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They sure are major ugly. They were pushing them here, and a relative looked into it. I don't know about elsewhere, but the contracts are one-sided, can be unilaterally dropped by the contractor, then the farmer is stuck with getting rid of them. And they are huge, monstrous things. They are not a good deal, bad for birds and muck up the landscape. So do oil wells for that matter, but sometimes we have to do what we have to do. They are probably better than fossil fuels, but are just another excuse not to drill.

When I say drill, I don't mean every last drop under there that is nonrenewable. But enough to tide us over until we can look into other alternatives.

Maybe a better solution are the smaller ones people buy themselves, pay for themselves in up to 5 years or less. Any excess is sold to the grid at market value.

Isn't it odd that those old windmills (we got rid of them on 2 farms) are now in vogue? I've tried to photograph a few, but haven't gotten very good ones yet. I remember climbing halfway up a very tall one when I was a kid, then got scared and climbed back down. My father's cousin was afraid to climb all the way to the top to change the light bulb. So my father did it for him, and he wasn't even a farmer any more but a civil engineer who had welded water towers and such just before WWII, so he was used to heights. Those older ones probably didn't generate as much power as the newer ones.

The old “farm-style” windmills were large enough to run (just barely - one water pump.

They succeeded because the water tank was a classic shallow depth “pump storage” unit - you could run the single water pump automatically whenever and for as long as the wind was high enough (but not too high to damage the propeller); then you didn't get any power for the many hours and days when the wind speed was too high, or too low.

The tank didn't care. It filled up, then gradually went down through evaporation, animal use - too small for irrigation! - , and for the farm kitchen. Then it filled up again. No electricity, no farm tools or belt-driven utilities could be reliably driven.

Wind farms are NOT economically driven - they are emotional TAXES on the already-stressed energy demands from conventional and nuclear plants.

Germany, Denmark, other parts of Europe have already idled many dozen wind generators because their grid has been forced sown regularly by their unreliability.

I remember an article several months ago about a farm in upstate New York about a family of farmers who were upset with their father for selling out to allow windmills to be built on there land.

The shadows and noise these windmills caused were driving thee siblings insane as they were built close to their homes. It was also causing problems in the small town because of all the birds the windmills were killing.

The worse part was the digg comments from the liberals. They were horrible. They called the children of this man all kinds of names from being selfish to ignorant. Many stated they would love to see windmills on the top of skyscrapers in the city where they lived.

Speaking of all the birds that are being killed, where are the Sierra Club and the environmentalist who are concerned about the rising number of birds that victims of these windmills? I work with an environut who thinks it is the birds fault when they fly into one of the blades and think the birds will learn to fly around them