Nebraska advertiser., 1870-02-17

Western life, and sought him out q
farm.
His first work, after q weeks travel
about, was planting corn for q neigh
Dor to get money to buy a beetle and
wedges thence he set to splitting
rails, and putting up q log shanty on
his preemption claim, eight miles
from the infant village of Rochester
He got forty acres plOughed, hiring
the money at three per cent. q month.
/ In the fall, he made for Chatfeld, the
hub of Minnesota land excitement,
and opened a law and land office
with ten cents capital. Other capital
soon came to him for investment, and
he loaned money and located land
warrants at five per cent commission,
clearing often V e a hundred dollars
a week.
In 1859, he opened his Office at st.
Paul. In five years he held a cash
balance of $4,000. He had had enough
he said, of p~ettifogging and claim col
lectiOns, and he now resolved to graft
fy his taste and inclinatiOns out Of
doors. He wished, also, to demon
strate two things:
LIST. That capital and labor could be
applied successfully to wheat raising
on a large scale.
I'd. That a man could be farmer
and not a slave.
With these two distinct ideas before
him. he set about to work them out,
mindless of old rules and precedents.
Within a veal he bought two thou
sand acres of the best wheat land,
opposite Hastings, and near Point
Il n-.,-T,- -ou~fn& fr0nn @ E0 70 XIX on
acre. It was smooth, high, undula-
ting prairie, without a bush or tree,
that had only wild grass and flowers,
and fed deer and cartridges for thou
sands of successive years. The sur
face soil is a dark, warm, vegetable
loan, two feet deep, and mixed with
clay, lime, and sand. 1t has a deep
clay subsOil, resting on lime rock
strata. The location is slightly and
accessible, and is admirably described
by the rapturOus "Gail Hamilton" in
her Wool Gathering adventures of
three years ago. Calls little sheep
family, by the way, has long since
been dismembered, and the location
Of her sheep farm, a mile out of Hast
ings, become mostly unknown to the
people there. /
In June, 1866, Mr.. Dalrymple put
in fifteen breaking teens, with six
heavy horses each. They turned
mile long burrows, sixteen inches
wide, and two and half deep. In
forty-twO days he had seventeen hun
dred acres 'under plough" at an
average cost of 50 an acre. He fenced
his farm in three divisions: n of a
thousand acres, and two Of five hun
dred each. He set fourteen miles of
oak post fence four boards high, at a
cost of $500 a mile. The larger divi-
sion, where he resides, he calls his
"Grant farm" and the other two his
fisherman" and SHERIDAN" farms.
His stables and grain houses are so by
80 feet each, with shed and storing
apartments on both sides. He uses
his own farm implements, and uses
the best. He has thirty stout horses,
averaging 1900 pounds each, and
worth $500 a span. He has pet names
for all; and keeps them fat. He hires
his other force of work horses as
needed. He has fifteen farm wagons,
and three private carriages for himself
and friends. He keeps two COWS for
milk and cream. With the exception
of a hundred acre patch of clover and
timothy, and a trife of gardening, he
crops only wheat. Seed time and
harvest only require his attention he
is his own man, he says, nine months
in the year. He keeps two response
BILE young men on his "Grant farm"
at all times also the two ever-trusty
and cheerful ebony girls. He has an
eighty acre woOd-lOt bordering his
prairie, equal in profit, he says, to two
acres of wheat.
Mr.. Dalrymple attaches special i'm
pOrtanee to seed sowing and sowing
early. He commences about the 18th
of April, and dispatches the whole in
two weeks. He uses twelve broadcast
seeders, which are followed by twenty
four drag teams. All move together
in battalion order, under n supervi-
sion. His horses are in good trim,
the men make long days, and all are
cared for generously. He puts in a
bushel and a half of ScOtch-fife wheat
to the acre. His last springs seeding
took an even three thousand bushels,
and was finished in exactly twelve
days.
Harvesting is the great event of the
year, and calls out the true DalTym-
pie talent and directing energy. The
idea is to secure the largest measure
of results in the shortest space Of
to get the harvesting finished,
the wheat to market, and the money
in pocket, while others are dawdling
along under barn covers, or watching
their field stacks in terror of fires and
equinoctials. Two weeks before har- ]
vest, he advertises in st. Paul for one
hundred and twenty-five men at $50
a day. He has no trouble in recruit
ing good men who have worked IN
the prairies or on river RATS. They
like the excitement of great numbers.
Harvest opens early In July. Fifteen l
Mccormick reapers move p
into the field together, following each
other side by side, like the fight of
wild geese thrO' the air. Ninty bin
1ers swarm on these tracks, working
in sections of a mile. They are fol- 7
lowed by shockers, setting up bundles, v
by twos and twOs, in numbers of
A mounted Overseer directs t
The whole. It is an inspiring sight 7
fifteen broad armed reapers plunging Z
into q sea of waving grain. Men and
horses do their best. If n falls be-
hind, another takes his place. Every ?
thing is provided for, and no time lost.
Horses are washed and we'll groOmed
1T night. Men go into the field at =
sunrise, and are called to dinner at IL 4
lunch is taken out at 4, and supper J
ready at dark. All feed at one table 3
IN the long rear wing. Aunt Minnie g
and Amanda have ample help, and
ire radiant with added Kitchen glOries, n
and two dollars a day. Hundreds of I
come from afar to witness the +
great harvest spectacle. In two weeks 4
he battle with the reapers are over, b
md sixty thousand wheat stacks ?
checker the wide harvest fields. =
There is no stacking. When the :
have finished, the whole force
IF men and teams are turned over to v
he threshing machines and market
wagons. Four ten-hOrse power and
steam DOWer machines are moved