daft batty

In my world it's a curb bit that goes in horses mouths, to curb them.
I can't say "realtors". Well I can, but I have to think about it. In the same way I have to think if I want to pronounce "poor", "moor", "more", without a dipthong thing. It sounds weird so I say estate agent and no one has given me any funny looks, well no more than usual.

I thought I should back up my opinion with a google reference. (Shoddy research I know but this is BE) Couldnt find one. Seems its an American word from around 1858? to describe an area in acres or an " area of ground used for some particular purpose (such as building or farming)"

Ah but things are different on planet dbd33 aren't they? While looking for the acreage definition I found some more ancient words to describe an amount of land. These may be more familiar to you. I look forwards to reading how many
carucates, virgates, bovates, nooks, farundells and/or farthingales your shack sits on

Novocastrian

dbd lives on an area of land perfectly adequate to support himself, his yankee cohabitant, two horses and a John Deere. The technical term is moot, although "home" seems adequate.

daft batty

A meeting hall??

Its a very nice moot hall too. I thought dbd might prefer a predecimal term to describe the plot of land he lives on

Canadian Citizen

In the western part of Canada, the term used by the farmers is "section " as in "how many sections do you have in wheat " ?

A section of land is 640 ACRES in size. A typical wheat or barley farm in Saskatchewan or Alberta can run to 8 or 10 sections of land, or 5,000 to 6,000 ACRES of cultivated land. It could also be called an "acerage ".

When we talk about a "sea of wheat " blowing gently in the wind, that is what we are talking about.

Jim Bunting. Toronto.

Coffeepot

need a sit on mower for that

daft batty

and a packed lunch!

Canadian Citizen

Actually, when it comes time to harvest that much grain, it's a "team " of about 5 to 8 combines, each worth about a million dollars, that run down the fields in a row , taking out about a 500 yard wide swath of grain in one pass.

Air conditioned cabs, with air ride seats, and CD players, and two way radios for communicating with the trucks that are loaded as the combines cut and separate the chaff from the grain, the combines run day and night to get the harvest in and then they are off to the next contract farm , to do it all over again. With high powered halogen lights the combines work all night to get the jobs done.

The harvest teams start their seasons in Texas, and Missouri, in early autumn, and work their way north, to finish up in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Individual farmers are willing to pay the teams, rather than spend millions to have their own harvester machines. Even so, an average Canadian grain farmer , with a 5 section farm of about 3,000 ACRES, has a 5 to 10 million dollar investment in equipment and buildings.

A cattle operation with beef cows, will be even more of an investment, depending on the size of the ranch and the herd. Herds of more than 2,000 head are common. Alberta beef is some of the best in the world.

Jim Bunting. Toronto.