Follow the muddy footprints.

They were made by more than 80 construction workers who have come to the Ubly area to build the Noble Thumb I Windpark, a project of Connecticut-based Noble Environmental Power.

The prints lead to 46 holes that have been dug in farm fields in Bingham and Sheridan townships, where the wind usually blows about 15 mph.

Each hole will be the site of a 1.5-megawatt General Electric wind turbine, towering more than 300 feet over the skies of Huron County.

The development, being constructed by RMT WindConnect of Wisconsin with local and out-of-state contractors, should begin spinning later this year, officials say.

It's southeast of the Harvest Wind Farm, a 32-turbine park constructed last year near Elkton by John Deere Wind Energy.

Harvest became the state's first commercial wind farm. Noble is set to be the second, with similar-sized windmills.

Noble plans to begin receiving huge blades, tower sections, gear boxes and hubs for the park in about two weeks.

''I've been waiting for this summer for a long time,'' said Charlie Briolat, 50, who has two farms that will accommodate five windmills and the park's substation.

Noble officials set up shop in Bad Axe in late 2004, working out of a realty office and signing easement with 82 landowners to put turbine pads in their fields.

The company rented a construction trailer on Atwater Road about three years ago. Access roads to the towers were built back then, and have been waiting for action for three years in some cases.

The project faced delays due to some citizen opposition, which seems to have died down, and troubles with transmission agreements for electricity generated by the towers.

Briolat said he supports renewable energy and the project also will help his farm.

He'll receive a portion of profits from the wind power, which will be sold to Consumers Energy, said Julie Harker-Leigh, Noble development associate.

Briolat hopes to see about $2,000 a year from each windmill, which will help offset increased input costs from fuel and fertilizers for his farm business.

''I've had people say, what have you got growing back there?'' the farmer said.

So far, workers have built an octagon-shaped pedestal for one turbine, constructed of rebar and cement.

Atop the pedestal is a round concrete base, made up of steel rings and long anchor bolts, which will hold the towers in place. When finished, only the top 6 inches of the base will be exposed.

More than 450 yards of concrete is needed for each base alone, which requires dozens of truckloads of cement, said Jeanette Hagen, Noble development manager and a Parisville native.

The only Noble windmill erected so far is a model that sits on a file cabinet in the office of Harker-Leigh, a Bad Axe native.

She's helping coordinate a monster operation to bring the turbine parts to town from places throughout the country.

The towers are 263 feet long, broken into three sections. The blades, three for each tower, are 125 feet long. Each turbine set also requires a nacelle, or gear box, and hub, which holds the blades together.

The blades will come from Texas, the nacelles and tower sections from New York state and computer system assemblies from California. A huge crane will put everything together.

Seven complete turbine sets arrived in June 2006 and are stored in Sandusky, Harker-Leigh said.

The big parts could start arriving the week of July 21. But that date can change. Some trucks can't move their loads at night or on weekends, because they're oversized, she said.

''Turning corners'' have been created at intersections, to allow turbine-carrying trucks to make wide turns.

Briolat said wind could be his best crop ever.

''The potential here is, there's not another crop I'm going to grow, per acre, that has a better yield than this,'' he said.

The development is called Thumb I because Thumb II is planned, with 60 more turbines in five Sanilac County townships, hopefully as soon as 2009 or 2010, Harker-Leigh said.

When finished Noble Thumb I will be able to generate up to 69 megawatts of power, or enough to power 23,000 average homes, according to the company.