FARMING ON A LARGE SCALE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5633, 19 April 1879, Page 3

FARMING ON A LARGE SCALE.

The Missouri Republican gives the following account of some rather extensive farming operations in Minnesota and Dakota;— Fargo, D.T., August 23, The “Grandin Farm,” a household world in the north-west, is barely known in the East, where the stories of its operations in the ears of the few read like the fantastic dreams of Western reporters. After the failure of Jay, Cooke and Co., the Grandin Brothers, bankers and oil kings of Tidiout, Pa., found on their hands an inconvenient load of Northern Pacific stock, but they qirckly discovered a means of converting it into gold. Their wheat fields in Dakota are perhaps the largest in the world, certainly larger by all odds than any in the United States. Their immense farm of nearly 70,000 acres lies partly in the Red River Valley, 300 miles south of Bake Winnepeg, and partly on the Goose River, twenty miles to the northwest. The portion on the Red, which is designed for grain culture, consists of 37,000 acres, in whoso vast extent it may be said there is no . waste land. It lies so beautifully that X think it is hardly an exaggeration to say that an uninterrupted furrow might be ploughed around the fifty square miles embraced within its limits. I know there are many tracts of this extent of which such a statement would be strictly true. From this farm they have just harvested 5000 acres of grain, from which they estimate a yield of 125,000 bushels. The planting and harvesting of this immense wheat field is a wonder of modern farming, and has attracted this year excursionists [from far and near to witness the working of so gigantic an agricultural enterprise. Through the hospitality of the Messrs. Grandin and their efficient superintendent, I have had. the privilege of a minute inspection of their mode of operations. The field work is conducted with a discipline as thorough as that of an army, while the details ofjthe office exhibit a method not surpassed by the best managed manufacturing concerns in the Bast. It is, in fact, a stupendous grain manufactory, the success of which depends upon the nicest system and the application (of the most complete business training. An active business life has well qualified the proprietor to organise and carry on with success interests so extensive. The price at which grain can be put to market is a proof that under business principles the pursuit of farming can be made to rank with the most remunerative employment of capital, and I would here remark that, though the distance from market seems appalling, the Dakota grain producer can put his bushel of wheat in New York at one-third less cost than the Eastern farmer, which fact is readily susceptible of proof. So perfect is the system on the farms I am describing that as the work goes on the cost of every portion of the same is accurately recorded, and when the last sack of wheat has left the thresher the Messrs. Grandin know to a cent what it has cost them per bushel to make and market their crop. Their farm as at present organised (the grain portion of it) is divided into sections of Nos. 1,2, and 3, each having its farm buildings, consisting of dwelling-house, boarding-house for the men, granaries, repair shops, and shedding for the numberless machines that are required to plant, cultivate, and gather the immense crops. The head-quarters of Hie farm are at No. 1, where the superintendent lives, while his lieutenants live at Nos. 2 and 3, The' latter are connected by telephone with No. 1, and orders are transmitted instantly to portions of the forces three and five miles distant. No. lis prettily situated on the banks of a lake of about 100 acres area. Flocks of teal and mallard ducks frequent this lake within easy range of the pleasant mansion, while upon the fields all around the beautiful prairie hen has not yet learned to be unsociable.

Besides the building described upon the sections Nos, 2 and 3, No. 1 has the office, where the book-keeper and his assistants are kept constantly employed. Here is also a special building for the various stores, such as are needed by tbe hands, of which they employ a steady force for the season of about lOC, which is swelled during harvest and the threshing season to between 200 and 300. A large room is specially devoted to the duplicate parts of farm machinery, and so nicely a.e .these arranged that when a break occurs in'any portion of the vast field, the nearest telephone station announcing the fact, a messenger, whose horse stands ready, need hue no excuse for not instantly putting h" j baud on the desired article and galloping off to the spot where the crippled machine, witndrawn from the line, awaits his coming, and where he will find the machinist standing ready to replace the broken part. At No. 1 also is the steam mill for grinding feed for horses and men, and so large is the demand that it is kept constantly running. Here are the carpenters’ shops, the main storehouses, and numberless auxiliary buildings which suoh an establishment must require. The force of this farming is about as follows:—Say 20 to 30 ‘‘break ploughs,” 125 harrows, 30 to 50 stubble ploughs, 20 to 30 broadcast seeders, 20 to 30 self-binding reapers, 10 steam threshers, I have stated about the numberof men it requires to perform the work, besides which there are upwards of 150 horses and mules—the breaking ploughs requiring four to each, the harrows two, the stubble ploughs two, the “ harvesters” or reapers three. It is worth a journey of many miles to see a platoon of self-binders attack a fine field of standing grain. Any description would fail to convey an adequate idea of the grandeur of the display. Two weeks ago I rode into the field where 71 of these intelligent machines stood ready for the order to move. The drivers were oiling-up, the machinists were inspecting the various parts to be assured that all were in order, the watertank man was driving from one thirsty group to another with refreshment alike for men and horses. The superintendent sat his horse silently awaiting the completion of preparations. At

last the order was given to “ field bosses, machinists, and messengers to mount. ih« drivers took th--ir scat-, r-ios in hands. G-o ahead,” cried General Mo'Jloskey, and away they swept for a four mile round, 24 clicking harvesters, each carrying a swath of six and a half feet, 156 ft. in width for all (nearly 10 rods) —in other words, taking from one side of the mile square patch 20 acres _ at one “ through.” Eighty acres of standing gram put into sheaf by one round of the field, a force of fifty “shockers” following put it at once into shocks. These harvesters seem to work with almost human intelligence. The grain is cut and laid in swaths upon a table, which, revolving, elevates it to another table, where, at regular intervals, a revolving iron arm, carrying, apparently between the tips of its fingers, a delicate wire, comes up and grasps the bundle about the centre, revolving still through an opening in the table, carries the wire below, where a twister twists it and a cutter cuts it, and the finished sheaf is tossed lightly off 6ft, from the reaper’s side, the inexorable arm moving on and upward for the next bundle. The motion is as easy and regular as the swing of a pendulum, tossing off the bundles at the rate of 10 a minute where the grain stands well, 21 reapers turning out 2-10 bundles a minute. X have taken the Grandm as my sample, but it is only one of several such, all under the general management of one man, Air, Oliver Dalrymple, who may be said to be the pioneer of this grand system of farming. Mr. Dalrymple has an interest in the following farms, and the supervision of them all, harvesting this year from the Cheney farm, 4000 acres; Grandin farm, 5080 acres ; Cass farm, 2300 acres ; Dalrymple, 2000 ; an aggregate of 13,000 acres, which, with the estimated yield of 25 bushels to the acre, will show a grand total of 325,000 bushels. I _ had the pleasure of spending a day with Air. Dalrymple on the Cheney farm, just as he was finishing cutting and was putting his steamthreshers to work. I sat by one for a few minutes while I was on a field of oats. By my timing it put through two sacks a minute, or between four and five bushels. This field would yield about 60 bushels to the acre, Eor half an hour I timed a wheat-thresher, and every minute it “ ran itself in golden sand to the amount of two bushels and a peck. The whole force at work there will be 10 threshers, and the aggregate stream of wheat from all will be : 20 bushels a minute, 1200 bushels an hour, 12,800 bushels a day. To cut the immense harvest of 13,000 acres Mr. D.’s force was 80 reapers, 80 men (drivers), and 240 horses, besides a large force of bosses, messengers, and machinists, who in the saddle constantly follow the reapers. The harvest was gathered in 10 days, and without a drop of rain.

A few days ago a party of excursionists from Eastern and Western cities visited the scene of these harvests, among whom were many newspaper representatives, whose accounts read like romances. The highest coloring they may give will not add one golden tint too much to the splendour of the canvas which lay spread out before them.