WHEAT SALES— THE FALL— LE BRET 59 



No. I Northern and fetched sixty cents a bushel. 

 Wheat is usually low in the market immediately 

 after harvest, and if one has sufficient capital and 

 horse-power to hold sales over until May or June, it 

 can make anything from ten to one hundred per 

 cent, difference in returns. For example, in 1906 

 the average sale of the bulk of the crop was about 

 sixty-four cents, but I had about thirty bushels held 

 in reserve, and in September I sold it for a dollar a 

 bushel at the South Qu'Appelle elevator, which equals 

 one dollar seventeen at Fort William. A farmer in my 

 neighbourhood had twenty thousand bushels in 

 reserve that year. I think he got out at rather over 

 a dollar a bushel, but the price is unusual, and a 

 sign of bad times rather than good. By December 31 

 I had sold over 1797 bushels, and I held about 160 

 in reserve for seed, although in the end I also 

 marketed this and bought other seed. The total 

 returns that year amounted to two hundred and 

 fifteen pounds ten shillings and tenpence. The 

 experience, disappointments, and mistakes of several 

 years have taught me that the wheat crop on a 

 Canadian farm should stand for net profit, charge- 

 able only with its threshing bill and cost of binder- 

 twine. Sufficient capital should be invested in stock 

 at the outset to ensure a comfortable living and an 

 easy mind in spite of August or early September 

 frost, which hangs as a sword over the prairie. The 

 sum of dairy produce from three milch cows and the 

 annual sale of four steers and twenty pigs should be 

 sufficient to cover the wages of a hired man, taxes, and 

 one's household and simple personal expenditure for 

 the year, under which plan the produce of the wheat 

 crop would rank as an addition to one's capital. 



