The Home of the Free and the Brave(s)

Yeah, it’s Thanksgiving, so here we “all” are, ready to hack up the turkey in celebration of “our” good fortune here in America. Why do I feel a little uneasy?

Maybe it’s because we started to wonder what kind of “holiday” fare the native people at the Kah-Nee-Ta Lodge on the Warms Springs Reservation in central Oregon will be serving guests this weekend. Or how the Lummi will mark this national holiday, now that they have won a judgment for water rights? Or, in Massachusetts, how the spirit of Massasoit will be affected 400 years after he likely ensured the survival of the Plymouth colonists, not knowing the generally egregious sweep that the “colonists” would eventually make across this country, a cataclysmic land reassignment at the expense of its native inhabitants.

Yes, this is simpleton thinking. It’s OK to spend a day thankful for what we have, but it’s tough not to consider the costs.

Oregon A Model for Land-Use Planning

When Oregon voters last Tuesday approved Measure 49, a bill that will scale back a property compensation law passed three years earlier, they reinvigorated an important state-wide task force that will substantially review Oregon’s land-use system. The Big Look is back in business.

In a way, Oregon also resumed its status as role model for how states can comprehensively seek to serve the rights of private land owners AND conservationists. In fact, an examination of the state’s land-use policies is something both sides agree on.

There is a growing political will of voters to try and get things right on land-use matters. Last Tuesday, voters across the country approved $1.4 billion in funding for new measures in land conservation.

Add to that a growing awareness of the U.S. food supply and this might be the first time in history that the U.S. Farm Bill got so much mainstream press, including important insight from the likes of food culture essayist Michael Pollan.

Is there a grass-roots effort being put forth that might actually mean smart people might actually begin to have beneficial impact on this nation? Despite all the things going terribly wrong, there is an undercurrent of change attempting to bubble up to the surface. Not a moment too soon.

One of the worst things about the Iraq war, besides it’s illegality, violence and unending mess, is that serious attention to so many domestic issues has been hijacked. So few issues of serious consequence to the health and well-being of THIS country can gain any traction. Major media is obsessed with Hillary-Obama, Iraq is a political, military, economic and media quagmire.

But under the surface of all this noise and mess, topics of domestic concern are being dealt with on state and local levels. Creative thinkers are starting to assert — despite a White House that told Americans in the wake of 9/11 to go back to the shopping malls — that solutions to the problems associated with our shifting society are within our power to create.

Land use and resources are a major, underlying component to these new solutions. In fact, this is a shifting nation, only no one in “power” is willing to say it, or act on it. But look at this site out of Michigan called Modeshift.

It is an news and information site edited by a former New York Times journalist, Keith Schneider. In addition to dealing with Smart Growth issues, Modeshift (associated with the Michigan Land Use Institute) is a: “a new blog that chronicles accelerating transition in two arenas of American life: the economy and competitiveness of state and metropolitan regions, and the swift development of social media. The focus is new forms, new techniques, the new rules of the game in economic development and communications.”

Could it be that smart people who want to save our country from further rack and ruin are starting to make waves? Small waves can ripple into tidal shifts …

Oregon Voters Put Brakes on Sprawl

They were calling it a Ground War in Oregon.

Three years ago, Measure 37 was passed in Oregon and the floodgates of sprawl where opened.  Timber companies and other owners of rural land — including family farmers who were rightfully looking to protect or maximize their land assets — filed thousands of claims across the state, seeking the maximum number of houses in new subdivisions.

On Tuesday, Oregon voters made it a new ballgame.

Measure 49, which limits subdivision rights on undeveloped parcels, won’t end the (endless) debate on the rights of landowners. It will, however, mean Oregon won’t see the proliferation of housing subdivisions that have turned Phoenix and Las Vegas into housing development hell.

Weekend Land Sale in the WA. Palouse

We must be on some kind of mailing list. Look what popped up in the queue, just as we said we were trying to renounce our LandCrazed obsession! Red Tail Ridge is selling multi-acre home sites from $69K in Colfax, Washington.

The Palouse is just an amazing sight! Wheat fields rolling along like a grainy ocean … it is beautiful and could be attractive considering what’s happening in California and other coastal regions. As a fans of the vast expanse of Eastern Washington, we can’t help but think it will continue to be an attractive alternative, but not without concern for water resources.

Look here at the Colfax Chamber of Commerce site that talks about groundwater resources, agricultural needs for water, lack of irrigation and the increased protection needs with declining glaciers!

We’re going to have to do a more comprehensive look at water tables and resources for the inland Northwest, which is not exactly in the same water concern area as other parts of the West often talked about these days, particularly any states that are fed by the Colorado River.

BONUS: Cool website specific to The Inland Northwest, out of Spokane serving visitors to northern Idaho, eastern Washington and western Montana.

LandCrazed in a Strange Time

It’s been awhile since we’ve posted here. I don’t think we’re any less LandCrazed, however, these are CRAZY times. The entire world seems to be shifting and sifting itself out in a vaguely pre-catastrophic manner. From the real estate/mortgage crisis that should continue to plummet our (highly manipulated and unsteady) economy to global warming, this is a time when everyone is (or probably should be) considering their relationship to how we live, where we live and the FATE of all our land(s.)

Maybe that’s why we’ve hunkered down here in Seattle, where we have turned our macro-kind of love affair with land into a more concentrated “nesting/working” phase in order to really evaluate what the heck is going on out there.

Currently, we are more involved in a very, very local blog called The Bluffington Report.

In our reading about the fate of the planet, we must recommend this article (The Prophet of Climate) in the current edition of Rolling Stone magazine. It is a real eye-opener. The interview Dr. James Lovelock will rattle your skull.

He maintains that the tipping point for global catastrophe has already happened. In fact, Dr. Lovelock suggests that in as little 100 years, the rising seas (80 feet, no 20 as predicted by politically hand-strung and scared politicians who can’t say no to the World Bank) could cause massive deaths — upwards of billions — as the earth’s population is chaotically shifted.

Lovelock’s most fascinating suggestion? That the only safe places for future generation (down to 500 million from 7 billion!!) are the Yukon and Siberia and other currently cold interior places that will be hospitable to human habitation.

OK, folks. Off to speculate on land in interior Canada/Alaska. See ya!

Sounds Good: 40 Acres for $40K

They’ve been pushing land sale opportunities at Eagles Springs Ranch pretty hard here in Seattle lately. Radio ads for the high desert development 20 minutes from Moses Lake in Central Washington have been coming in loud and clear during our morning commutes.

We put a call into the developers to ask if they were having a tough time selling the lots, given the $1,000 an acre price and hearty sales pitch, but we’re told 117 parcels in 170-parcel first phase of the development have been sold, so scratch that theory.

There’s still plenty of land to go around out there in Eastern Washington, but there’s also no doubt that with places like Bend, Oregon becoming boom towns for Californians and others in search of the NEXT GREAT escape, central Washington is becoming an attractive alternative. Moses Lake ain’t no Bend, but, the location does put you in the middle of a giant outdoor playground, right there on the Columbia River; with alpine terrain about two hours north and Spokane/northern Idaho about three hours east.

Texas Two-Steps On Land Sale

Good article in The New York Times today about a mountain wilderness tract that was, and probably will be again shortly, on the block. The delay of the sale will give Texans a better chance to debate the destiny of this 9,700 acres of wilderness.

“This is a fortunate mistake,” said the land commissioner, Jerry Patterson, “because it will give Texans an opportunity to become more informed about why this land should be conveyed to a good steward.”

Here’s a link to a KeyeTV news video on the issue.

Wind Farms: Fair or Foul?

Count central Washington as a battle ground between environmentalists clammering for renewable energy and local landowners who think their environs will be compromised by the sound and sight of the giant wind machines.

Washington state governor Christine Gregoire said she will over-rule local officials and permit a wind farm near Ellensburg.

As much as LandCrazed would like to see the U.S. get off our oil addiction (yeah, G.W. Bush, you really invented THAT thought) the idea that rural residents should take a hit with the landscape-altering addition of wind farms seems, well, a little unfair. Rural residents don’t have the numbers or the clout to beat back speculators, developers, engineers and politicians on these kinds of issues, and, frankly, they’re being asked to take one for the Green Team.

Wind energy sounds good, unless you live next to one of the noisy farms. Look at these stats from the National Energy Education Department:

In 2005, wind machines in the United States generated a total of 17.8 billion kWh per year of electricity, enough to serve more than 1.6 million households. This is enough electricity to power a city the size of Chicago, but it is only a small fraction of the nation’s total electricity production, about 0.4 percent. The amount of electricity generated from wind has been growing fast in recent years, tripling since 1998.

This is not as easy as it sounds, finding the right balance between the needs for renewable energy sources and the rights of rural landowners, who can’t effectively fight the companies out there speculating on rural real estate and new energy technologies. The Sierra Club itself has danced around the touchy issue, calling the choices involved “complex.”

Online Land Inquiry Nets Credit Offer

As we drove through Seattle the other morning, a radio ad for land near Moses Lake, Washington caught our attention. The announcer seemed to be signaling a distress sale at Eagles Springs Ranch, considering the urgency conveyed in the 30-second spot blaring in the middle of the morning commute.

Basically, 40-acre parcels were being advertised, hard and loud, for $39,999 — which by our poor math skills calculates to less than $1K an acre.

So, naturally, being a fan of the high desert — and understanding that raw land on the west and wet side of the Cascades Mountains is a limited resources — we thought we’d check out the development. We clicked around online and, yes, sent off an e-mail inquiry about the land.

Oddly, we did NOT get back an e-mail from Eagles Springs Ranch, but we did hear from Northwest Farm Credit Services. Here’s what they had to say:

Finding financing for rural properties can often be difficult. Larger acreages, irrigation, growing crops, agricultural zoning and other common features of rural properties can present challenges for many lenders. Start with a lender that understands the uniqueness of rural properties……at Northwest Farm Credit Services, we specialize in financing rural properties and have unique loan programs to meet your needs. We offer competitive financing for…

• Country homes
• Future home sites
• Farms and ranches
• Timber and woodland tracts
• Equestrian, vineyard, orchard, and much more….

The only downside is that, well, we were NEVER interested in buying the land, let alone financing it. But, we guess it’s good to know that one innocent e-mail can spur a potential land lending spree.

Chickening Out on Buildable Lots!

It is a long story, but after much deliberation, LandCrazed (the blogger) has decided to PASS on acquiring (at minimal cost) 6 lots in Hampshire County, West Virginia. The lots would have been a lovely gift, but … and here’s the part that’s embarrassing to admit … too much of a liability — at this time. The lots were all 3-5 acres in a subdivision called the Cabin @ Capon Bridge. It is about 45 minutes west of Winchester, Virginia, which puts the land about 2 hours drive from D.C. and Baltimore. It all sounded good, but then there’s this fact: Not a lot of lots have sold in that subdivision in the past year. And LandCrazed needed to liquidate at least one or two lots in order to support taxes and HOA fees for the remainder.

Oh well. Maybe next time. Or, maybe this was foolish conservatism on the part of this (maybe not so) landcrazed land lover.

Not that we didn’t get some gentle nudging from a local broker (Steve) affiliated with United Country. Here’s the message that, naturally, made us wonder if we were too conservative with this decision.

“I’ve actually gotten two contracts in the past week for building lots one a 3-acre lot and the other a litle over 9 acres so there are buyers looking for buildable lots out there. Let me tell you a little about United Country.You’ve been on our website and this is where we get most of our leads. www.UnitedCountry.com gets upwards of 28,000 web hits daily all of which get transferred to the local office in whose ares the inquires were made. In addition our company website which is www.homeplaceproperties.com has all our listings,location,prices and pics. This is the difference between U-C and other real estate companies. When myself or my agents come to work every day we have leads we are able to work. Other companies will tell you to go “farm” for customers or ask your friends or relatives if they may know someone who may be interested in your property.I personally wouldn’t work for another company.Like our motto says “No one knows the country like we do!”

Hey. Good sales pitch there!