People of the Flint Hills by John E. Brown

Author:John E. Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-11-25T16:00:00+00:00

Tall as a 747 jetliner stood on its nose, the turbines south of Beaumont are visible north of Eureka, forty miles and more, as the wind blows.

Whew.

The complaint stretched across almost two hundred pages, and all the verbiage reduced to “Pete, your turbines are ugly.” With a coalition of ranchers, conservationists and wildlife enthusiasts filing a federal lawsuit to halt development of the Elk River Windfarm, this $190 million project involving an even one hundred generating towers to be constructed for the most part on the Ferrell Ranch and a few more towers across the road on the late Les Cooper’s grass.

It came down then to a three-to-two county-commission vote in favor of the wind farm for these reasons, and these alone: increased tourism, the privately financed improvement in roads, the project’s consistency with the county’s planning and zoning prospectus, the creation of jobs, its overall safety and—get this—its effect on the view.

And here’s the agricultural upshot: no change whatsoever in grazing patterns, and no birds, not one, killed by the propellers (as documented by researchers from Kansas State University); the Flint Hills changed all right, but as one neighbor says, “Those things aren’t near as bad as I thought they’d be.” Manager Nelson talks of cattle lined up on a hot afternoon, enjoying the shade of the towers, easing along as the shadows edge east to west and back again. Still, one of Ferrell’s erstwhile partners in Tallgrass Beef once walked up to him, called him the devil, and announced that those infernal towers would ruin the Flint Hills forever.

It could have gone either way: one, the mama cow’s dead weight might have pulled the Dodge Powerwagon into the pit, or two, the engine might have started at last and, with the winch released and the cadaver deposited below, Pete and his buddy might have driven away, his dad none the wiser.

Pete Ferrell found a third option.

With the truck chained to a tree, Pete took a limb saw, climbed out onto the gin poles and cut the poor animal’s front legs free. Voila! The chain removed, Pete watched the Powerwagon slip, for no particular reason at all, straight over the cliff.

With nontraditional ways to sustain ranching in these parts as with cleaning up after a blizzard, one never knows for sure. An old boy just never really knows.

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