I was outside checking on the gopher situation the other day and seeing how bad it was going to be this spring, when I could hear something. Now standing in the pasture there are only so many things it could be – but this noise I knew exactly what it was. What it was was our windmill. It kind of has this certain type of noise that it makes when it’s windy and I think it only brings character to it. Some might argue, but hey.. it’s not their windmill. This windmill was one that was on my folk’s farm and it was rescued. I don’t remember much about it’s past history other than I think it had a barn by it and it did pump water in it’s day. There hasn’t been much there for a long time, but when we picked rocks in that field we would once in awhile find some cool half broken piece of a horseshoe or maybe once in awhile some old square nails. My brothers farm the land now where the windmill stood and they are the ones that saved her. They had it taken down and literally put back together again.To say it was in bad shape might not even tell you really how bad it was. My one brother is a welder and was able to fix it all back up. I LOVE my windmill. Now between Daryl and I we always talk about loving something or if you like it. Well, I LOVE it! We had to hire someone with a crane to set it up and it’s got the footings so deep that I don’t think it’ll ever blow down. I remember it like yesterday when it was going up we had so many neighbors and town people driving by that we finally quit waving at them and just kept on doing the work. Our one neighbor who was putting in his crops even told us that both him and his son stopped the field work to come and watch. They knew that they might never have the chance to watch a windmill going up again and didn’t want to miss it. We wanted to have it up for our son’s graduation and that was such a good motivator that we did get it all painted and up just in time. It’s funny what you can get all done on the farm when you have a graduation isn’t it? So when I was standing in the pasture checking out the windmill the other day, I noticed the new windmills that have gone up around our area. Our neighbor had put up a couple of wind turbines and it isn’t too far from us that one business came in and put up 15 wind turbines for a cost of $45 million.
From our farm you can see the new wind turbine farms
There is something about windmills, old or new that just catch your eye and are fascinating. But the only difference is that I don’t think anyone with a new turbine would like the squeak that ours has, and it wouldn’t take long until a technician’s truck would be pulling into their yard. For me? I kind of like the squeak. It’s got a comforting sound and it makes it ours, and it now she stands proud on our farm.
Just perfect!