Re: [LAU] thunderstorm

david wrote: Small farm....6000 acres of Illinois farmland... Boy *that* brought a smile to my face. 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! 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. Best, Stephen.