There’s magic in the Nebraska panhandle. For the urbanites of the east, those hailing from Lincoln, Omaha, or even Grand Island, the region unfurls a blank canvas. For some, it’s a lacuna, like sinking into a dreamless sleep—heavy eyelids and vague, milepost memories. For others, a time-worn photo of the ‘Good Life,’ bucolic and bewitching—ardent skies, coarse with possibility.
Prairie hamlets and small-town facades crest the shifting dunes, sand or snow. Ancient creatures like Nebraska’s newly christened state reptile, the ornate box turtle, endure. Near the crenellated chassis of ‘Carhenge’—a to-scale replica of Wiltshire’s Stonehenge wrought from classic cars—the city of Alliance, Nebraska, idles at just over 8,000 residents.
Individualism permeates the city, yet there are those still deemed “eccentric” by the libertine standards of the land. A compulsive tinkerer who privileges invention over convention, Greenhouse in the Snow proprietor Russ Finch gladly accepted this descriptor over decades of “off-the-grid" living, heating his hand-built home through a series of eight-foot-deep geothermal tubes.
His ideas were often met with placid skepticism until a fateful project convinced many, most notably Greenhouse in the Snow co-owner Allen Bright, that there was “method” to Russ’ so-called “madness.” Thirteen years later, the magic of their geothermal greenhouse concept—a made-to-order kit that taps into the Earth's natural heat—has rendered the country, and the world, a more vibrant place.
“Russ is the originator,” Bright explained, recalling the earliest months of their business relationship some 14 years prior. “His old, original greenhouse was made of wood, and it had rotted out. He wanted to rebuild it. He came into the shop looking for steel.”
As owner of Alliance-based Antioch Machine, Bright was happy to oblige despite harboring doubts.
“The thing was, when he came in here, he was actually debating with himself whether to rebuild it or just take it down. He came in with the (then) head of the local chamber of commerce, Dixie Nelson, and she was trying to convince him to rebuild the greenhouse and that he needed to start selling the greenhouse. He was 78 at the time, he’s 92 now,” Bright added.
Finch, eventually swayed by Nelson’s enthusiasm, returned to Antioch Machine a few months later with a home-wrought support arch in tow. He asked Bright if he could replicate it, the latter assuring he’d do a “professional job.” An initial order of nine arches was followed by an invoice for 48. As Finch’s reconstruction efforts took shape, so too did the excitement of Bright’s team.
“We started shipping them out of there (directly)…so the guys would pick them up and they’d say, ‘Russ who’s going to take this over when you’re done? This is such a good idea and someone needs to carry it on.’ And (Russ would) say, ‘Well, Allen…’ And I’d say ‘No…I don’t think so.’ Because I didn’t believe the greenhouse worked,” Bright recalled.
In time, Bright agreed to raise a greenhouse on his own property. Under Finch’s direction, the structure was complete by Thanksgiving of that year. Though absent vegetation, winter’s encroaching frost and swelling snowdrifts heralded revelation.
“I’d go out there and it’d be 20 or 25 degrees below in the morning, and I had water bottles that were partially full sitting around the greenhouse,” Bright said. “There wasn’t anything growing in there, but I’d look at these bottles and they were never frozen, even when it was bitter cold outside. And I said, ‘Oh, this actually does work!’”
Finch describes the greenhouse kit as a “modified Walipini,” an earth-sheltered design originating from the Central Andes that translates to “place of warmth” in its native Aymaran. Through decades of experimentation, Finch discovered a way to make the fundamentals of the Walipini—semi-subterranean, glazed A-frame exteriors—productive in northern latitudes.
“It’s kind of a compilation of ideas over time. There was an old greenhouse style they call the Walipini, which was basically a hole in the ground that had some kind of glazing laid over it and then it would use the ground temperature to keep from freezing most of the time. And then, of course, conventional greenhouses have been around for hundreds of years,” Bright explained. “This is kind of a marriage between a conventional greenhouse and the original Walipini.”
Bright entered a partnership with Finch that has since shipped more than 700 geothermal greenhouse kits and cultivated thousands of fruits, vegetables, and flowering plants throughout the continental United States, and even internationally via licensing agreements in France and Canada.
Ryan Lorenzen of Wakefield, Nebraska, received his family’s Greenhouse in the Snow kit five years ago.
“I was a land surveyor for the Bureau of Land Management, the federal government, for 34 years (…) a few years before I retired, I was starting to look for things to do,” Lorenzen said. “And I just happened to see a little three-minute episode on Russ Finch’s ‘Greenhouse in the Snow’ on Nebraska Public TV, and kind of thought, ‘Jeez, that looks kind of interesting.’ We’ve always been gardeners, and so the following summer we went out and visited Russ, and by that next year, 2019, we decided to build one.”
Since then, the Lorenzen clan has enjoyed a 120-foot-long slice of equatorial Eden, growing pineapples, bananas, and daughter Sarah’s favorite, mandarin oranges, year-round, among other colorful flora. The unit’s relatively low startup cost, ease of set-up, and energy efficiency means the household isn’t just flush in tropical and subtropical yields, but long-term savings.
“The amount of electricity that we use is so little, we actually have a dedicated meter on our grid coming in,” Lorenzen said. “We’ve been down to 38 cents a day in October, and then our heaviest used month is always January; the worst we’ve ever had is $1.78 (in a day).”
Such efficiency, along with selling surplus fruits and vegetables under the ‘Lorenzen Family Produce’ stamp, means their Greenhouse in the Snow isn’t just sustainable, it’s profitable. However, it’s the man behind the greenhouse, Russ Finch, who turned satisfied customers into fervent advocates.
“Especially my daughter and myself, we’re almost like disciples of Russ because we absolutely agree with his philosophy of, ‘Why are we importing all of our food from overseas when we should just be growing it right here?’” Lorenzen said. “So, we (give demos of the greenhouse) out of the love of our heart for what his design and everything is.”
At time of writing, Greenhouse in the Snow kits come ordered in long (54’-150’) and short (36’-48’) geothermal, lean-to, and most recently, free-standing models designed for residential grows. And while the company has garnered numerous accolades—including the 2014 Nebraska Business Development Center’s ‘Sustainability Business of the Year’ award and a finalist position in the Nebraska Chamber’s ‘Coolest Thing Made in Nebraska’ contest in 2023—it’s Finch himself, his preternatural vision and resolve, who melted skepticism around, and nurtured belief in, a greener, brighter tomorrow.
“It was Russ’ idea,” Bright reiterated. “He put the effort in when everybody was saying, ‘No, no, no, that won’t work,’ (and) he said, ‘Yeah, I think I can do this.’”
“And he was right.”
For more information, visit greenhouseinthesnow.com and the Lorenzen Family Produce page on Facebook. Editor's Note: Russ Finch passed away in November 2024.
This article originally appeared in the May 2025 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
