There are a great many varieties, the two main kinds found in the United States being the large-kernel winter wheat, grown in the East, and the hard spring wheat, the best for flour-making, which is grown in the West.
Minnesota is the largest wheat-producing State, and I will ask you to go in thought with me to that Middle-West region. The farms there are very level, and also highly productive. The big “bonanza” farms, as they are called, range in size from two thousand to ten thousand acres. Some of these are so large that even on level ground one cannot look entirely across them—so large, indeed, that laborers working at opposite ends do not see one another for months at a time.
A Wheat-Field.
During the planting and harvesting seasons temporary laborers come from all over the country. They are well housed and well fed. The farms are divided into sections, and each section has its own lodging-house, dining-hall, barns, and so on. Even then, dinner is carried to the workers in the field, because they are often a mile or two from the dining-hall. The height of the harvest season is at the end of July.
In the autumn, after the wheat has been harvested, the straw is burned and the land is ploughed. In the following April when the soil is dry enough to harrow, the seeds, after being carefully selected and thoroughly cleaned, are planted. For the harvesting a great deal of new machinery is purchased every year. One of these huge machines can cut and stack in one day the grain from a hundred acres of land. Then the grain is threshed at once in the field, before the rain can do it harm.
Grain-Elevators at Buffalo.
Through the spout of the thresher the grain falls into the box wagon, which carries it to the grain-elevator, or building for storing grain. Here it remains until it is loaded automatically into the cars, which take it to the great elevator centres. The wheat is not touched by hands from the time it passes into the thresher until it reaches private kitchens in the form of flour.
The great elevator centres are Duluth, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Buffalo. Some elevators in these centres can store as much as a million or more bushels each. They are built of steel and equipped with steam-power or electricity. The wheat is taken from grain-laden vessels or cars, carried up into the elevator, and deposited in various bins, according to its grade. On the opposite side of the elevator the wheat is reloaded into cars or canal-boats.