Russell Crowe has written a letter to Moving Picture Blog’s Joe Leydon correcting a passage in his Cowboys and Indians profile of the actor that referred to “the 100-acre spread [Crowe] maintains five hours from Sydney, along the coastal flats of New South Wales, where he raises Brangus cattle.”

Not quite, Leydon is embarrassed to admit. “My property,” Crowe wrote, “is now 1360 acres in the main block — with 180 acres of grain land down the river one way and 360 acres of finishing land down the valley the other way.

“[And] we aren’t what you would call coastal flats, being some 18 to 20 miles inland from the ocean at about 109′ above sea level.

“Over time what we do on the farm has been refined. We now run a herd of 500 breeders and bulls, having gone into straight Angus about five years ago. We haven’t achieved full certification yet but we follow an organic regime. This month we are turning off about 250kg of restaurant cuts. It’s not a lot, but it’s all hand raised, home range 150 day grain-fed or true home-range beef, and it tastes great.”

Crowe not only sounds like an intelligent, well-informed rancher who knows his stuff and cares about doing things right. He’s also an eloquent writer. Seriously — I love the way he says “down the river one way” and then “down the valley the other way.” He could have gotten all anal and written “east” or “southeast” and broken it all down by the square acre, but he said it like someone who knows what he knows and that’s that. Not pretentious in the manner of some city slicker trying to sound like he’s not that, but plain and true in a Cormac McCarthy vein.

I love it when hard-working guys talk this way. How far’s the wagon train? “I’d say it’s nearer than further.” How far’s the diner? “It’s down the road a piece.” Where do the Griner brothers live? “They live over that way.”