Zane Fulbright is an archeologist with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. He’s leading a restoration of a two-story log barn that Edwin Wartzenluft and son, Paul, carved out of the prairie with axes next to the log house in 1914.

More than that, Fulbright is trying to explain to today’s generation what yesterday’s homesteaders endured.

The nearest blacktop highway is 25 miles away.

“Until you drive out here, you don’t get it,” Fulbright says of the homesteading experience. “And you say, ‘Holy cow’ and think, ‘People lived way out here?’”

An effort by the BLM to save remnants of the state’s homesteading heyday in northcentral Montana is under way, before they disappear like the people who built them, taking the important history with them.

Restoration of the Wartzenluft barn falls on the 150th anniversary year of the Homestead Act, which was signed May 20, 1862, by Abraham Lincoln, and it’s no accident. Fulbright sees the anniversary as an ideal opportunity to educate the public about this site and others in the area.

“This is a public resource,” Fulbright said. “This is a recreation site. People drive right by it. It’s a local landmark. We have an opportunity here to preserve some of the local history.”

Structures that remain standing from one of the most important eras of the state’s history are artifacts in the eyes of Fulbright and Kirby Matthew, an exhibit specialist with Region 1 of the U.S. Forest Service in Missoula.

The BLM asked Matthew’s five-member building restoration team to help in restoring the two-story barn built by the Wartzenlufts.

“We look at these as big open air museum exhibits,” Matthew said. “We’re working on artifacts ¿ just big ones, big ones with a roof.”

Last month, Matthew’s crew was camped at the site like pioneers, living in tents during the duration of the restoration project. The only sounds were coming from the whistling wind and prairie birds.

Staying on the site saved driving time as opposed to returning nightly to Lewistown, which is 73 miles to the southwest.

“We’ve got so much to get done,” Matthew said.

The Homestead Act was passed in 1862. It gave 160 acres ¿ and later 320 ¿ to anybody who could “prove up” the land, in effect successfully farming it for five years and later three. The land rush in Montana occurred roughly from about 1910 to 1917 with the 151,000 homestead applications the most in the nation.

In Fergus County alone, where the Wartzenluft place is located, the population swelled to 28,344 by 1920. Today, it’s 11,600.

Over the years, the BLM, created in 1946 with a merging of the General Land Office and U.S. Grazing Service, has acquired land with homesteads as a result of land exchanges, donations or purchases, Fulbright said.

Now it’s attempting to preserve structures constructed by homesteaders who were able to successfully acquire title to the property.

“We are losing them rapidly,” said Kate Hampton, preservation coordinator for the Montana Historical Society’s Historic Preservation Office.

There’s no record of how many homestead structures remain standing but it’s a good bet there are thousands, Hampton said. Not all of them should be saved but well-preserved sites, such as those in the Missouri River Breaks, are worth the trouble, she said.

Everybody’s heard the familiar hardy-folks-came-West-and-made-the-land-great story, she said.

Homesteads that retain multiple features, such as fence lines, rows of trees and root cellars, tell a more complete and accurate story about the experience, she said.

“These places really show you what a struggle it was to be out there and dependent on good weather, good crops, hard work and a lot of good luck,” she said.

Since 2005, the BLM has spent $150,000 to $200,000 preserving five homesteads on its lands in northern Fergus and southern Blaine counties.

The Wartzenluft place, which is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, is the sixth.

Besides the Wartzenluft restoration, the BLM also plans to fence a homestead cemetery in Petroleum County later this year. One name is still visible on a headstone and thus its name ¿ Nordahl Cemetery.

Oral and written histories of many homesteaders already have been recorded, the BLM’s Fulbright said.

What’s missing from the stories, however, is the “bones of it” ¿ physical remnants, the cabins, barns and cemeteries. That’s where the restorations come in, he said. Today, it’s rare to find an original homestead landscape that has not been modified for contemporary use, he says.

“I hate to see a part of the story lost,” he said.

Saving the structures is personal for Fulbright. His great grandparents homesteaded 10 miles north of Ingomar.

Edwin and Paul Wartzenluft came to Montana in 1914 from Illinois and each homesteaded on the Musselshell Road. They sold the land in 1926. The BLM acquired it in a land exchange in the 1980s.

They used axes to square the logs so they were flat on each side and dovetailed the corners to prevent warping and settling. Matthew said the process of smoothing out the logs would have taken a tremendous amount of labor.

“We’re guessing it was logged locally,” said Fulbright, as a row of people carried off a log from the barn.

Wooden pegs were used to hold the logs together.

The buildings have held their shape over the years.

“This is a really cool barn,” said Betty Westburg, a BLM employee who was assisting at the Wartzenluft restoration. “They were really master craftsmen.”

Westburg knows the history of the area as well as anybody. She serves on the board of the Central Montana Museum and her grandmother, Elma Webb, who was born in Denmark, was a homesteader who ran the post office and store in a community called Wilder, not far from the Wartzenluft place. She traveled by train as far as Roy and made the rest of the 35-mile trip by team and wagon.

Fulbright says the Homestead Act anniversary is a perfect time for an aggressive restoration effort of the Wartzenluft place.

One interesting feature of the two-story barn is that it was constructed with the lower level situated into a hillside.

That allowed the wagon to be backed up to the second story to unload hay. The hay could be easily unloaded without having to hoist it up to the second floor, with the food simply dropped to the animals on the lower level.

“It’s not very often you see a two-story log barn,” Westburg said. “So I think it’s really wonderful it’s being saved.”

In the house, sleeping quarters were in a loft. The main floor served as a kitchen and the general living space.

In conjunction with the 150th anniversary, the BLM is developing a self-guided auto tour of 11 homesteads on private, BLM lands and Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge in Fergus County.

A 60-mile loop, beginning on Sand Creek Trail and ending on Wilder Trail off U.S. Highway 191, will take 5 1/2 hours to drive.

The Wartzenluft homestead is one of the places on the tour.

The log barn stands 18 logs high on each side and has a total of 72 logs.

One by one, logs are being taken down from the walls and put aside during foundation improvements.

As part of the restoration, 40 new logs will be needed. That will require a crew to hew them with an ax ¿ just like the Wartzenluft’s did nearly a century ago. The restoration is expected to be completed in July.

“We’re going to rebuild this as it would have looked when it was new,” Fulbright said.

This winner of a Consumer Electronics Show innovation award for 2012 is a first of its kind — a solar-powered e-reader cover. It’s not cheap but for Kindle devotees who want to be able to read late in the night while they’re on a camping trip or otherwise away from a charger, the SolarKindle promises to deliver three months of reading time under normal sunlight conditions without drawing on the Kindle’s battery.

The solar panel is built into the cover and it has a reserve battery that can be charged through a USB cable or with solar power. The case has a built-in LED reading light that will operate for up to 50 hours without drawing down the main battery on your Kindle. The reserve battery can also boost the Kindle’s main battery, with an hour of direct sunlight converting into the equivalent of three days of reading. The SolarKindle for the Kindle is available now and a new version compatible with the Kindle touch is available for presale now (www.solarmio.com).

SolarKindle, Solarfocus, $80.

We are beginning a community in Texas where we are building sustainable earth homes off-the-grid using solar, convection and thermal technologies to cool, heat and provide energy to the home. We are also building a community aquaponics garden to produce fish and vegetables.

Please contact me for details.

Please join us off grid! To apply simply send us a video of yourself telling us why you want to come to our off grid community. See more information at www.montelloalpacacompany.blogspot.com

Abrams: raising the profile of off-grid life

If trailer does not appear above click here to see.

Here is the series summary:
Our entire way of life depends on electricity. So what would happen if it just stopped working? Well, one day, like a switch turned off, the world is suddenly thrust back into the dark ages. Planes fall from the sky, hospitals shut down, and communication is impossible. And without any modern technology, who can tell us why? Now, 15 years later, life is back to what it once was long before the industrial revolution: families living in quiet cul-de-sacs, and when the sun goes down lanterns and candles are lit. Life is slower and sweeter. Or is it? On the fringes of small farming communities, danger lurks. And a young woman’s life is dramatically changed when a local militia arrives and kills her father, who mysteriously – and unbeknownst to her – had something to do with the blackout. This brutal encounter sets her and two unlikely companions off on a daring coming-of-age journey to find answers about the past in the hopes of reclaiming the future.

Abrams is currently directing the untitled sequel to Star Trek. The film is scheduled for release in May 2013.

Check out this article from Frugal Living containing 23 PAGES of useful tips on how to make your own cleaning products for next to nothing. In this article, published just a few weeks ago,  you will find tips on how to clean your home with eco-friendly homemade cleaning products. You will find more than 45 fun and easy to follow recipes to make almost every room in your house sparkle. These recipes are all done with non-toxic economical ingredients that can be found in your kitchen.

The Big Four, as everyone knows are Vinegar, Lemon Juice, and Baking Soda. Either on their own or in combination these ingredients, can handle multiple house cleaning tasks. The first two break down dirt and disinfect, and the third absorb foul odors. Hydrogen peroxide is also a cheap, plentiful cleaning product – to eliminate bathroom mould for example, spray areas with a one-to-two H202-to-water solution.

There are many other books. One recommends the following:

Building your own Household Cleanser

Mix water and vinegar in equal parts and use to clean kitchen surfaces, wash floors, appliances, sinks and toilets.   you can pour the solution into a spray bottle, and that woks particularly well on surfaces.

Baking soda particularly effective at neutralising doors. Put it in your fridge or toolbox to eliminate smell of stale food. Adding baking soda to the above vinegar solution can enhance its efficacy.

Mix vinegar and baking soda 2 parts vinegar and 1 part baking soda and 8 parts of water.

Lemon Juice 

Lemon juice is a natural bleaching agent, — just as well if you insist on wearing  white clothing and other fabric. This juice can be used to clean and shine metal, or mixed with baking soda to make an abrasive cleaning paste. Finally, it makes a great disinfectant for cutting boards and other kitchen surfaces.

Dishwashing Liquid and Laundry Detergent

A simple equal-parts mixture of borax and washing soda (sodium carbonate) makes an effective dish cleaning solution, appropriate for dishwashers. Simple liquid soap is great for most hand dish washing, while adding a few tablespoons of vinegar to soapy water will help you to scrub off tough residues.

For laundry detergent, you will need a whole bar of plain homemade soap (no color or fragrance added) or 1/3 bar of Fels Naptha or other commercial soap. You will combine the soap with ½ cup washing soda and ½ cup borax. For a very simple powder soap, simply grate the bar of soap into fine pieces and mix them with the other two ingredients.

You can also make a liquid detergent with a few additional steps. Melt the soap over a stove in six cups of water, and then stir in the soda and borax. Add your mixture to four cups of hot water, stir, and then add a final one gallon and six cups of water. Allow the detergent to cool for 24 hours until it has gelled.

Vinegar Encore

In addition to the uses we have already discussed, here are a few more ways to put vinegar to use. Adding ½ cup of vinegar to your washing machine’s rinse cycle is an effective fabric softener. Hard water stains and soap scum on bathroom and kitchen fixtures are no match for vinegar, and toilet rings don’t stand a chance. You can even use vinegar to polish floors in conjunction with a little bit of baby oil.

Other products

There are many other home cleaning remedies that people have end in to us. The DIY Network has  readers suggestions . Eartheasy also has many suggestions,

Is it Vaporware?

A decision by Samsung to sell solar powered laptops in Bangladesh at low prices could be the first of  a new generation.  For mobile users and those living without utility power in the West, the 3G products could give long-term Internet access on the remotest mountaintop.

In a display of cultural ineptitude, the Seoul based company with an annual turnover of more than $220 billion says it will launch the new product next month, right at the start of the Bangladesh monsoon season which  would make solar powered portables unusable.

Samsung had announced plans last year for a solar powered laptop to be launched (improbably) in Russia. But this product has yet to appear. The new development seems more realistic as part of a strategy to target the young professional market among the 160 million Bangla population.

“We will launch solar notebooks in June for young professionals,” said Choon Soo Moon, managing director of Samsung Electronics (Bangladesh operations), in an interview with Dhaka’s Daily Star.

“It is a unique product and we will be the first company to launch it in Bangladesh with a price tag of Tk 34,000. ($415)”

He expects the product to attract professionals, especially of 23-30 years of age, who have to travel a long way for office work.

Samsung aims to introduce the solar notebook computers as the country faces a nagging power crisis and still half of the population is deprived of electricity from the national grid, says Moon.

Besides, in terms of weather, Bangladesh is suitable for solar energy as the country enjoys longer sunlight hours.

The South Korean electronics powerhouse will initially focus on awareness building about the solar notebooks, says the official.

“In the beginning, we are not targeting big, rather focusing on creating demand for the products through promotional campaigns,”

He expects to sell around 500 pieces of solar notebooks a month.

For anyone interested in importing the products to the West, Samsung’s Dhaka office is not involved in any direct sales in Bangladesh. It sells refrigerators, television and mobile sets and computer monitors through local distributors.

For cellular handsets, Transcom Mobile Ltd is the official distributor, while Electra International and Transcom Electronics market consumer electronics.

In the IT products’ category, Smart Technology, Index IT Ltd and Computer Source sell Samsung computer monitors, hardware and other computer accessories.

These distributors import Samsung products directly from the factories of India, South Korea, Malaysia and China and also handle the service centre activities. For mobile phones, Samsung outsourced mobile servicing to Discovery, a third party mobile servicing company.

“In Bangladesh, you have to go to one market to buy a television set, while for IT products and consumer electronics, you have to go to other markets,” he says.

“It is good. But the end-users have to spend a lot of time for this.”

The company also plans to develop around 50 mobile applications for local market this year at its research and development centre in Dhaka.

The R&D centre, which was launched last year, has offered a big advantage for the electronics giant to face the challenges in the local market.

“We are in a position to handle any regulatory or unforeseeable challenges due to having our own software development centre in the country,” says Moon.

He says Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has recently made it mandatory for all mobile handsets to be used within the country to have Bangla keypad.

“We could easily comply with the directive as four hundred Bangladeshi software developers are working at the R&D centre,” says Moon.

Its fun in Conwy

Looking for free solar power and live in North Wales?

Farms and rural businesses without mains electricity in Conwy, a costal community at the tip of Snowdonia National Park North Wales, are being invited to take apply for free solar power installation in a trial funded by the local government. 

Conwy Rural Partnership’s Local Action Group (LAG) is planning to install photovoltaic (PV) panels, with battery storage, at a wide range of sites. These will either replace existing diesel generators or provide a new supply to allow a broader range of business activities.

Suitable sites include workshops, studios and farm-based self catering units. Non-farming tourist buildings are ineligible.

As planning consent may be needed, prospective participants should check with the local authority. Stuart Whitfield, renewable resources officer at Conwy Cynhaliol, said: “A conditional funding offer may be awarded prior to planning approval – but this must be secured before any grant is claimed.”

Expressions of interest must be submitted by May 23. The LAG will agree which schemes to support by June 1. The LAG is also inviting ideas for other rural renewable energy schemes in 2012 and 2013.

More details at: www.ruralconwy.org.uk. Stuart Whitfield, 01492 577838 or conwycynhaliol@conwy.gov.uk.

Charles Baird - jolly good sport

Is he secretly being sponsored by Remington?

A 40-year-old oil rigger and filmmaker from Anchorage will spend the next year on uninhabited Latouche Island in Alaska’s Prince William Sound.  Charles Baird will live in a shed, and plans to feed off catches from hunting and fishing.

He’ll send short updates via a satellite to http://www.facebook.com/AlaskanPioneer with no way to receive any inbound messages.  He calls his experiment more modern-day homesteading than a survival game, and he’s heading into the adventure well-armed.

“I may see some hunters and fishermen come by but otherwise I will be on my own, just me and my dog,” he said.

Latouche Island is a narrow strip of land (12 miles long, 3 miles wide) located about 100 miles southwest of the port city of Valdez. Like many islands in Prince William Sound, people digging into the beach there can still find oil from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.

The now abandoned Latouche City site once was home to 4,000 people, thanks to copper mining. The mine closed in 1930, and now the island is dotted with occasional seasonal cabins and not much else. The island is mostly used for subsistence hunting.

Kate and Andy McLaughlin live in Chenega Bay, a village six miles away on Evans Island, and own a cabin on Latouche.

Kate McLaughlin doesn’t know Baird, but has heard his story many times. In fact, she’s written a book about people coming to Alaska to live the remote lifestyle and is in the process of trying to find a publisher.

“We’ve seen several people of his ilk try to come out and say, ‘We’re going to build a cabin, we’re going to live out here and do it,”’ she said. “It’s tough.”

Some abandoned supplies from those people making earlier attempts can still be found strewn on the beach.

The challenges of Latouche Island are numerous, and foremost is the weather.

“You’re fighting the cold or the mould,” McLaughlin said of the seemingly constant precipitation, snow and rain.

Baird said the island has anywhere from 80-120 inches of snow in a typical winter, along with 70 inches of rain a year.

The McLaughlins’ two-story cabin on the beach had snow up to the roof this winter.

“It’s wet, things don’t dry out,” said Dave Janka, who owns Auklet Charter Services in Cordova. “You get lots of snow.”

Much like Cordova, he called Latouche Island “paradise with rain.”

“Heavy weather is going to be a constant companion,” said RJ Kopchak, a Cordova businessman and former commercial fisherman. “That’s what happens there.”

Another problem? Black bears. There’s a large bear population on the island, and McLaughlin says they “love to get into trouble.”

Baird said he’ll be safe from the bears. He’ll carry a .44 with him at all times, has a shotgun “and a few other weapons, as well.” The dog will also alert him to any predators.

There are building restrictions on the uninhabited island, Baird said, so he will have to construct his makeshift cabin without digging into the ground for a foundation.

He plans to have lumber delivered to build his cabin, which will be located about a third of a mile from the beach, about 150 feet up a hill.

He’ll have plentiful fishing opportunities.

“The nice thing about the ocean is twice a day you’ve got a dinner table set out for you,” Janka said.

The challenges don’t faze Baird, who is ex-military, except perhaps for one.

“Probably the biggest challenge is the isolation,” he said, adding it was an issue for some of his classmates in an Air Force Academy survival training course.

Some “did experience hallucinations and even group delusions, just minor things. But it is kind of a concern, being alone that long,” he said.

He said he’s worked with psychologists at Harvard and the University of Chicago, talking through the things he can expect, like nightmares.

“I think I’ll be OK, I’ve done a lot of work on my own, and I’ll also have a dog, which probably will help keep things stabilized,” he said.

He also plans to keep busy by reading, taking a couple thousand books on an electronic reader. He’ll keep it charged with wind and solar systems he’s taking with him.

Baird is planning to keep a diary, which could be turned into a book. He’s also thinking of writing an instructional book of how to live in the remote wilderness.

Then there’s also the filming, day in and day out, of his experiences alone on the Alaska island.

Once he returns to civilization, he’ll edit the video and try to sell it as a documentary series. But he won’t even know who won the November presidential election for six months.

Baird is not the first to make or film such an odyssey.  Dick Proenneke lived alone in a remote cabin and kept journals published as the classic Alaska memoir “One Man’s Wilderness.”

He moved to his cabin in 1968 at the age of 52. Proenneke lived alone until 1998 in what is now Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. He also filmed his adventures, which have been turned into DVDs and were aired on PBS. He died in 2003.

Hard work, but at least you can look good

Urban homesteading, growing or raising a portion of your own food, has become so fashionable that upscale cookware company Williams-Sonoma introduced the Agrarian collection, a line of tools and supplies for activities ranging from beekeeping to cheese making, delivered to 75 countries.

Photos of gardening beds thick with leafy greens, heirloom chickens strutting around picturesque coops and shiitake mushrooms growing on a log make the homesteading life look beautiful and delicious, while also playing down the hard-work aspect of these chores-turned-hobbies. Copper gardening tools are so shiny and pretty they seem more like rustic decorations for a farm-to-table restaurant than tools for working in the dirt.

Will $700 chicken coops become the new status symbol for the upper-class foodie who owns a Viking range but eats takeout every night? Maybe so, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing for the local food movement.

“I think it is a good sign for urban homesteading,” said Julie Butcher Pezzino, executive director of Grow Pittsburgh, a nonprofit which promotes and supports urban agriculture. “It moves urban homesteading more into the mainstream,” she said, which might encourage more people to think about where their food comes from and to see that they can do some of these things themselves.

Some people do grow vegetables or raise chickens to save money. It’s no coincidence that urban homesteading gained literal ground during the Great Recession. With skill and luck, growing vegetables, raising chickens and preserving food to minimize waste can offer a cheaper alternative to, say, buying heirloom tomatoes and free- range eggs from the local farmer’s market.

Even at its most frugal, however, these urban homesteading activities cost money.

Still having control of even a very small part of the food supply is incredibly satisfying. For some that might mean raising chickens; others might try making ricotta or fermenting sauerkraut. Buying an $80 fermentation crock fromWilliams-Sonoma isn’t the cheapest way to try out a new technique, but it’s not an extraordinary splurge either. Fancy pickled vegetables often cost more than $10 a jar.

It typically costs about $2,500 outfitting a new community garden with 15 12-by-3-foot cedar wood raised beds, filled with a mix of dirt and compost. At Williams-Sonoma, a three foot square raised bed (without the dirt) costs $150, but it comes as an easy-to-assemble kit delivered to your door. For someone who loves to garden but has trouble with all the bending and stooping, there’s the option of a raised bed on stilts ($300 for a 2-by-4-foot bed on 3-foot legs), or, a cheaper solution, a memory-foam kneeling pad with a neoprene cover that wipes clean ($30).

The Agrarian collection includes an attractive wooden beehive with a copper-colored aluminum roof ($340) and a backyard beehive starter kit that includes a hat with a veil, gloves, a smoker and other equipment ($180). Beekeeping gear and chicken coops stand out from the other items that Williams-Sonoma sells, because of the commitment they represent to actual bees and chickens. Williams-Sonoma doesn’t sell either, but they do provide information about where to get them, as well as reminding people to check local ordinances before diving into small animal husbandry.

For now, only eight Williams-Sonoma stores will carry items from the Agarian collection. Browse the collection online at www.williams- sonoma.com.

Brandt: punters will be "slammed"

Commodities Trader Peter Brandt sees lower oil prices; bubble in grains, farmland

Brandt is a technical trader, poring over charts and patterns to spot potential breakouts and breakdowns. Nowadays he’s bearish on corn and other grains, along with farmland, oil and natural gas.

“When you look at those markets, I think we’re at prices that are unsustainable.” said Brandt, who also writes a popular Internet blog about trading commodities and stocks. Read Peter Brandt’s blog.

Gold is one of the few commodities Brandt is staying long on. He also said the U.S. stock market is attractively valued, and warns of a “huge bubble” forming in Treasurys and other fixed-income investments once U.S. interest rates rise.

1. Natural gas is a bust

Natural gas prices have been at decade lows — and for good reason, Brandt said: “We have such a huge supply of natural gas in this country,” he pointed out — “more gas than can be consumed.”

He’s watched with fascination and trepidation as investors have bet on the natural gas sector through exchange-traded funds such as United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG, US). Those ETFs and their leveraged siblings have taken a beating that Brandt doesn’t believe is over.

“I have no desire to be involved in natural gas whatsoever,” Brandt said. “I don’t think there’s any way for an investor to make money.”

2. Oil spills and slicks

If natural gas is a bad trade, oil futures aren’t any better, Brandt said. He expects crude prices to move to a more normalized level from their recent spike, and not to challenge the summer 2008 highs when a barrel of oil commanded close to $150.

“A year out I do not think we’ll be at $104 oil,” Brandt said. “Oil could go back to the $60 level.”

Brandt advised investors to avoid or take short positions on leveraged oil ETFs and exchange-traded notes, such as PowerShares DB Crude Oil Double Short ETN (DTO, US)  and ProShares Ultra DJ-UBS Crude Oil (UCO, US), and even avoid the straight, nonleveraged United States Oil Fund (USO, US) . “It’s a sucker play,” he said about the oil-patch ETFs.

3. Harvest crop profits

Corn (CN2, US) and many other crop prices are as high as, well, an elephant’s eye — “Too high,” Brandt said — and the trader said he’s short-selling grain futures in anticipation of the agriculture investing theme playing itself out.

In the supply- and demand-driven world of commodities, “there’s nothing that cures high prices like high prices,” he said.

“I would be looking for a top to grain prices, which could be the top for the next couple of years, somewhere in the next two months,” Brandt added. He said that he plans to unwind his long position in soybeans in coming months in the wake of an expected strong pickup in trading volume that catapults prices.

4. Plow under farmland

Agriculture products are in a bubble, and so is the land they grow on, Brandt said.

“The price of farmland is at an obscene level,” he said. “It’s impossible to make money by being a farmer, and the land can’t be justified as an investment.”

Farmland, largely in the Midwest grain belt, has been one of the few bright spots in the U.S.  real estate market. Agricultural land prices rose 3.8% on average in the first quarter, the strongest start to a year since 2006 and the second-highest going back to 1991, according to the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries.

For example, farm acreage values rose 24% in Iowa and 17% in Nebraska in 2011, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. Double-digit yearly gains for farmland were also realized in Illinois, Kansas, Indiana, Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota.

The main drivers of this land rush — high grain prices, Asian demand, weather-plagued supply — have reached unrealistic territory, Brandt said.

“When the reality comes in that grain prices have seen their best for sometime in the future, there starts to be nervousness about owning $15,000 an acre in Iowa,” Brandt said. “The only reason you own farmland today is the belief that you can sell it to the next sucker for more than you paid.”

His warning to investors who have exposure to farmland: “Scramble quickly. Land is not a liquid asset. You want to sell it on the way up.”

5. Gold on the verge

“We’re in an extremely broad trading range, but I think the next move for gold will be up,” Brandt said, forecasting a climb as high as $2,200 an ounce.

Why so bullish? Brandt said the technical chart pattern of the past year resembles a period in 2009 when gold prices drifted sideways for many exasperating months. That go-nowhere trading eventually “exhausted the participants,” Brandt said, setting the stage for a sharp rally. Moreover, he added, the current lackluster movement in the gold market has washed out a large swath of buyers.

Said Brandt: “Markets that have lulled people to sleep are typically ready to have a substantial move.”

Remember this little feller? Brought to you by GE

Bloomberg News reports a fast-growing consumer movement in opposition to smart meters.   Smart meters, so called because they allow real-time usage monitoring, originally were pitched by the industry as a boon to consumers for increasing control over consumption.

The gadgets that bring the so-called smart grid into your home are being foisted on consumers for the convenience of the Utility companies. With the new wi-fi meters sending user data back to base, Utilities no longer need to employ meter readers, but still want to charge end-users for the installation, as well as picking up substantial government grants.

Now a growing consumer backlash is slowing U.S. utilities’ network upgrade. Bloomberg puts a figure of $29 billion on the project but the true costs is far higher. One consultancy put the total at $1.5 TRILLION.

States including California, Maine and Vermont have responded to customer concerns about higher bills and safety by offering them the option of keeping their conventional devices for an extra charge.

The fee may discourage drop-outs from the “smart-meter” program, in which household usage data is transmitted over radio waves to local utilities such as PG&E Corp. (PCG), Central Maine Power Co. and Central Vermont Public Service Corp. (CV), which can use the information to charge higher rates during times of peak demand.

“Charging fees for opting out is pretty outrageous,” Charles Acquard, executive director of National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates, which represents 44 consumer groups in 40 states, said by telephone.

Escalating consumer opposition is delaying efforts to deliver power more efficiently because the gadgets anchor next- generation transmission grids. Several utilities, including one owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), are holding off on roll-out plans until regulators decide whether they can force consumers to pay costs for the technology that utilities also refuse to pick up.

Smart meters, so called because they allow real-time usage monitoring, originally were pitched by the industry as a boon to consumers for increasing control over consumption. While the effort won grants from the Obama administration, consumer advocates say benefits have yet to materialize as promised.

Rising Opposition

A minority of customers complained the devices instead raise their bills, compromise privacy and risk their health with electro-magnetic fields emitted by the wireless technology. In California, more than 50 local governments are opposing use of the smart meters, according to Joshua Hart, director of Stop Smart Meters, a Santa Cruz County-based consumer group.

At the behest of state regulators, utilities such as San Francisco-based PG&E and Edison International of Rosemead, California, plan to use the meters to offer plans that would charge higher rates during peak usage-times such as summer heat waves or winter storms. The devices also promise to save utilities money by eliminating meter readers, shortening response times to power failures, and allowing for remote switching when turning service on or off.

While the companies anticipate cost savings, they’ve pushed for the expense of buying and installing the new meters to be passed on through customer bills.

Meeting Safety Guidelines

Smart meters must meet Federal Communications Commission guidelines on emission levels and those that meet the standards and are installed properly are safe, agency spokesman Neil Grace said.

California regulators have approved smart meter programs and decided households that don’t want a wireless unit should pay for the costs of continuing to use their old devices, said Terrie Prosper, a spokeswoman for the California Public Utilities Commission.

Utilities, which back the state-imposed fees, say charging consumers for keeping their old mechanical meters will pay for the workers dispatched to homes and businesses each month to record usage by hand, the old-fashioned way.

About 27 million smart meters have been installed as of September 2011, according to the Institute for Electric Efficiency, a Washington-based lobby group financed by investor-owned utilities. It used to be known as the Edison Institute and has been a front organisation for multi-billion dollar consumer education campaigns ever since the Grid was first created.  By 2015, about 65 million, or about half, of U.S. homes will have a wireless meter, according to the group.

‘Model for Broadband’

Those opposed to the state-driven mandates say forcing customers to use smart meters is like making someone pay to have a high-speed Internet connection.

“We kind of like the model for broadband, where nobody is forced to take it, but people see the value in it and are willing to pay more for it,” said Mark Toney, executive director of the Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco-based consumer advocacy group.

Catharine Gunderson, 59, a retired teacher, said she installed a cage around her traditional meter on her home in Santa Cruz, California, to prevent PG&E from swapping them for a wireless unit.

“I feel like it’s extortion,” Gunderson said about the opt-out fees. Gunderson said she’s concerned about the health effects of smart meters and recently paid to keep her traditional meter.

Holding Off Deployment

The meters are key to the “smart grid” being rolled out nationwide to increase delivery flexibility. Investment by utilities in the new grid has totaled $15.4 billion through the first quarter of 2012 and is projected to increase by another $13.4 billion through 2015, said Theodore Hesser, an analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Not all companies are plowing ahead. In November, MidAmerican Energy Co., a utility owned by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, told Iowa regulators it was waiting to deploy electric smart meters while it assesses how other power companies address complaints.

Alliant Energy Corp. (LNT)’s Iowa utility told state regulators that concerns about raising customer bills and rapidly changing technology were among the reasons keeping it on the sidelines, even as it hard-sells the idea to consumers

Last fall, Connecticut delayed its decision on Northeast Utilities (NU)’ proposal to install 1.2 million smart meters, saying it needed time to establish a state policy on the technology.

How Consumers Benefit

Even if a minority of customers keeps their old meters, PG&E still will be able to realize savings from the upgrade, said Helen Burt, PG&E senior vice president and chief customer officer.

PG&E “wants to accommodate” residents who don’t want a wireless meter and is reaching out to inform residents about the benefits of tracking energy use on its website and signing up for energy conservation programs, Burt said.

Edison International (EIX)’s Southern California Edison, the state’s second-largest utility, said about 28,000 customers have asked for a delay of a smart meter installation out of 4.9 million customers, said Ken Devore, director of the utility’s smart grid program.

That will not interfere with its program that can offer benefits such as tracking and saving on energy use, he said. “These are safe, secure and high quality devices,” he said.

Allowing Meter Choice

An increasing number of states are moving to motivate consumers to go along by permitting utilities to charge those who refuse the meters to pay an extra monthly fee. State regulators see “smart” technology as a way of reducing power consumption during periods of peak demand, reducing the need to build expensive power plants and easing the potential for black- outs from capacity that can’t keep up with urban growth.

Nine U.S. states including Texas and Michigan are either considering allowing customers to decline a smart meter or are allowing for that option, according to state regulatory filings and an April 2012 report from the Edison Electric Institute, a Washington-based industry lobbying group.

In California, most customers will have to pay an initial fee of $75 and then a monthly charge of $10 to keep their traditional meter. At PG&E, fees could hike monthly power bills on average by about 12 percent, based on an average bill of $84, said Greg Snapper, a PG&E spokesman.

About 26,800 PG&E customers out of 5.4 million have decided to keep their mechanical meters, Snapper said in an e-mail.

More Accurate Measurement

More than 90 percent of PG&E customers now have a smart meter as part of a more than $2.2 billion program to deploy at least 9.7 million wireless electric and gas units, Burt said.

The utility’s roll-out of the devices, which started in 2006, has been fraught with complications including customer accusations that the smart meters were overcharging. In 2010, state regulators commissioned a study that found the measurements were reliable. Burt of PG&E said the devices are more accurate than traditional analog meters.

Regulators and utilities also point to government studies that say the devices are safe. In 2011, the California Council on Science and Technology, a state-created technology advisory board, said in a report it found no evidence from scientific studies that smart meters were harmful and the devices emit far less radio-frequency energy than microwaves or mobile phones.

Food box schemes - every town should have one

London, Ontario……For two hours every Thursday afternoon,  Julie Richards-Bramhill  is a conduit connecting a lone vegetable farmer with  hundreds of families looking for organic food.

Her garage is a drop-off and pickup point for  Triple Cord Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), one of several in the London area.  CSAs are a fast-growing solution to an old issue: how to connect food producers with customers. The customers are essentially buying a share of the season’s crops: if there’s a bumper crop of yams, for example, they all eat lots of yams. If the cucumber crop turns sour, none get to take home cukes.

The concept is a unique mix of socialism and capitalism. CSA farmers sell shares in their crop before it’s even planted. That gives the farmers a known income for the season, and it spreads the risk of growing among the community members, not just the farmer.

In return for their up-front payment, the consumer/shareowner gets a set percentage of all produce grown over the summer. Unlike a grocery store where you can pick just about any vegetable just about any time of year (which may come from thousands of miles away), local CSA farms can provide only what the soil and climate and calendar will offer.

In London’s quest for local food-processing companies, Richards-Bramhill and others argue that the foundation of the food economy is the grocery-buying family.”We have a lot of food sitting on our porch but it takes a lot of effort to get it through the door,” says one.

And with the city’s location in the heart of the Ontario food belt, that means small and local at least as much as large and multinational.

To meet demand, local foodies have built a loose-knit distribution structure that includes farmers’ markets, co-ops and CSAs.

Richards-Bramhill, whose Facebook and Twitter handle is Lady Locavore, said the idea evolved as she looked for London sources of fresh organic local produce. She met Mervin Miller, an Amish family in Aylmer who grow it all on their 50-acre off-grid farm. They worked out a plan that would help him grow his crops and ensure a guaranteed market for his produce.

In its fourth year, the Triple Cord CSA has 90 member families, who sign up for a season to buy in-season, perishable food boxes every week, with produce that ranges from asparagus to zucchini.

“When you buy a share of what the farmer has, you’ve basically got access to everything the farmer grows,” Richards-Bramhill says.

This year’s deadline for Triple Cord is fast approaching: applicants can purchase their shares only until May 17, with the first deliveries taking place the following week.

Over the border, in the Duluth region, it started with the Food Farm near Wrenshall, still running strong into its 19th season. Now, at least 14 CSA farms have sprouted across the region. Localharvest.org lists more than 4,000 CSA farms across the country, and the number keeps growing.

Starting in June with green, leafy vegetables, the farmer sends boxes of produce to their shareholders each week, ending in the fall with things like squash and pumpkins. Some CSA farms also offer winter shares of things like potatoes, and others offer shares in free-range poultry and grass-fed beef. Conover is offering shares in pigs, too.

Conover’s members will get 17 shares of produce from June 18 to Oct. 11. And that can be a lot of vegetables, especially for people who aren’t used to eating “seasonally.” Many CSA members split their shares, and last year Conover’s 45 shares were enjoyed between 85 families. Like most CSA farmers, Conover also offers weekly tips on how to cook what can be an overwhelming choice and amount of vegetables.

“We still have a lot of education to do, even for people who make the choice to participate,” Conover said. “Most people aren’t used to eating and cooking at home that much anymore. And a lot of people just don’t know what to do with all those fancy vegetables.”

Having the cash in hand at planting time also is a huge benefit for the farmer, Conover notes. For her, the 45 shares she offers at $475 each will net about $21,000. That’s still not enough for her to live on — she and her partner have jobs off the farm in town. But it’s a start.

Conover is planting about 2 acres this spring on the land she bought in Carlton County. She’s had to fight weather, insects and hungry deer, but she’s entering her third year as chief farmer, marketer and staff member, and she has no plans to stop.

“I spent two years learning at the Food Farm before going out on my own. I guess it’s a labor of love,” said Conover, 34, who grew up on a farm in Iowa. “After leaving the farm where I grew up, I never thought I’d go back. But this has really drawn me in.”

Conover’s now in competition with her mentors down the road at the Food Farm, and with her neighbor across the road, Rick Dalen, another Food Farm graduate. But she said it’s also a blessing to have “people down the road that do the same thing I do. We help each other a lot.”

Eight of the 11 CSA farms in the region earlier this month formed a “guild” to share information and services and market their businesses.

Janaki Fisher-Merritt, a second-generation farmer at the Food Farm down the road, said the more CSA farmers, the merrier.

“As far as people who are committed to eating good food and who really are into supporting sustainable agriculture, we may have saturated that market in the Duluth area,” he said. “But there is still a lot of room for growth by bringing in new people. That’s what’s great about all the new (CSA) farmers; they seem to bring in new people with them.”

Fisher-Merritt’s parents, John and Jane, started vegetable farming near Wrenshall in 1988. They became the first CSA farm in the area in 1994 with 50 shares. The Food Farm now sells 165 shares split among hundreds of families.

In addition to better-tasting food, Fisher-Merritt also extolls the virtues of building a relationship between consumer and producer, of bringing city folk closer to the land to understand where and how their food is produced. It might even encourage people to eat healthier, he said.

Conover lives in Duluth and spent nights at the farm in a pop-up tent camper last year. Now, when busy at the farm, she sleeps in a room inside the new shed that houses her 1958 International Harvester tractor.

“I couldn’t afford to buy a farm with a house on it, so this will have to do for a while,” she said. “Someday I hope to make a living out of this — live on the land.”

Greener for land, farmers

The idea of locally produced, sustainable agriculture that’s easier on the environment — fewer pesticides, less chemical fertilizer, far less transportation and fossil fuel burned, and usually organic — has become a big selling point for a growing number of local vegetable, fruit, berry, livestock and orchard farmers in the Northland.

But the CSA model takes sustainability to the economic level for the farmer.

“It’s a huge advantage knowing how much money we have when the season starts,” Conover said.

Conover also has a relationship with Minnesota Power, which advertises her farm to its employees, and she drops off their shares right at the company’s downtown Duluth headquarters. Other customers drive to her Duluth house to pick up their shares. The Food Farm has multiple pickup sites across the Twin Ports for its shareholders.

Heather-Marie Bloom, who calls herself a “traveling farmer” until she can buy land of her own, is planting her vegetables on Conover’s land this year. Bloom’s Rising Phoenix Community Farm will offer up to 25 shares this year.

“I did the farmers market at UMD, which can be great. But it also can be pretty slow some weeks. And then we’re stuck with all this food,” she said. “The great thing about CSA is that it’s constant. We know how much to plant and how much to send out, and we don’t have to worry about trying to sell it. We can concentrate on growing it.”