The video begins silently. A shingled farmhouse stands in full sunlight for a moment before a giant shadow sweeps over the façade as though a low-flying airplane had passed overhead. Then it happens again, and again, and again.

"Today we have flicker." (View video)

The voice belongs to Freedom resident Phil Bloomstein who recently posted a series of videos on YouTube documenting the trials of living next to a wind farm. Bloomstein, who declined to comment for this article, is one of a handful of people who live close enough to the Beaver Ridge Wind facility to hear the turbines and occasionally fall under their shadows.

The "shadow flicker" video documents the unique effect with minimal narration from Bloomstein, who lets the images speak for themselves. After several outdoor shots, each predictably interrupted by blade shadows, Bloomstein moves indoors to show the strobing effect caused as the blades pass between the windows and the sun, momentarily sapping the interior light.

In another video, Bloomstein uses a sound level meter to record decibel levels from his home. The results, which Bloomstein captures on a laptop, show a mean sound level of over 52 decibels, never dropping below 48 and peaking at 59 decibels.

"The whole idea behind this little episode, is to let you know that when the turbines were being proposed to be put up," he says, "we were told that 45 decibels would be as loud as it would get except for ... no more than eight days a year."

In the preliminary stages of negotiations over the wind project, the Town of Freedom created a commercial ordinance that capped noise levels at 55 decibels at the property line and 45 decibels at nearby residences. The ordinance was later repealed.

Beaver Ridge Wind promised to build the project as planned, according to Richard Silkman of BRW, but he added that the original plan restricted the noise levels at the nacelle [the head piece of the turbine that holds all the generating components] rather than calculating levels in remote areas.

The Bloomsteins live on Deer Hill Road, 1,000 feet due north of the turbines. Jeff Keating, whose house is roughly 1,400 feet northwest of the turbines, said he experiences a similar flicker effect.

According to Keating, 17 homes are within 3,000 feet of the turbines, a distance he took as a guideline from the recent wind power initiatives of former Gov. Angus King.

Keating said, to date, the noise has woken him up three times at night. He likened the experience to hearing the furnace kick on, then lying awake mad about having been woken. "It's not just a physical thing," he said, "there's an emotional side."

Beaver Ridge Wind offered to buy the Keating's house in hopes of running transmission lines up Sibley Road, Keating said, but he turned down the offer out of solidarity with his neighbors. BRW ultimately routed transmission lines up the opposite side of the ridge.

Now that the turbines have been built, Keating said he's considering moving. "I've been fighting this for three years and I've been beat up pretty bad," he said. " ... I'll see what I can deal with."

Keating's neighbor and longtime Sibley Road resident Steve Bennett has also been wondering what he can deal with, though he made no mention of moving. Bennett said he hears the turbines at all times of day.

"It's like a jet plane flying overhead that just stays there," he said.

From a distance, the jet plane analogy fits the sound produced by the turbines - a white noise suggestive of a plane that never entirely passes.

Closer to the turbines the sound quality changes. Each turbine rotates to face the wind and the sound varies in relation to one's orientation to the blades. At close range, facing the turbine head on, the sound is low and pulsing like a clothes dryer. From the side the blades cut the air with a sipping sound. Either way, when the wind is blowing, there is noise.

"They simply do not belong this close to people's homes," Bennett said. "Our property values have been diminished, and our quality of life has been diminished."

Bennett was a strong opponent of the wind project before it was constructed but he said the reality has been worse than he expected. "I'm not prone to having seizures," he said of the pulsing shadow flicker effect he experiences for an hour each day, "but I could see if someone was, it would be unpleasant to live with."

Over a mile from the turbines as the crow flies, Diane Winn of Avian Haven said noise levels at the wild bird rehabilitation center are not as bad as she had expected they would be. Though turbine design has improved, the turning blades are still hazardous for some birds. As a consequence, Winn said she will not release raptors from the facility. As to whether Avian Haven will have to relocate, Winn said she is "undecided."

Ronald Price, who leases the land to Beaver Ridge Wind said he has talked with some of the abutting property owners since the turbines began generating electricity Nov. 1, but he chalked the quality of life problems up to the cost of doing business.

"Anything you do is going to have some detriment," he said. "Shadows or a little noise is probably better than a dairy farm stirring up a manure pit."

Price placed the wind turbines behind soybeans and cell phone relay towers in a list of potential undisruptive uses of the ridge land. "You could have 20 house lots up there. Then there would be a lot more traffic and the noise of a community," he said.

Price went over some technical features of the turbines, then paused for a moment before returning to the subject of noise.

"It's definitely a change for some people up there," he said, "especially the Bloomsteins and [their neighbors] the Zanes."

Area maps indicate Deer Hill Road ends at the entrance to the Beaver Ridge

Richard Silkman of Beaver Ridge Wind said the company was not required to do shadow flicker studies because of the small number of turbines. Competitive Energy Services, the parent company of Beaver Ridge Wind, is currently in negotiations with several landowners in Jackson, Thorndike and Dixmont about a future wind project that could include between 10 and 20 turbines.

If all goes according to schedule, Silkman said, CES will file for permits with the Department of Environmental Protection in spring 2009. Given the average delays in permitting, he speculated that the first turbines would not be installed before 2010.

By that time the town of Freedom will have received a year's worth of tax revenue from Beaver Ridge Wind. The electricity will be sold out of state. New Hampshire Energy Cooperative signed an exclusive purchasing agreement with Beaver Ridge Wind in June, four months before the turbines were constructed. Silkman said the decision to go with NHEC, which serves central and northern New Hampshire, was based on price.