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Newsletter from Montana
April 2005
You are invited! On Saturday, June 11, 2005 from 7:00 - 11:00 pm my husband and I will put on a fundraising event to benefit the "Red Lodge Volunteer Firefighters Association" and "Operation Nip and Tuck" (Free Spay-Neuter Clinic for pets). The event will be billed as "SWINGING AT THE HANGAR", A RETURN TO THE FORTIES FEATURING THE CRAIG OLSON ORCHESTRA. There will be dancing, hors d'oevres and beverages and will be held at the Beartooth Flight Center hangar at the Red Lodge Airport. Admission of $25.00 per person includes snacks catered by Bridge Creek, our favorite restaurant in town, and non-alcoholic beverages. There will also be a cash bar for beer and wine. Hope to see you here!!
Talking about charitable things, I listed
120 acres irrigated pasture land north of town
for $ 485,000. The present owners also founded a non-profit organization, which already had been in operation in the western part of Montana. They moved this way to escape the mosquitoes, which had spoiled their fun on the other side of the state. At any rate, with this organization they are teaching handicapped children about ranching. They let them ride of course, but they also teach them the lowly working aspects of taking care of animals and they are planning to build some cabins where the children with special needs can stay. There is never a charge for the kids, they operate solely on donations. So far they have a barn with living quarters where they are staying until I sell this property for them.
Then they will start to build their log home and the cabins for the kids. The property may be divided into 40 acres parcels and there are already beautiful homes being built in the neighborhood. Your neighbor to the west is a local doctor who is in the process of finishing his mansion, the neighbors to the south and east are ranches and the present owner will keep his 40 acres to the north of this parcel. There are spectacular views of the Beartooth and the Crazies, which are all the way in Livingston. Spectacular sunrises and sunsets. 120 acres of native pasture, 70 acres are irrigated. The irrigation ditch comes in on top of the hill, from there it flows into an underground pipe to sprinkler heads which then are connected to a wheel line. Because the water comes from above, there is no pump needed to get the water through the sprinklers. This is a very easy to use irrigation system. While you can get in trouble and spoil the crop with flood irrigation by over watering, a wheel line is the ticket to efficiency. The property is fenced and cross fenced. If you are really ambitious you can divide the pasture even smaller and do intensive grazing there with yearlings. Irrigated pasture can support 1 AU (animal unit) per 2 acres. For dry pasture you need 15 acres per animal in these parts. If you are planning to use old barn wood for your home, the owners have an old building to sell that sits on their land.
Before you get to this parcel, just as you drive up the hill, in Fox on your right, I listed 43 acres for $ 1,500,000. As you might have guessed,
this parcel has some improvements and views to brag about.
There is a 200' x 80' insulated riding arena, steel construction, with an attached horse barn, featuring 5 stalls, a tack room and a shower for the horses! The attached shop has in floor heat. From the barn you can go directly to several corrals and the whole property is fenced with a steel fence and cross fenced also. As you drive into the property, there is an electric gate that swings up, which is common around here, because of the snow that might accumulate around it. Once you drive through the gate, you would drive past the horse riding arena to the home, which sits at the edge of a ridge. It is a cedar home, built with dove tailed, squared cedar logs and big windows to take in the spectacular mountain views. Cedar logs are twice as expensive as pine logs, because they take much longer to grow, but also cedar produces oil within the tree itself that naturally resists insects and decay. Heartwood within the tree will last for generations. White Cedar has a minimal amount of sapwood, which easily decays and discolors (approximately ¾ inch on a 10 inch diameter log). Through the sawing process, the majority of sapwood is removed. During the shaping process, nearly all sapwood is removed. Cedar has a closed cell structure. The cell structure resembles that of cork. This cell structure combined with the natural oil provides protection against internal mold and mildew, naturally. This is also important if properly kiln dried, it will resist the absorption of moisture from the environment. The process of absorbing moisture from rain, air etc and then the resulting drying effect from wind and sun, is a key component of "checking" and deterioration. That is the reason for using cedar for saunas as well. The insulation factor of Cedar is among the highest of any wood and rated at over 1.4 R-factor per inch. As the sapwood is removed from the log, you are left with the heartwood that contains no sap from the tree. The sap, or pitch, from pines and other species, are one of the reasons you will see a black discoloration form on the exterior. This also contributes to the "yellowing" discoloration over time on pine interior products. White Cedar is a very stable dimensionally. If kiln dried properly, it will not twist, warp or shrink.
There is another log home you might like, 15 minutes west of Red Lodge. This one is not quite as expensive, just $ 665,000. The home hides among Aspen stands in the valley and Red Lodge Creek runs through the property. There are also two ponds and a nice yard.
The log home is crafted from hand peeled 10" to 12" logs.
The main floor is upstairs and features a brand new maple floor, open beamed ceilings, an arched doorway to the living room and a wonderful porch in the back, looking into the Aspen, but you can also see the mountains from there. You are only a few miles from the National Forest and it is gravel road all the way. So you can take your horse out your backdoor and ride until the cows come home :-)
If you rather be close to Red Lodge and can get by with two acres and just enough irrigation rights to do landscaping, I just listed a log home on the way to the ski run in Tipi Village for $ 335,000. Tipi Village is a very nice subdivision south of town with mostly log and cedar sided homes. This particular home has an unobstructed view into the Westfork Canyon of Rock Creek and also looks east to see the sunrise over the Pryor Mountains. There are plans to get the road into the subdivision paved either this year or the next. The water here in the mountains is delicious; the well water almost tastes sweet. A garage was just added, which is fully insulated. They left a bit of space between the garage and the home in case they would add a den to the 3bdr/2 baths home.
If you like to build your own log home, I just listed another drop dead beautiful lot in Cathedral Mountain Ranch. It has tall pines along the north side, sits in a saddle protected from the wind and has stunning canyon and river valley views for only $ 19,500! This is a 7,850sqft circle in a gated subdivision with a full time caretaker, stocked fishing ponds, National Forest Access and wonderful neighbors. Most of them are professionals or business owners - "birds of feather, flock together;" if you are an eagle, you want to be with eagles.... Speaking of which, the Bald Eagle is plentiful in those parts, they love the updrafts of the mountains. Great spot for a vacation home or retirement.
The price of the
cedar home with creek and 20 acres also in Nye has been reduced to $ 995,000. The owners are in town and will finish all the work that still needed to be done. Once the work is finished, the price will go back up of course, so here is your chance to snag this highly efficient cedar home with cherry floors, swimming pool and views of the highest mountains in Montana.
Would you like to own a gold mine? I listed
410 acres along the creek surrounded by the Lolo National Forest
for $ 1,250,000 including mineral and water rights. This property has been in the family for almost half a century, but they never really chased after the gold, so it's still there! The property is surrounded on all sides by the Lolo National Forest and winds along the creek for a good three miles. The owners had build a very nice log cabin there in 1996 out of 9" Western White Pine logs, fitted together tightly with Swedish Cope and treated with Chevron log oil, for a light and bright finish. The home is powered by hydro-electric, which charges batteries. The water supply is gravity fed into the home, so it does not require power to get the water into the house. The original cabin is also still on the property, which is being used as garage mainly, since it does not have plumbing of any kind. There are also some tarpaper shacks from some early gold miners. Even though these shacks don't even have studs in the walls, they held up through all the snow storms they had over the last 70 years. They are still standing. The owners had made the property pay for itself by cutting out the Fir and Tamaracks that needed to be cut anyway and made $ 20,000 to $ 40,000 a year profit just from the timber sales. In case you are not familiar with Tamaracks, they are a fir tree that turns beautiful colors in fall and then looses its needles in the winter. Indians in the far north pulled the Tamarack's fine roots to use as thread for their birch-bark canoes. Wintertime travelers often mistake vast stands of tamarack trees for scarred survivors of fire or disease. In spring, the Tamarack starts with feathery fragments of light green that give the tree a lacey appearance. But even dressed in summer green, the tamarack offers little shade. With fine, sparsely spaced needles, the tamarack allows sunlight to pierce to its base. Therefore, even though this property is in a shaded valley, this tree will let the light in. Tamarack has cones that sit upright on the branches. In the fall and winter when the needles have fallen off, the branches are covered with short, bumpy shoots. Tamarack is a tough, rot-resistant wood, and in olden days it was cut for railroad ties, posts, and utility poles. Now of course, with the advent of preservative treatment, we can make nearly any wood last, but it is still a sought after wood to build exquisite homes. The property has old growth with 400 hundred year old trees of the Western Larch Tamarack and Western Red Cedar. From the home it is about 10 minutes to pavement and 40 minutes to the nearest grocery store in Superior, which also has a small public airport with a 3,500ft runway. From there it is another 50 minutes on I-90 East to Missoula.
We sold one of our airplanes my husband had restored and took a little one in trade. It's a
Cessna 150 for $ 24,000 - and you thought one has to be rich to fly... Actually there are quite a few "airport bums" that just have a little airplane to have fun with. It costs about $ 5,000 to make a private pilot's license. So for $ 30,000 a whole new world will open up for you. There are a gazillion little airports out there, usually with a car that has the keys under the visor for you to go have lunch in their little town. Here in Red Lodge I am the official airport shuttle. If someone flies in, I drive them to town, to the ski hill or to the golf course. You never know, they might buy a piece of real estate to boot! :-)
If you have a free email account with yahoo or hotmail, you probably have noticed that you don't have a whole lot of storage space and need to delete your emails quickly to make room for new messages. Well, my computer savvy 12 year old made herself a free gmail account. Those are only issued by invitation, Tanja explained to me, but there is a
website where you can pick up an invitation
and sign up without paying the $ 300 they are requesting otherwise.
Another hot tip came from a client, she said pharmaceuticals are a LOT cheaper at
Costco. Click on Pharmacy, then on pricing information. Type in the name of your pharmaceutical. Even though Costco is a membership store, their pharmacy is NOT!
At the bottom of my Listings page is a link to Alexa,
which keeps track of traffic of the most popular sites on the web. When you click on it you will not only find out how many people per million visit my site and how many pages they are reading, but you can compare my site with others and it will show a graph. I am proud to say that my website receives more visitors of people looking for real estate in Montana than any of my competitors. The only one that comes close is northwest-national.com, which is a franchise with 28 offices in fives states and an aggressive promotional program, while Sky Lodge Properties is just me :-)
If you are still sore from paying your taxes this month, take a look at the
tax returns of our presidents
back to Franklin Roosevelt
Another website for fun was recommended by Tuula, my 18 year old daughter:
Guess what people "googled" (searched for with google.com) by looking
at the
images that resulted from the search.
Have a wonderful month of May and be sure to come to our party on June 11th!
:-)
Best Regards,
Dorothea Lowe, Broker
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