bushels of acres

Also in the potentially helpful I-had-no-idea category:

How much is a bushel? I was envisioning a bushel as one of those baskets you put apples in at apple-picking places. Not so. It's much bigger: 2,150 cubic inches, which is about as helpful as "a bushel". More helpful, if you're a baker: a bushel is approximately 42 pounds of flour, so if you imagine 42 of those 1-pound sacks of flour, you can see that a bushel = a lot. All this information comes from this site, which notes, helpfully: "The average person may never actually measure anything in terms of a bushel, but having a basic understanding of this form of measurement may certainly help city folk during that next visit to the orchard or farm." Also it will helps me understand the $19.99 for a bushel of apples sign on Leavenworth St. (a lot of apples: 42-48 pounds-worth). This is confusing, because it appears to be both a volume metric and a weight metric, but I guess 44 pounds of apples takes up approximately 2,150 cubic inches. I think it would be cool to start measuring things in terms of bushels, say, when moving: I guesstimate (my favorite form of math) I have about 150 bushels worth of stuff, give or take. Next time I move, I'll try to remember to measure it.

And an acre? Well, I was interested to discover that an acre is a measure of area and therefore does not require a particular shape. Similarly, a "square foot" need not be one foot by one foot square--it could be a rectangle with some fraction of a foot on one side and a foot plus a fraction on another side--or it could be a nonrectilinear shape altogether. An acre is equal to 43,560 square feet. For you sports fans out there, it's about 76% of a football field, or 100% of a football field minus the end zones and about 9 yards from one end. A square 40-acre parcel (e.g. "40 acres and a mule") is 1/4 mile by 1/4 mile. The other way to get a good idea for this is to go on to your county assessor's website, look up a property you're familiar with, and see if the acreage is listed.

Happy measuring.

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