30 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



of this big field are perfectly clean. You could 

 quite well sow wheat on this stubble. But it 

 would be wiser to spring plough and sow oats so 

 as to make a good reserve of feed, and go nap on 

 wheat in 1907." 



" Are all Canadian farms like this, or have I 

 made a particularly unfortunate investment ? " I 

 asked. 



" I shouldn't say that exactly," he answered, 

 " the investment is all right if you have sufficient 

 capital to work and wait for its return. It is a 

 common saying in this country that if you don't 

 get the better of the other man in a deal, he will 

 get the better of you. In the main this farm 

 owes its present plight to the first English buyer, and 

 the vendor no doubt thinks that it is quite all right 

 that the second English buyer should take a share 

 in the settlement of the score. You have bought 

 the best farm in the neighbourhood as far as the 

 wheat-land goes very little slough and bluff, 

 a hundred and twenty acres of crop-land, to which 

 you can easily add another hundred and fifty and 

 still hold on to that useful pasture. But you 

 mustn't forget that you have a far more expensive 

 proposition before you in dealing with the cleaning 

 of that forty acres than with new breaking. If 

 you can hold over next year's crop you will be 

 upsides on the deal ; but if this is the best farm 

 within the slough and bluff neighbourhood, which 

 lies between the wheat plains of Wideawake and 

 Springbrook, it is wiser to face the fact that it is 

 also about the dirtiest. There is one neighbour 

 who can beat you in French weed, and another in 

 wild oats but you have both ! " 



