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Newsletter from Montana - Minnesota
July 2010
Montana stayed relatively cool so far this summer and there are no forest fires, even. So if you would like to get out of the heat, come on up! I just listed a 20 acres ranchette with a 360 degree view on top of a little knoll overlooking a ranch in the foothills of the Bull Mountains. The 1,440sqft cabin is brand spanking new and the sink upstairs is being installed as we speak. It has an interlocking steel roof with 6"x12" rafters underneath and is built out of insulating foam blocks with cement board on the outside.
You would have to look out the window in order to know if there is a storm raging outside, otherwise you will never know it! The home is heated with a gas stove and just for good measure there are electric wall heaters in the bedrooms and bathrooms, but for the most part this stove will do the trick in winter. The well pumps 15 gallons per minute! So, while there is enough water for 500 cows, this little ranchette would be ideal for a couple of horses and a garden and within 25 minutes you are in Billings!
Only $ 250,000 and if you have half down, the owner will carry the rest.
For the golfers among us, I just listed a European style home looking down the length of the Fairway in Red Lodge. 2,358sqft of a well laid out home, featuring bay windows, new granite counter tops and a gas fireplace with glass on three sides. The outside has brick accents, color lok siding and the arched windows take in the mountain views. The beautifully landscaped half an acre has the highest mountains in Montana as a backdrop. Here you are just one mile from downtown Red Lodge, minutes from skiing and the Yellowstone Park is just across the pass.
If you missed out on the 278 acres in the Pryor Mountains near Bridger, the other half of the same section just came on the market. There are 255 acres, fenced on three sides bordering National Forest and BLM for $210,000. 22 acres are in CRP paying $ 544 a year, but this will expire in September unless it is renewed. These 22 acres used to be in dry land wheat and is now growing nice grasses. I just walked across there the other day and found that the Yucca plants were bearing big cucumber like fruit. I cut one open and chewed on the seeds, they tasted quite good!
From Bridger, Montana, it is only 28 miles down to the Port of Entry in Frannie, Wyoming. You might have heard of the Frannie Tack Shop, they hand craft western riding gear and their saddles are famous near and far. Just one block up the road from the tack shop, I now have a fully irrigated 73 acres ranchette for sale for just $ 310,000! The little ranch is fenced and cross fenced and would support 37 AU. Actually, the owners had bought some scraggly and skinny range cows in November, not paying much more than a song for them. Now look at the photos on my website - those are $ 1,000 cows and they all had healthy calves to boot! The alfalfa field is only two years old and the 18 acres field at the north end was freshly seeded to grass in spring. Gated pipe is running throughout the ranch for irrigation and if you can keep the raccoons from playing with the gates, this system works quite well. The year round creek makes a nice pond at the south end of the property. I would build my home down there with the big trees, mountain views and overlooking the pond! The well by the existing home is amazing, even if they let the water run all night to water the garden, it still goes strong in the morning! The owners are raising Paints and Quarter horses, so if you are in need of a horse to go with that saddle you just bought at the tack shop, they are $1,200 each; ghee that is the price of a saddle!
Just two miles SE from this farm, I have a little compound for sale. It sits on two irrigated acres with ranchland all around it, except for one neighbor, which owns an acre next door. There is a main home, a guest cabin and a shed, all out of big logs. The homes were just finished this year, but the floors are still a cement slab, which you could stain or put on a floor covering of your choice. Most of the light fixtures were also left off to give you a free hand with your decorating skills. The homes are very energy efficient and the total electric and natural gas bill hardly ever goes above $50 a month. In winter, a cleverly installed woodstove keeps the earth bermed main house warm, less than two chords were used all winter! Eight chords will even convey with the purchase of the home! The log homes have many custom touches, such as built in deer horns above the doors, custom cabinets and a covered deck off the master bedroom. The guest cabin was given a rustic look. The builder found a classic tin roof to put on. He used old salvaged windows and doors for the garage and shop areas. You really feel you are back on the old homestead when you are out there, expecting Ben Cartwright to step out of the house to greet you. Actually the present owner and builder was an outfitter in the area for 40 years. Owner financing is available with 20% down at 6% for 20 years. The guest cabin is rented for $450 a month right now and actually if you don't want to buy, the owner is open to a lease option, as well.
Would you like to run a little trailer park or some other business while you live in the log home? There are six acres available right along the highway in Deaver, about four miles from the home. It used to be a mobile home park and there are six connections to city water, city sewer, natural gas, electric and phone. There is also an old motel, which needs to be torn down and I don't know if those six connections are still in working order. I kind of doubt it from the looks of things, but it needs some investigating. Or pave it over and build a mini storage, it is zoned commercial and only your imagination is the limit, how about building a small motel? Owner financing is available with 20% down at 6% for 10 years.
Frannie and Deaver are only about an hour from Billings, an hour from Red Lodge and 45 minutes from Cody, Wyoming. Speaking of Cody, I still have the Wapiti Lodge for sale there. Now there is a project, if you are looking for a project. We just reduced the price to $ 450,000. It comes with a two bedroom home and a cabin, but we just found out the septic system for the home and cabin will need work as well, hence the price reduction. Still, here you are getting five acres with 750ft of riverfront in one of the most spectacular areas in the world among million dollar homes, close to the Yellowstone Park and it is zoned commercial!
There is an article in the Horse Link magazine about a trail ride to the Hellroaring Plateau in Montana just north of the Yellowstone Park. Click on the page to enlarge the print, click on the bottom right for outfitters and horse rentals.
If you leaf one page back from there, there is an article by
Clinton Anderson on how to catch a foal; I thought that might come in handy, if you have one of those little rascals running around in your yard.
Back in Minnesota, we just reduced the price on the $289K property in Hawley to $279,900.
And Mike listed a small rambler in Hawley for just $ 89,900
Hawley is good place to be if you like a small community close to the abundance of jobs in Fargo and close to the lakes around Detroit Lakes for fishing and boating.
Do you feel bad about your home not selling or loosing value? Well, you are not alone. Our farm in Minnesota still has not sold even though we reduced the price to half of what we have in it. It is now just $ 465,000 with ponds, crops, home and all those buildings. In one in my dreams I asked why do I have to sell our beautiful farm so cheap? And the answer was: "It is not about you, it is about the others so they can get a good deal."
Ghee, I never thought about that way! So, I guess it is up for grabs for somebody to get a bargain who otherwise could not afford it. Never say "oops", always say "interesting."
Are you looking for an attractive investment? How about a gold mine?
The gold mine in Northern California is looking for a joint venture partner. $6MM will buy you a 30% interest in the mine, which has a 900,000 oz reserve. Even deducting the production cost, it will amount to $200MM eventually.
After my daughter Tuula visited us for graduation here in Montana, I suggested to take a little detour back to Oregon and explore Western Montana a bit. Since she majored in journalism, I thought she could do a little homework for us. The following is what she came up with:
One Ticket to Paradise: My 12-hour search for life and meaning in Western Montana
I'm sitting by myself in a booth of a shiny new pizza establishment in downtown Missoula. As I wait on my cholesterol triangle with a pint of locally brewed ale, I examine the black-and-white photos on the wall depicting the city's earlier years - men stuffed into their waistcoats, trolley cars stuffed with mine workers, gasoline at 19 cents a gallon.
An illuminated cow skull looms over the frame of the photo, stealing my attention as well as (temporarily) my appetite. But that's the awkwardly funny juxtaposition of modern Missoula and its old-west legacy. While the used cowboy boots, pickaxes and kayak paddles lying about don't invite me to linger, they do a fair job of reflecting the region's mix of ranching, mining and outdoor adventure. Anyway, the pizza is good enough to distract me from all of it.
I'm just passing through the city on my way back to the west coast, after spending some time with my mother and fellow offspring in Red Lodge, in south-central Montana. Mom, the relentless gypsy businesswoman, is contemplating a move to western Montana, and I volunteered to do a bit of scouting around the region on my way home to Oregon.
Before I left, we sat down at the kitchen table with a map and plotted my journey. I would keep to the interstate until I came to Missoula, then veer off on a parallel route that would follow the Clark's Fork River up to Lake Missoula on the Montana-Idaho border before finding the freeway again at Spokane. The detour would only take a day, in which I might observe the famed countryside and report back on any strange vibrations or intriguing possibilities I happened across along the way. As she's done so many times in the past, my mother handed me the map, gave me her best wishes, and waved me out the door to destinations unknown.
At a rest stop alongside the flat stretch of freeway between Bighorn and Butte a few hours later, I try to orient myself to the constantly changing yet movie-backdrop-simple landscape. Flying down the freeway at 80 mph, you wonder whether you're actually moving at all. The roadside is lined with sagebrush; the rolling, golden hills stretch on endlessly, and stunning, snow-capped mountains are always right beside, or right behind, or somewhere ahead of you, sneaking into your mental pictures and stealing the limelight, like that attention-seeking cousin at the family reunion. After all, Montana is just another word for mountain, and this is our claim to glory. But after four hours of driving through such grandeur, it begins to do something to your mind.
There is really no other way to experience Montana than alone. The enormous scale of everything - the sky, the mountains, the empty space - demands a flexible sense of time and location. You're never "there" when you're here, in the center of the valley, 100 miles from any freeway exit. You're somewhere else, between home and destination, a place where humans don't really belong but stumble through anyway, oblivious to the great feats of technology and history that make their presence possible.
Back to Missoula. After dinner, I meander back to the Hutchins Hostel (travel tip #1: Grab a bunk here for a cheap, clean and welcoming experience in the city) slowly, observing the tidy but active atmosphere of modern-day downtown Missoula on a Friday night. The setting sun casts long shadows on the rain-dampened sidewalk, but the wind that sweeps down Broadway is warm and smells of summer. Irises, tulips and lavender overflow from small sidewalk gardens like the tipsy college students spilling out of the bars on every block. Peering in, I catch glimpses of cowboy hats and thick Montana burgers served on beds of French fries. The old west feeling is timeless and runs deeper than the brick and concrete surrounding me. It's that sense of abandon we all feel in places like Montana, a primal urge that is immune to the comings and goings of civilizations.
You can read the rest of the story on Tuula's blog site
Or you can drive through Montana and experience it all for yourself, see you here!
:-)
Best Regards,
Dorothea Lowe, Broker
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Dorothea Lowe, Broker 
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