State's largest wind farm a new cash crop for farmers.

• Author: Best, Allen
• Position: STATE OF THE STATE

Thermometers were hurrying toward 100 on an oven-hot day in June when local farmers and elected officials gathered near Limon to celebrate the enormous change in the local landscape. All around on the swelling hills were the 262-foot-tall turbines of Xcel Energy's $1 billion Rush Creek project, Colorado's newest and largest wind farm.

"I enjoy every day I look out the kitchen window and see the majestic wind turbines in every direction," says Jan Kochis, who farms 10,500 acres of dryland wheat, corn and other crops with her husband, Virgil. "It's a new cash crop for us. It doesn't matter whether it rains or hails. As long as the wind blows, we're fine."

The Kochises and other land owners will get annual payments guaranteed for 25 to 30 years. In addition, Xcel will pay property taxes to the five counties in which the 300 turbines are located. The wind farm will also need 30-plus technicians to service them, at least some of them presumably living in local towns. The Great Plains have been hollowing out for the better part of a century, but renewable energy represents a small economic reprieve for rural Colorado.

This is mostly a Colorado-grown venture, as the components for harnessing the winds of the world were manufactured at Vestas factories...