Earlier generations of Vermont farmers sometimes used windmills to pump water for livestock--on a smaller scale than in westward states, but renewable energy made sense. A few of these remain, and in one case I know there is a new windmill fem has put up as a symbol. A family that came from the Netherlands, aka The Low Countries, has a small wooden windmill in their yard, symbolic of an old tradition that saw wind power creating and maintaing land reclaimed from the sea.