The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1879-08-21
DIR. GLENN'S BIG FARM.

DIR. GLENN'S BIG FARM.
Harvest Requiring 500 Men and Yield
ing Nearly a Million Bushels of Wheat
From the San Francisco Chronicle.
DIR. Hugh James Glenn, named by the
party of the New Constitution as their
candidate for Governor of the State OF
California, is not what has been known
in literature as "gentleman farmer"
His hands are hard from actual contact
with labor; his face is brown from real
exposure to the sun. There are those
who object to DR.. Glenn because he tills
broad acres. 1t is true that his acres
are broader than those of most men, but
he tills them all. He tills them himself,
and he acquired every rood by the
money which came from his own provi-
dent exertion. His place is not the
largest landed estate in the world, but
it is among the largest, and, in reality,
the most extensive put to legitimate use.
If any of his soil lies idle, it is only long
enough to recuperate. He makes it
yield to the utmost of its capacity. The
ranch lies on the Sacramento River, be-
ginning about 20 miles above the Town
of Colusa. Its length on meridian is
not far from Is miles; following the
winding of the river it extends nearly 80
miles. The general shape is that of
parallelogram, its liver edge being
long, waving line, its western edge
nearly straight, with the exception of a
single projection, and its average width
being about one-third of its length. Its
surface is fiat or undulating, like the
prairies of Southern Illinois. Where it
skirts the river. it occasionally falls
down into broad bottom land, hand
somely diversified with timber, and kept
clear and park-like by the removal of
the underbrush, Or runs along the high
clay bank which the treacherous stream
is all the while seeking to undermine.
The soil is black or gravelly loan,
never supposed to be of any use except
for grazing until Dr. Glenn proved its
fertility and its adaptability to wheat
culture some ten years ago. Before that
time the dull, monotonous hatness of
the country was scarcely broken by a
fence. Now, the broad plain, from the
banks of the meandering Sacramento,
to the slopes of the Coast Range, is a
succession of wheat-fields-one vast sea
of nodding grain, cut up here and there
into squares and oblongs, and dotted at
irregular intervals by farm-houses, with
ample barns and other essential build
ings.
The harvest time on the Glenn ranch
is spread over the whole summer and
part of the fall. 1t begins in the mid
die of June and lasts till October. All
through this long period the headers are
plunging through the standing wheat,
and the threshers are laundering over
all these leagues of land. The seeding
begins about the middle of September,
tapping on to the harvest, and lasts till
April. Lest there should be month of
idleness between seeding and harvest,
Providence has provided a haying sea-
son, which furnishes healthful industry
for that unoccupied period. DR.. Glenn
has this year $4,000 acres in wheat.
"People ask why l raise all wheat" he
says. "The answer is simple 1t is the
only crop that will bear transportation /;
it is the only crop not perishable. l
must not raise on my land what ruins
nae, but what is profitable" These 49,
900 acres were expected to yield 1,OOO,-
goo bushels, but some damaging north
ers reduced the estimated amount below
100000. This can be placed on the
river bank, ready for transportation, at
80 cents per bushel.
This vast amount of grain requires
vast appliances for planting and bring
to point where it is &C sessible to the
consumer. During harvest time there
are employed some 500 men. This
small army is differed as follows: DR..
Glenn is General in Chief of his forces.
The ranch is subdivided, for conve-
nience of operations, into nine smaller
ranches, each with dwelling house,
barns, blacksmith's shop, and other
needed buildings. In charge of these
are seven foremen, the lieutenant's Of
DIR. Glenn. Under the foremen are 16
blacksmiths, IA carpenters, six engi
neers, six machinists, five commissaries,
and numerous cooks and servants. The
common wOrkmen, the rank and file
OF the army, are divided into gangs, and
detailed where they are needed-to the
reapers, the threshers, the cleaners, etc,
These men, so eficered, manage q vast
fortune invested in the costliest kind of
agricultural machinery. There are 1870
gang-plows, 60 headers, to which be-
long $50 wagons, six cleaners, 100 har-
rows, 18 seeders, six threshers, six en-
gines. Besides there is a count
less number of smaller implements.
and many vehicles that can not well be
classified. Co operating with their hui
man brethren in the great labor 1000
work horses and mules, with kinship
of 1000 brood mares and younger stock
that has not Yet achieved the dignity of
labor. The aggregate value of the ma
chinery is imposing. Flows cost $12O;
headers, 1915; wagons accompanying
headers, $l35; cleaners, $3.50; harrows,
S45; threshers, $1,000; engines,
S2,250; seeders, $50. Without weary
the reader with minute mathematics.
we may roundly say that the machinery
could not be replaced for 1925, 600; that
the work horses and mules are worth
$4,000; the brood mares and Young
stock, $4,000; and the buildings on the
place, 100000.