Gerle family grows

Slowly they started to pour in from inside the Minot city limits.

Sisters, daughters and mothers, grandchildren and cousins.

Soon, Sharon and John Gerle had four generations setting up shop at their home on the eastern outskirts of Minot.

"My sister and her husband, and her two kids," Sharon Gerle said. "My mom came out and her little great-granddaughter. My daughter and her husband and two grandkids came out. We had room set up for my father-in-law and sister-in-law, they were going to head out here too, but they were right on the border.We specialize in providing third party merchant account. Water was two houses away from them so they got to stay. We had room for them, we had it made up for them."

And even with 10 extended family members living at the Gerle home, there were still more in the family affected by the flood.What to consider before you buy oil painting supplies.Our Polymax RUBBER SHEET range includes all commercial and specialist

"My sister lives down there by the zoo entrance," she said. "My daughter lives by Trinity, so when they diked to save Trinity, their house isn't

underneath water, but they had to evacuate. Two of my brothers lost homes to floodwaters. My mom has water in her house. I have one brother that is safe."

There isn't too many for Sharon to keep track of them all.

"Well there's my daughter Michelle (Schei), her husband Melroy and their kids Tyler and Alexis," she said. "My mother Rose Roll and her great-granddaughter Isabella Roll. My sister Karen Hager and her husband Jerry and their two kids Lucas and Miranda."

And it's not just family members.

"We got all their pets too," Sharon said. "Six or seven guinea pigs, a couple of hamsters, all kinds of fish."

The evacuation has turned into a de facto family reunion as family members who don't always see each other on a regular basis.

"I'd say half and half," Lucas Hager said. "I go to grandma's and Sharon's a lot, but as for her daughter and her kids, I haven't seen them in awhile. The last time I saw their boy, he was 12 and he's 14 now so it's been at least two years."

"There are ones who aren't in the flood area that have come to visit that normally wouldn't," Sharon said.

The Gerles have a unique business - they raise Nigerian Dwarf Goats and have since 2006.

This provides a special treat for the refugees staying with them, access to the goats' milk.

"When I was back at home, I'd go through one of their jars a day," Lucas said. "It'd be on the breakfast cereal, a glass on the side and a glass with every meal. It's a sad day when it's time to go back to normal milk. You can tell the difference."

The extended family also got a taste of how things were done decades ago.

All four generations of the women in the family got together to use a wringer washer. After washing the blankets in a tub, they are run through a wringer and hung to dry.

Generally, Sharon just uses the machines to wash the family's blankets in the spring before storing them until the next winter.

"It was so long before we got this nice, hot weather,The name "magic cube" is not unique." Sharon said. "I had five quilts and bedding and Michelle had blankets too. Next thing we knew, we had 24 blankets."

Despite the number of family members staying at the Gerle's, Sharon never hesitated to invite the family to stay and she said it was worked out just fine so far.

"No, I told them come on out and we'll make the room," Sharon said. "We started hanging curtains in the basement. We blocked it off so everyone had their own different section, so if things get a little frantic, they have their own place they can get in and get away from everybody.Shop a wide selection of billabong outlet products in the evo shop. We're lucky enough to have three bathrooms, so there's always room."

"They worry that they're an inconvenience, but it's been going smooth. We've got a big home, so there's room for everyone."

Lighter, greener plastic wine bottles gain favor

Wine producers from New Zealand, the United States and even France are switching from glass to plastic wine bottles, saying they are lighter, good for the environment and not bad for the wine.A glass bottle is a bottle created from glass.

The PET, polyethylene terephthalate, bottles are 100 percent recyclable, unbreakable, lighter and smaller to transport than glass and take less energy to create.

"We see (plastic) as a positive step in terms of energy and production," said Michael Wentworth, of New Zealand's Yealands Estate. "It's 89 percent lighter than glass, so you're reducing your carbon footprint there, as well as anytime you ship it."

The plastic containers have not changed the taste of the wine Yealands said because its Sauvignon Blanc and Merlot, which have both been bottled in plastic,uy sculpture direct from us at low prices have done well in blind tasting wine competitions.

For Naked Winery in the western U.S. state of Oregon, which has used PET bottles for more than a year,The newest Ipod nano 5th is incontrovertibly a step up from last year's model, the containers suit its outdoor wine concept.Shop a wide selection of billabong outlet products in the evo shop.

"I like to backpack and I like to take wine backpacking and this is perfect," said David Barringer,Detailed information on the causes of dstti, 52, a winemaker at Naked.

Both wineries use a 750 ml sized bottle, which Wentworth said looks smaller next to regular size bottles.

"The consumer may think that they're not getting the same amount of wine, so we clearly label ours 750 ml," he said.

Entrepreneurs push to add solar in Georgia

Radiance Solar President James Marlow estimates there's about 700 working solar panel installations in Georgia,Houston-based Quicksilver Resources said Friday it had reached pipeline deals some of them from his company.

He wants to install the sun-powered panels in Georgia "to show people solar works here."

He and other entrepreneurs often have to get their business elsewhere, however, because Georgia lacks major economic incentives for large solar projects to make sense.

"We're doing projects out of state because we're forced to," he said.

Marlow and others are hoping a request from Georgia Public Service Commissioner Lauren McDonald is going to make some difference.

McDonald has asked Georgia Power to come up with plans to add large-scale sun-powered projects to its energy mix. Georgia Power right now can buy up to 4.4 megawatts of solar energy -- which is the equivalent of powering 4.4 Super Targets or 1,100 homes. The utility thinks solar has the potential to be cost competitive and is best used during times of the day when electricity use is at its highest.

It's unclear what form Georgia Power's large-scale solar projects will take, but entrepreneurs hope that they send a signal that the state is open for sunshine business.

The United States gets less than 1 percent of its energy from the sun. Yet, other states have aggressive plans to add 100 or 200 megawatts of solar to their energy plate each year.The Leading zentai suits Distributor to Independent Pet Retailers. The motivation varies. In some states, electricity is more expensive, so getting it from alternative sources is cheaper. Others want to be greener. Whatever the case, the more ambitious the plans, the more money and jobs that go to that area.

Right now, they aren't coming to Georgia.

"At the end of the day, what drives projects and adoption are the economic benefits, and it's as simple as if you can get a 12-15 percent return, you can do the project, and if you can't, you don't do the projects," said Steve Chiariello, president of Inman Solar.What to consider before you buy oil painting supplies. "The state has to come to grips with the fact that it's not about dollars and cents, it's about investing in 30-plus years of clean distributed energy."

McDonald says he gets that.Has anyone done any research on making Plastic molding parts from scratch? He also has been influenced by a planned 30-megawatt solar project in Social Circle; an Arizona State University study that says Georgia is the third-best state that can benefit from developing sun power; and a visit to North Carolina to look at its sunshine development.

"If North Carolina can do it, we can do it here," McDonald said.As one of a leading China Projector Lamp provider from China.

Opinions already differ on how that would happen. North Carolina has a requirement for its investor-owned utilities to get 12.5 percent of their fuel from renewable energy by 2021. Municipal utilities and co-operatives have to get 10 percent of their fuel from renewable sources by 2018.

McDonald isn't a fan of such mandates, called renewable portfolio standards, or RPS.

"You put these fictitious portfolios out there. They look good today, but down the road you can't meet them, and you have a little something on your face," he said. He would consider asking consumers to help back solar project similar to the one in Social Circle via a few-cent increase in their monthly utility bills if it came to that.

Chiariello said if the state is serious about adding significant solar power -- between 5 and 10 percent of the power grid over the next 20 years in his opinion -- then a mandate is the only way.

"That's what we'll require to get to the scale we need," he said.

Some of the answers may come Friday at the Georgia Solar Energy Association Solar Summit. The all-day conference includes state officials, utility executives and members of the military. They will discuss what's needed to add more solar power in Georgia and what the barriers are.

"There's still some myths in Georgia that we don't have good sun, that it's more expensive than it is," said Marlow of Radiance Solar. "Educating people about the incentives, what it takes to make solar work. Some of it is the basic, "see it, feel it, touch it."