef cow operation. But that's all for today!