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Newsletter from Montana
September 2006
For those of you, who do not think there is life in Northeastern Montana, I have a surprise for you: Tony listed two stunning homes on acreage up there, and they come with a promise that it will not become crowed any time soon. The nearest big city is
Regina, 120 miles north in Canada, with a population of 178,225.
The nearest US city with a population of over 50,000 is 300 miles away (that would be Bismarck in North Dakota). Billings, the largest city in Montana with a whooping 120,000 people is 343 miles to the south. Therefore, nothing outshines the stars at night in this pastoral northeastern Montana setting. The area lends itself to long walks and horseback rides in the peaceful open spaces and rolling plains. You can snowmobile right out your backdoor. It is like a different planet up there and the nice thing is, there are no strangers!
The first sunny and bright home stands on 40 acres with a seasonal creek, pond and barn. It is a
contemporary home
built in 1998 featuring 5,600 sqft (5bdr/4baths) with 9'to 12' high ceilings and garage. Every window has a panoramic view. There is a true country kitchen, which could feed the entire high school football team a buffet-style dinner with room to spare! The soil is rich, wildlife abundant, lots of sunshine, and the weather did mellow out over the last 20 years, still getting milder... $ 545,000
The
second home
was built in 1983 on 20 acres. It also had just one owner and features passive solar with a sunroom passing on heat to a stonewall. There is an oak kitchen and oak throughout the cozy home of about 3,900 sqft, 4bdr/3baths and a 4-car garage. $ 299,000
The city of Plentywood has modern schools along with health care facilities, shops and social clubs, in spite of the sparse population. Outdoor activities include snowmobiling, sledding, and cross-country skiing out your back door, on hills near town, and on the golf course. Enjoy water skiing, jet skiing, and swimming at Brush Lake - FWP (Fish, Wildlife and Parks - a government agency) managed with a sandy beach, bathroom facilities, and boating dock. There is also a motor sports racing complex. If you like clubs and social activities, there is the Community Choir, Prairie Symphonette, Antelope Dinner Theatre, Old Car club Motor-cross club, Bump-n-run car club, Sno-travelers, Old Tractor Club, Trap Shooting Club, Golf league, dart league, and bowling league, Baseball Leagues (for all ages), Dolphin Swim team, City league basketball, Adult volleyball Roping Club, Trail riding / wagon train club, 4-H, Quilting clubs Book club, Boy Scouts / Girl Scouts, Homemakers clubs, Knights of Columbus, WELCA, Shriners, Elks, Lions, Sherwood Garden Club, Red Hat Society, Golden Years (senior citizens), and I wouldn't be surprised if there are more reasons for social gatherings....
Plentywood is the county seat of Sheridan County, which was named after General Philip H. Sheridan. Sheridan fought in the Indian Wars of the Great Plains, both as a soldier and private citizen; he was instrumental in the development and protection of Yellowstone National Park.
Regina is the major commercial center of southern Saskatchewan. It is the provincial capital and was previously the territorial headquarters of the North-West Territories, which later divided into today's provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Regina is a cultural and commercial metropolis for both southern Saskatchewan and the adjacent areas in Montana and North Dakota. It attracts numerous visitors for shopping, theatre, concerts and restaurants and to its summer festivals and fair.
Regina International Airport, the oldest established commercial airport in Canada, has recently undergone a major upgrade and expansion so it will be able to handle the projected increase in traffic for the next several years. There are daily flights to and from Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota via Northwest Airlines and Regina would the airport to fly into if you want to visit Plentywood, it is much cheaper then to fly into any of the other US airports that are nearby.
The border to and from Canada is very friendly and easy to cross. Nowadays and in the olden days as well, hence there were many "Outlaw Trails" in the West, and one of them started at the Outlaw Caves in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, and wound it's way south through Sheridan County and as far south as Mexico. The trail was in heavy use during Sheridan County's early days.
Following the Lewis and Clark expedition, fur trappers began heading west. Forts were built by the large fur-trading companies. Between 1829 and 1867, the Fort Union Trading Post built by John Jacob Astor's Fur Company dominated the industry. The Missouri River was an outlet for transporting the furs to St. Louis by steamboat. Later the railroad was the key to opening the unsettled west. The Great Northern Railroad ran hundreds of miles of steel through the region and in the 1880s, railroad siding towns such as Malta and Glasgow sprang up to supply water and fuel.
The railroad provided a means of transporting cattle and sheep to market, and livestock barons staked their claims to huge parcels of land. Rustlers often staked their claims to the livestock. The likes of Kid Curry, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, members of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, aka the Wild Bunch, Dutch Henry and others stormed a trail of devastation through eastern Montana. The Outlaw Trail, an intricate, loosely defined route of escape for turn-of-the-century outlaws, wound through eastern Montana. Along the trail, visitors to Missouri River Country can find historical walking tours and interpretive signs pinpointing locations of bank robberies, outlaw hideouts and historic shoot-outs.
Near the beginning of the trail in Scobey, the site of the Dug Out Saloon frequented by Dutch Henry and his gang can still be visited. About a mile from Scobey, the Wood Mountain Trail can also still be seen. This trail was used for centuries by the Indians following the migrating buffalo, later by the fur traders after the establishment of Fort Union, and then by the homesteaders. Near the crossing of the Outlaw and Wood Mountain trails, a Pioneer Town and Museum at Scobey would be worth a stop. The pioneer town includes more that 50 old western shops, a theater, church, saloon and schoolhouse.
The Sheridan County Museum in Plentywood and the Pioneer Pride Museum in Bainville tell more about Montana's pioneer heritage. The Valley County Pioneer Museum in Glasgow is home to a chronological history of the region from the age of dinosaurs to the present day, and includes one of the largest Assiniboine material culture collections in the world. The Assiniboine were located in northeastern Montana and in parts of Canada, living in small bands. What intrigues me, according to one historian the Assiniboine women did all the work, while "the men had no particular chores." :-)
The impressive Fort Peck Dam Interpretive Center and Museum opened in 2005, featuring unique paleontology displays and programs. A variety of exhibits displays the wildlife, history, paleontology, and recreational resources of Northeastern Montana.
I am back in Red Lodge for another school year for Tanja ,and we brought back one of the kittens from our farm in Minnesota. It was the runt of the litter and just did not do well. She hardly ate any of the commercial cat food and hardly even touched cottage cheese or cream. She played very little and slept a lot. We tried different vets, to no avail. So I took her to Red Lodge to our favorite acupuncturist. I know you are laughing, I can hear it. Anyway, he said after treating her to give her raw meat only and it needs to be fresh, not previously frozen until she pulls out of it. Organ meat such as liver, kidney, stomach, heart would be best! Well, it was Friday evening and the best I could do was cutting up chicken breast, hamburger meat and stew meat. After mumbling to myself about the expense of it all, the doctor stopped by at our house handing me a large bag of raw elk meat, scraps from his hunting trip! Well, the kitty was in heaven. I never saw her eat that much before, besides that, she tossed some in the air, pretending it was alive, then played with it before she ate it. The very next day she was a changed kitten, jumping and running, playing like crazy and no more accidents on the carpet. For her persistent eye infection, the doc told me to wipe out the eye with a cotton ball dipped in chamomile tea. The eye infection was gone within a day. So simple and yet I in my civilized splendor had totally forgotten about the
rudimentary needs of the beast
and the simple herbs.
Books on the subject available from Amazon.com: "Raw Dog Food: Make it Easy for You and Your Dog" by Carina Beth and another good book is "Food Pets Die For" by Ann Martin.
While we are back to basics, Tuula (my older daughter) and I visited my relative in northern Minnesota. He just about lives off the land and it impressed the heck out of me. Wildlife and fish are abundant, the garden grows all the condiments and veggies you can imagine, the fruit trees are laden, the chickens run free and lay more eggs than he can use, he harvests the wild rice from the lakes and tells me birch trees make excellent syrup! He has a campfire set up and the neighbors come over to play blue grass in the evenings. There is a bunkhouse for his hunting friends and it is equipped with snowshoes. In winter, he whittles fish out of burls for sinkers to use when he spears fish. The lakes are little communities, everybody knows everybody else who lives around it and they all visit each other. There is nothing but forest in northern Minnesota and of course lots of lakes. I asked him how he hunts in the woods with all the trees in the way, but he says the leaves fall off just in time for hunting season and you just have to be a good shot!
I had a request to feature hunting land in Montana at the bottom of my newsletter, well here it is:
Land 160+ acres
Farm/Ranch 160+ acres
There is a lender here in Billings that will lend 95% on the purchase price for land up to 10 acres if your credit score is above 650. Leo Hart 406.252.2756 or his cell phone is 406.671.5751 leo.hart@home123.com
http://www.leohart.home123.com/lo/
If you have no money at all, your credit is gummed up, but you would like to own a home in Montana, contact the National Home Buyers Assistance. They will buy the home for you, let you lease it for a year and at the end of that year half of the rent will be credited towards the down payment and because you made all those payments, your credit is in a better shape and you can buy the home. Call Doug Wells 406/777 5211, cell 406/239 1270
http://www.nhba.com/mhba
I am selling our warehouse/hangar at the airport in Red Lodge to a new Fixed Base Operator (airplane maintenance station), and he is offering scenic flights over the Beartooth Mountains and around the Red Lodge area, which I think is a wonderful idea! You get to see some of those 1,000 lakes up there in the mountains, be awestruck by the highest peaks in Montana with their glaciers and count the 73 ski runs on Red Lodge Mountain. Call Kris or Beth Kuhr to make reservations: 406/321 2888 cell or 406/328 7408. Their email address is vikingair@nemontel.net
Hopefully this will also roll my husband out of the tube to offer air tours over the Minnesota lakes, we will see. Some husbands are more stubborn than others...
A friend of ours owns a company, which retrieves any vital records for people who might have lost their birth, marriage, death or divorce certificates.
http://www.usavital.com/
His company also does employment screening
http://www.backgroundsusa.com/
If you have use for any of these services, you might want to visit those websites or call 1.800.315.7678
When we bought the farm in Minnesota, it came with a FIR sauna (Far-Infrared Radiant heat). This kind of heat is a form of naturally occurring energy that heats objects by direct light conversion, which warms only the object and does not raise the temperature of the surrounding air. All life receives far-infrared heat from the sun. It is not ultraviolet radiation, but a narrow band of energy with wavelengths between 5.6 and 15 microns. This type of energy penetrates 2-3 inches into the body, which increases circulation and nourishes damaged tissue. The sun is the primary source of radiant energy, but not all of the sun's rays are beneficial. FIR heat provides all the healthy benefits of natural sunlight without any of the dangerous effects of solar radiation. Today, many healthcare professionals throughout the world use far infrared to treat a variety of ailments. Traditional saunas raise the temperature of the air to a very high degree to warm the body. A far-infrared sauna operates at a lower, more comfortable temperature, which allows the person to remain comfortably in the sauna for a longer period. Longer heat exposure results in deeper tissue penetration, which causes the body to produce 2 to 3 times more sweat, and the body receives all of the health benefits, without the hot air of a traditional dry or steam room. If you do not have time for regular exercise or suffer from injuries or health concerns that inhibit rigorous activity, a FIR sauna might be the ticket. Far-infrared heat penetrates the muscles and relieves aches and pains. Guyton's Textbook of Medical' Physiology reports that during a 30-minute far-infrared therapy session, a moderately conditioned person can sweat 500 grams, while burning nearly 600 calories-the equivalent of running 6 miles. "While the weight of the water loss can be regained by re-hydration, the calories consumed will not be regained."
Fat becomes water-soluble at 110° Fahrenheit. Because far-infrared heat penetrates up to two inches below the skin, it helps break down cellulite, a gel-like substance made up of fat, water and waste particles in pockets beneath the skin.
http://www.wasauna.com/infrared-sauna-faq.html
If you install the Google toolbar
for your browser, you can go under options, select the language you like and then when you point to a word in a text with your mouse, a little text balloon will appear translating that word into the language you had selected. This comes in handy if you are trying to learn another language or if English is not your native language in the first place. I am practicing simultaneous translation into German and those little text balloons are fun for me.
Tanja found a map on the web, showing
which states have been affected with the "Spinach Bug" and which ones are bug free (so far)
Stay happy, healthy and creative until my next newsletter at the end of October!
:-)
Best Regards,
Dorothea Lowe, Broker
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