WHEAT RAISING. 615 



horses are stabled at only two or three places. One stable at the head- 

 quarters has 180 stalls. In some fields of this great farm the teams plow 3 

 or 4 miles straight forward, being interrupted only by roads on the section 

 lines, where the plow is thrown out of the ground for a few rods. The 

 first breaking on both the Dalrymple and Grandin farms was in 1875, the 

 same year in whicli the land was mostly purchased, and their first crop of 

 wheat was harvested in 1876. During every year since that time the har- 

 vests on these lands and in general tlu'oughout the Red River Valley have 

 been good, with no failure on account of drought, which for several years 

 (from 1885 to 1889) was very severe upon many portions of the Dakotas 

 west and southwest of this valley. 



WHEAT AND OTHER CEREALS. 



One man, if very nidustrious, with two pairs of horses and ample "farm 

 machinery" — that is, plows, harrows (here often called drags), seeders, a 

 self-binding harvester, etc. — can cultivate 100 to 150 acres in wheat. An 

 intelligent and energetic farmer in Traverse County, Minn., with whom I 

 conversed in June, 1886, informed me that during the preceding autumn, 

 beginning after the harvest and working daily until the ground froze, he 

 plowed 130 acres, walking behind the plow. In the spring of 1886 the 

 seeding of his crop of 210 acres was done entirely by his wife, not an 

 especially strong woman, who I'ode on the seeder, di-iving a pair of horses, 

 while he with another pair was dragging (harrowing) the plowed lands to 

 prepare them for seeding. He expected to harvest the whole with one har- 

 vester, estimating that this would occupy fifteen days, working from the 

 time when the dew would be mostly gone in the morning until it would 

 gather heavily in the evening. The amount of work accomplished, how- 

 ever, by most farmers with their hired men is no more than to cultivate 50 

 or 75 acres in wheat for each man laboring through the season. 



The seedtime for wheat, oats, and barley is shortly after the ground 

 is thawed in the spring, usually occupying the second half of April and the 

 first week or two of May. The harvest comes during August, northward 

 extending somewhat into September, after which follow stacking, thrashing, 

 and plowing, until winter arrives. Harvesting is the busiest part of the 



