He’s got one turbine on his 800 acres, right where he raises cattle and farms wheat.
“My brother got one and I got one, we have ground right next to each other,” he said.
“It makes for a pretty nice check every year,” one that helps keep everything afloat, he said.
Some of his neighbors said no when the wind company first came through to site the farm, something he said they regret.
“There isn’t a person out here who wouldn’t have sited more on their land if they could,” he said.
Many of the objections he hears – that the turbines are noisy or scare animals – come from people who clearly don’t have firsthand experience, Thimesch said.
Of his own turbine, he said, “I can hear the motor humming. But I can also hear the irrigation running from my neighbor’s fields, and that’s louder than my turbine.”
He said his cattle actually love it. “When it’s hot out, they come and line up in the shade from the turbine tower,” he said.
The formation is called a “bovine sundial” and multiple ranchers USA TODAY interviewed described the same phenomenon on their land. The cattle bunch up in the line of shade, slowly shuffling from west to east as the sun moves across the horizon.
Click to next page to continue reading
