Occasionally farmers lose heavily by severe hailstorms, at the time when harvest is approaching, or very early frosts damage the grain, but crops may be insured in government-aided co-operative associations against the first disaster—which is usually very local when it occurs—and the farmer may secure himself against the worst effects of the second by the more general adoption of the combination of dairying or some other form of “mixed farming” with wheat-growing.
By the way, the little town of Red Deer is noted in agricultural circles from the fact that upon a farm near by was raised the “champion dairy cow” of Canada, rejoicing in the name of “Rosalind of Old Basing,” which “surpassed in a twenty-four months’ official test the previous highest butter record in Canada, by giving the milk equivalent of fourteen hundred and seventy-five pounds of butter.”
Dairying was “a state-supervised industry” in days before Alberta attained provincial standing; now there is a provincial Dairy Commissioner, who, aided by a number of experts, assists the industry in a variety of ways; and there is at Calgary a government “dairy station,” where butter is manufactured on the most approved lines from cream collected at fourteen co-operative creameries. But the numerous private creameries and cheese factories are by no means shut out from the benefits of expert aid and instruction, while a scheme of travelling dairies has been evolved to improve the output of butter made on the farms.
The Association of United Farmers of Alberta, like the Grain-Growers’ Associations of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, is proving a power in influencing the public men of this largely agricultural province in the direction of reforms in the interests of farmers, with regard to the marketing and transportation of farm produce, the reduction in the prices of such articles of necessity to the farmer as binder twine, and the establishment of “elementary short course schools in agriculture.”
Alberta has been the scene of interesting experiments (so far as Canada is concerned) of the effects of irrigation on a large scale in improving the fertility of the semi-arid districts in the south; and of the introduction of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s system of “ready-made farms.”
Irrigation on a small scale has long been carried on in Alberta, but there are great areas which can be successfully irrigated by means of large engineering works. To construct these, however, requires much capital; accordingly, the provincial government has thought it “in the general interest to dispose of extensive tracts of land to strong companies, on condition of their constructing a due proportion of irrigation works and supplying settlers with water on terms satisfactory to the government.” The first corporation to irrigate on a large scale was the Alberta Land and Irrigation Company, which has two hundred and twenty miles of canals and dykes fed with water from the St. Mary’s river, and upon its lands sugar-beets and alfalfa have been grown with great success. Another of these companies is the Southern Alberta Land Company, taking water from the Bow river, and the third, which has the largest irrigation scheme in America, is the Canadian Pacific Railway, and it is intended that its watercourses shall eventually supply about one million acres from the Bow river.
In this district the great railway has inaugurated the system of “ready-made farms” of from eighty to one hundred and sixty acres of irrigable, and one hundred and sixty to three hundred and twenty acres of non-irrigable land. The company erects a house and necessary buildings, sinks a well; fences, breaks, and sows part of the land and offers it to suitable settlers, requiring in payment only one-tenth of the price during the first year—chiefly payable after harvest. The remainder of the purchase money, with interest, is payable in instalments, of which the last is not required till the eleventh year. In allotting the farms, preference is given to men with families, and to help the newcomers to make the best of things under the unfamiliar conditions, the company has established “demonstration farms” in different districts.
The new arrivals in these districts have an advantage in social life and in the establishment of churches and schools over immigrants going singly into sparsely-settled regions; and any man with £400 or £500 of capital, who does not wish to “rough it,” would do well to make careful inquiry about these farms. Some of the “ready-made farm” colonies have bought machines, and have worked in other ways, on a plan of co-operation, and there is great opportunity in these new communities for the successful application of the principle which combines “self-help” with very practical recognition of “one’s duty to one’s neighbour.” Apart from this particular scheme, the man with capital may purchase improved or unimproved lands in Alberta from $15 (£3) to $35 (£7) the acre.
To the man with no capital, but a pair of willing hands, Alberta has free homesteads to offer (for conditions, see Appendix, Note B, page [297]), and there is a good demand for labour, by which a thrifty newcomer can acquire a little capital before taking up land. On the farms, the monthly wages for a good single man (engaged by the year) range from $18 (£3 12s.) to $30 (£6), with board. When the engagement is for eight months they average from $25 (£5) to $40 (£8), whilst for harvesting and threshing the rate is from $35 (£7) to $50 (£10) the month.
At present, as in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, “hired men” sometimes find it difficult to obtain employment during the winter, and the farmers find it equally difficult (despite harvest excursions from the east) to get anything like the number of men they desire in the brief, hurried harvest. The more general adoption of intensive farming would greatly help to solve the labour problem. In the meantime the progressive farmer employs all the labour-saving machinery he can—in some cases, on the smaller farms, more than he can well afford.