"WHEAT IN "WESTERN CANADA 47 



prairie after the threshing season (except for small por- 

 tions saved for bedding horses, feeding, etc.) have usually 

 been burned. The straw-pile fires reflected against the 

 clouds at night in the autumn are well known everywhere 

 in the West and form a strange and unexpected sight to 

 newcomers from Europe where straw is of so much value. 

 The recent development of mixed farming, however, offers 

 in western Canada an opportunity for the utilization of 

 straw to a much greater extent than hitherto as roughage 

 for stock feed. 



On large farms, the threshing is done directly from the 

 stooks which are hauled in wagons from the places in the 

 fields where they were set up straight to the threshing 

 machines. The stooks may be loaded on to a wagon me- 

 chanically by means of stook-loaders, or they may be 

 pitched by men into bundle racks. The threshing is car- 

 ried out as soon as possible after the bundles have become 

 sufficiently dry to pass through the machine without diffi- 

 culty and after the grain has become sufficiently dry to be 

 safely stored in bulk. If threshed when too moist, the 

 grain may heat in storage and thereby be injured for com- 

 mercial purposes. On the smaller farms, when for any 

 reason threshing may be delayed, stacking is sometimes re- 

 sorted to. This permits of fall tillage being undertaken 

 at once and provides safe storage for the sheaves until a 

 threshing machine becomes available. 



The harvesting and threshing season is the busiest part 

 of the year in western Canada. To assist in relieving the 

 labor shortage which is always felt at this time, some 

 20,000 to 30,000 extra harvesters are annually brought to 

 the Prairie Provinces from the east of the Dominion and 

 from the United States. 



The grain, after it has been threshed, may be stored in 

 temporary granaries on the farm or it may be hauled at 



