When I rode the SSL in May 2010, I had the great fortune to chat with a tour guide between Del Rio and El Paso. He had signed on as a tour guide because he wanted to see his ranch from the rails rather than from a jeep or horseback. He said his sheep ranch had somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 acres, with an average pasture of about 8,000 acres...I forgot to ask how many sheep he had on each pasture. This blew me away because my experience was a 750 acre 55 head dairy farm in Vermont where the average pasture was 40 acres. Apparently things ARE Bigger in Texas.
A joke I heard while living in Vermont:
A Texas rancher goes on vacation to Vermont and one day decides to take a long walk in the Green Mountains. His wanderings take him along some of the many beautiful stone wall lined dirt roads that criss-cross the state. These roads once passed through open farmland, but over the years the farms were abandoned, the land returned to heavy forest, and the area is now remote and little traveled. After walking for a good number of miles, the Texas rancher approaches on opening in the woods which turns out to be a remaining, solitary small Vermont farm. The Vermont farmer who owns it was out by the road tending his fence, so the Texan stops and they start chatting. A little ways into the conversation the Texan says "Back home I can drive for half a day and not reach the end of my land." There is a short pause in the conversation, when the Vermonter gets a knowing look on his face and replies "Yeah, I had a car that ran like that once too."
