It was with this thought in my mind that I had approached Mr. Roblin, who is not merely Premier of Manitoba and its Minister of Agriculture, but one of the foremost living authorities on Canadian farming, his knowledge being based on practical experience in cultivating a large holding in the province.
I told Mr. Roblin that I desired an authoritative account of the process known as “breaking the prairie,” and he very kindly supplied me with the following particulars:
“Where the original prairie is thick and tough, it is customary to break and back-set. The former is best accomplished with a hand breaking-plough that has a rolling coulter, but, if the land be very smooth and level, fairly good work can be done with a sulky plough. In the case of such smooth land, the breaking should be shallow, and it is desirable to have the work completed by the end of June. The sod will be rotted a few weeks, after breaking, and the land should then be back-set. This is done by ploughing in the same direction as before, but to an additional depth of about two inches, so that fresh soil is brought up to form a seed bed. Afterwards the land must be made as fine as possible with a disk-harrow, or similar implement. Then only a light harrowing will be necessary in the following spring, when the seed is put in.
“Where the land is rough instead of level, thin breaking, of course, will not be practicable. Here the plough must go to an additional depth of from four to five inches, and the work should be done as early as possible in the year. Back-setting is unnecessary, but there should be a good harrowing to produce a level surface, as well as a further harrowing before seeding.
“So much for the two sorts of open grass land—the smooth and the rough. Now we come to the land that is covered with light trees and scrub. It will be found so very fertile as amply to repay the work involved in clearing it—work which, of course, bears no analogy to the task of dealing with the heavily timbered land to be found in other parts of the continent. The larger poplars and willows are chopped out, this being usually done in the winter. Then a fire is run over the land to burn off the remaining trees and the scrub. Afterwards the ground may easily be broken with a strong brush plough, and, when levelling has been done with a harrow, the seed can go in. Large returns are yielded by that class of land, of which immense areas are still obtainable, principally in Northern Manitoba, either as free homesteads or at a nominal price.”
To practical farmers, as well as to other persons having a grasp of farming principles (and this chapter is designed to serve the interests only of those two classes), the foregoing clear and exact statement by Mr. Roblin will convey a definite knowledge of the easy agricultural preliminaries that have to be faced, not only in Manitoba, but also in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
From the expert and obliging Premier I sought and obtained other useful facts about prairie farming.
THE FIRST STEP IN FARMING: “BREAKING THE PRAIRIE”
