Canada and Newfoundland

by Frank G. Carpenter

Farming is done on a largo scale on the great wheat farms. Ploughs turning over twelve furrows at a time are pulled by traction engines, and when the wheat is ripe a dozen binders are started in one field.

The principal wheat area extends from the southeast corner of the province northwesterly along the valley of the Saskatchewan River to the Alberta boundary. This belt is five hundred miles long and in some places two hundred miles wide. Many of its farms contain thousands of acres, and the average holding is three hundred and twenty acres, with one hundred and fifty acres in wheat. When the land was first settled, wheat was the only crop raised, but mixed farming is becoming more important each year and there are now large crops of oats, hay, and alfalfa.

The dry climate and hot summer days of the prairies are just right for producing a hard grain, with the high gluten content that makes a big loaf of bread. In that quality Canadian wheat ranks highest in the world. It is mixed with even the finest of the United States product to produce the best flour.

The chief varieties grown are red fife and marquis. Red fife was discovered by a Canadian farmer and is the older. Marquis was originated by a scientist of the Dominion Agricultural Department by crossing red fife with an early ripening Indian wheat known as hard red Calcutta. It was distributed among the farmers for general use in 1909, and quickly became the most valuable wheat produced in America.

During various trips to Canada I have seen the wheat belt in all its aspects. As soon as the snow has melted and the frost is out of the ground the ploughs are started. The ploughing may be done by the farmers, each on his own land, or by contractors who make a business of preparing fields for planting, and who, later on, do much of the threshing. The ordinary farmer uses a gang plough and from four to a half dozen horses. With four horses he is able to plough more than two acres a day. Much of the work is done by tractors, which pull gang ploughs that turn over a strip of sod as wide as the average city sidewalk.

The next process is back-setting. This means going over the field again and throwing the furrows in the opposite direction. Where the land is new, some of the farmers plough it in the spring and back-set it in the summer, seeding it during the following spring. Others, who are anxious to get quick returns, sow wheat the same year that they break up the soil. Sometimes flax is planted as the first crop and wheat the next year.

The old picture of the farmer going over the ploughed ground sowing the grain broadcast is something one never sees in Canada. The wheat here is planted with drills, usually pulled by four horses, although on the larger farms several drills, drawn by tractors, sometimes follow one another over the fields.

The busiest time of the year comes with the harvest, which usually begins about the middle of August. The farmers now go to work with a vim. In many instances the women and the girls join the men and the boys in the fields. Nearly every man has his own harvesting machinery and the girls sometimes drive the binders that cut the grain. At the same time thousands of labourers are brought in from the United States, eastern Canada, and even from England. They are transported at reduced rates by the railroads and are sure of work at good wages until the grain has been loaded upon the cars that take it to the head of the Great Lakes.

Harvesting on the larger farms goes on from daybreak to dark, and sometimes even by twilight and moonlight. After the wheat reaches a certain point in ripening, it must be cut without delay. If it becomes wet it will deteriorate, and if left too long it will hull during the harvesting, or an untimely frost may ruin it. I have visited one farm near Dundurn where sixteen hundred acres of grain all became ripe overnight. The next morning the owner started a dozen harvesters at work, keeping the machines going until every stalk was cut. Horses were put on in relays every four hours and there was no stopping to rest at the end of the field. In Alberta there is a farm five times as large, where sixty binders, each pulled by a four-horse team, are used to cut the crop.

Riding through the country in the fall, one is seldom away from the sound of the threshing machine. Only a few farmers own these machines, most of the threshing being done by contractors and their crews who go from farm to farm.