Tag Archives: turbine

all the pretty horses near odin avenue.

all the pretty horses near odin avenue.

driving back from hockey practice in la crosse with odin, south down county road pc ( aka “rollercoaster road” ) like we’ve done hundreds of times, we call out “hallo odin avenue!” as we pass by and then we pass by these three horses grazing near the road. big and beautiful with manes blowing in the breeze and a hint of blue sky and almost too green pasture. if you look off in the distance you can see the organic valley wind turbines at our distribution center in cashton, wisconsin.


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i immediately get that feeling like i have to take a picture. if i don’t it will bug me for the rest of the day. but i don’t actually want to take the time to stop. the photographer in me argues with the part of me that just wants to get home and make dinner but i only make it a quarter mile past the horses before i hit the brakes.

odin looks up. “what are you doing?”

“can you grab my camera?”

odin looks around, “what’d you see?”

“horses.”

“oh, cool. let go take a look.”

for him this is absolutely, completely normal if even a bit mundane.

and as it happens, i couldn’t get all three horses to look up all at the same time and the wind had died down so their manes weren’t blowing, so it didn’t quite turn out like the shot i saw while i was driving by, but that’s the way it goes.

the shot almost didn’t get away 🙂

earth, wind and fire. or, the sunnier side of biodiesel re-re-visited.

earth, wind and fire. or, the sunnier side of biodiesel re-re-visited.

it’s august which means it’s time for yet another photo of the high-oil sunflowers that are pressed for biodiesel for an organic valley sustainability program. some might recall my photos from last year and a few might even recall the original, popular sunnier side of biodiessel photo from five(?!) years ago.

this year is extra exciting because nestled amongst the sunflowers you can now see the two wind turbines that are part of wisconsin’s first community wind farm that were put up in a partnership between organic valley and gundersen health system.

the two wind turbines are expected to generate about 5 megawatts of energy which more than offsets organic valley’s cashton distribution center and our la farge headquarters.