north forty vs the sticks

north forty

noun
  • A 40-acre section of land, located in the northernmost part of a farm or ranch. 

  • Any remote place. 

  • Farms, ranches, or agricultural land collectively. 

the sticks

noun
  • A remote, rural area; a place that is removed from civilization such as the boondocks. 

  • The set of yardage markers used by a chain crew to indicate the ten yards between the line of scrimmage from the previous first down and the line to gain, which the offense must reach in their series of four downs in order to retain possession of the ball. 

How often have the words north forty and the sticks occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )