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NEW YORK, JAN. 28, 1 
[Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1882, by the Rural New-Yorker, In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.] 
farm (Topics. 
BONANZA SERIES.—No. 2. 
Breaking. 
The prairie country in the West, free from 
roots, vines, or other obstructions in the soil, 
where the virgin sod can be turned from the 
mold-board like a roll of ribbon as long as 
fancy or the limits of ownership may choose 
upon the Western prairies, where the soil is 
naturally much more fertile ? 
During a visit of the writer in Massachusetts 
last Spring, he commenced telling an old, 
wealthy farmer something about breaking. 
He eagerly inquired what we meant by the 
term. The natural surface, from Pennsylva¬ 
nia and New York, eastward, throughout the 
New England States, and to a large extent in 
Ohio, is of so brittle a cast that an ordinary 
plow is all-sufficient, and meets with no other 
resistance in stirrir g the soil than the stones 
ordinary stirring plow in prairie sod could 
not endure the strain of moving it, even if 
one could fiud a team of sufficient strength to 
do so, or get men enough on and around the 
plow to keep it in the ground. The plows that 
are constructed for this special work are 
termed “breakers,” or “breaking plows,” 
and the process itself is termed “breaking.” 
In the first number of the “ Bonanza Series” 
(so-called) we presented a brief biographical 
sketch of Mr. Oliver Dairymple, “ The Bo¬ 
nanza Farmer” of Dakota, who raised be- 
tion (Fig. 25) three horses abreast are used, 
with a thin, steel, circular coulter, commonly 
called a “rolling coulter,” to distinguish it 
from the old-fashioned stationary coulter, 
beveled and sharpened for a few inches above 
the point of the plow to which it was at¬ 
tached. 
A furrow is broken sixteen inches wide and 
three inches thick, which, as a rule, is com¬ 
pletely reversed, or turned over; the coulter 
and plow-share need to be sharpened frequent¬ 
ly, and the keeping of them in good order con- 
BONANZA FARMING—BREAKING. (Drawn from a Photograph.) Fig. 25. 
to make it, is something of which many a 
wiseacre in agriculture, where stones, stumps, 
red-roots, etc., abound, have little or no con¬ 
ception; and yet, in localities of the latter 
description, patient labor overcame all these 
obstacles, and the rocky, sandy, stubborn soil 
has been mellowed and enriched by fertilizing, 
until its yield bus given an economic support 
to the tiller, and provided a steady accumula¬ 
tion for the savings bank. This being true, 
who shall estimate the proportionate increased 
profit of farming, with the same skill and care, 
found upon most of the open spaces, or the 
roots and stumps of the clearings; v bile upon 
the Western prairies, free from all these im¬ 
pediments. the immense, luxuriaut and spon¬ 
taneous growth of nutritious grasses produces 
such a mass of rootlets that they will hold a 
large surface of sod together, even when sus¬ 
pended in mid-air; and to “break " or plow 
this sod, it becomes necessary to cut it, not only 
at the width of the furrow you des re to turn, 
but underneath the sod at any desired thick¬ 
ness or depth it is designed to turn over. An 
tween 27,000 and 80,000 acres of wheat in 1881, 
and in reviewing his methods of farming, we 
shall, as promised, devote this article to 
“breaking”—the first process upon the land 
in opening a farm. The “Alton,” “ C'ass- 
Cheney,” and “ Grandin” Farms, as we ex¬ 
plained them, and located them, in our last, 
are in a section of country (the Red River 
Valley of the North) where the richness and 
fertility of the soil produce a heavy growth of 
grasses and a correspondinglythiek, tenacious 
sod. As shown in the accompanying illustra- 
tributes matei’ially to the ease and efficiency 
of the work. In the sub-division of the work 
about 25 teams and plows are assigned to a 
gang in “breaking,” each gang being in 
charge of a “Gang Foreman,” who stays with 
the stock and field work continually and is 
subordinate to the “Division Foreman.” (Fur¬ 
ther details of the division and official manip¬ 
ulation, the feeding and lodging of the men, 
etc., we will give in the last number of the 
series.) 
Each gang of teams come to the work at 
