DOMINION EXPERIMENTAL FARMS 91 



EXPERIMENTAL FARM 



FOR 



MANITOBA 



BRANDON, MAN. 



The Experimental Farm for the Province of Manitoba was 

 established at Brandon in 1888. It is located chiefly on Section 

 27 of Township 10 Range 19, west of the First Meridian, but 

 also contains small portions of sections 22 and 37 of the same 

 Township. Most of the Farm is within the corporation hmits 

 of the City of Brandon, the distance being 2J miles in a north- 

 westerly direction from the business centre to the Experimental 

 Farm buildings. Brandon is reached by the Canadian Pacific, 

 Canadian Northern and Great Northern Railways and expects 

 soon to have a branch of the Grand Trunk Pacific. 



The area of the Farm is 652 acres; about two-thirds of this 

 is situated in the Assiniboine Valley. Some 350 acres of the 

 valley land are available for agriculture, the balance being taken 

 up by roads, woods, watercourses and a small lake. The valley 

 soil is a deep, rich, black loam, with a clay subsoil. Part of it 

 has sufficient heavy clay in its composition to make it stiff and 

 tenacious. Part is a lighter loam with a considerable portion of 

 sand in it and is much more friable and easily worked but is 

 more liable to blowing. There is thus, in the valley, land that 

 is typical of most of the better land in Manitoba, both of the 

 heavy clay of the eastern part of the Province and of the lighter 

 land of the western. 



The sloping sides of the Assiniboine Valley and the coulees 

 leading to them take up about 200 acres of the Farm. This land 

 provides good building sites and well-drained yards. Experi- 

 ments in fruit growing and tree growing are also 'conducted on 

 the hillside. Otherwise, it is too rough for cultivation and is 

 used only as permanent pasture. 



On the higher level, there is rolling prairie land, forty acres 

 of which are cultivated. The soil here is shallow and sandy, 

 and the subsoil is open gravel, which, in some places, comes to 

 the surface. It was intended that this portion of the Farm 

 should be typical of the less fertile parts of the Province, but 

 there is very little land as poor as this under regular cultivation 

 in Manitoba. By systematic rotation, it is found possible to 

 make even this land productive. 



Drainage is towards the Assiniboine River which forms the 

 front border of the Farm along its whole width. There is a 

 natural slope towards the river and a few little watercourses 



