[LAU] thunderstorm

[david]

TheOther wrote:
> david wrote:
>> I have a friend who owns a small farm in Illinois (6000 acres). A couple
>> of times now, he's been out in the field working on or near large
>> farming equipment when lightning struck. One time, he came to on the
>> other side of the equipment from where'd he been working!
>>
>> Hawaii's pretty tame on lightning ...
> 
> Small farm....6000 acres of Illinois farmland... Boy *that* brought a 
> smile to my face.

He described it as small. I understand by comparison to many other farms 
in the area at the time, it was small.

That was many years ago - haven't had any contact with him since.

> I'm now living in Champaign, Illinois, in the heart of Illinois 
> farmland.  Very little livestock, most farmers are grain farmers.
> 
> It's the 6000 acres that made me smile.  Let's see, there's 640 acres to 
> a section, and a section of land is 1 mile by 1 mile, or a 1 mile 
> square.  6000 acres would be 9.375 square miles of some of the most 
> prime farmland in the entire United States.  If all of his land was 
> contiguous, he'd own something like 3 miles by 3 miles, and then some. 
>  Land around here can sell for 25,000 USD per acre.  So he's got around 
> $150,000,000 in land value alone.  I wouldn't call that a *small* farm, 
> and I'm wondering what he's doing working it by himself!

Maybe he sold it and took his $150M and that's why I haven't heard from 
him for years. ;-)

> Now when I spent some time in the cattle and sheep areas of North 
> Dakota, 6000 acres would be just about right for a small ranch.  Slope 
> county in North Dakota (western side, near the Montana border) was 40 
> miles by 30 miles roughly, around 1,200 square miles.  There were 2 
> towns in the entire county, one of around 200 people and the other 
> around 125.  If you saw a tree, it was probably planted at a ranch 
> house.  You won't see many trees or people in Slope county.  You can see 
> some buffalo, though.

I remember the lack of trees across the midwest when my family took a 
vacation trip back in the 1970s. Strange to me who grew up in northern 
California with little things like the Sierra Nevadas and the Redwoods 
near to hand ...

Worked in Yellowstone National Park for two summers, got to see buffalo 
and other critters. They were cool!

-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community