6 DRY FARMING 



various times during the first few years of the new 

 i-entury. 



In Western Canada the colonization that followed the 

 building of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the eighties 

 slowly spread itself westward from the Red River 

 Valley. The first settlements developed along the North 

 Dakota boundary, along the main line of the Canadian 

 Pacific Railway west to Qu'Appelle and Moose Jaw and 

 to the northwest in the Yorkton and Prince Albert dis- 

 tricts. It was in the Qu'Appelle Valley that the first 

 organized effort to introduce the summerfallow into gen- 

 eral farm practice originated. At the time of the last 

 Riel rebellion in 1885 most of the settlers hired out their 

 horses and oxen with the military transport, the financial 

 allowance being so much more than they hoped to get 

 from the cultivation of their land. A few remained be- 

 hind and after putting in what crop they could, com- 

 menced to plow the land that was still unsown. The fol- 

 lowing year, 1886, it was observed that the land which 

 had borne no crop the previous season, but which had 

 lain fallow, produced a much better crop than the other. 

 This marked the beginning of the summerfallow as a 

 recognized good farming practice in the central Can- 

 adian West. The methods of fallowing were later studied 

 and improved upon by Mr. Angus McKay, who, from 

 1886 to 1917, was Superintendent of the Experimental 

 Farm at Indian Head. 



It is interesting to note that while the farmers of 

 Saskatchewan have been given credit for being the first 

 to practise the fallow system extensively in Western Can- 

 ada, the benefits of this practice were not,, unknown 

 to the Selkirk settlers, the first white people to take up 

 land in the Canadian prairies. 



