New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1894-09-19
FARMING IN THE DAKOTAS.
An Old New Ulm Boy Writes of What He
Has Seen in North Dakota.

EDITOR REVIEW: Perhaps the many
readers of your paper, the farmers jespec-
tally, would like to hear from the state
of North Dakota which this year is thresh-
ing millions of bushels of wheat and is
getting back to her record of the early
SOS. Go where you will in the eastern
part of the State from it's northern to its
southern boundary and for an area of
two hundred miles wide and a person
sees nothing but a sea of shocked grain
| or thousands of stacks scattered over the
prairies. The very large farms such as
the Da]rymple at Casselton, the Grandin
at Mayville, the Elk Valley at Larimore
and others of like size thresh just as soon
as the noise of the binder is stilled, but
the majority of the smaller farmers stack
their grain as they do in your state. It
is very pretty sight and one that would
make your small farmers eyes stick out
with wonder and pleasure to see thresh-
ing scene on one of these mammoth
farms. Two hundred men, three COM
plete threshing outfits and two hundred
mules taking care of grain on one farm
is common sight and is the means of
soon filling train load of cars for the
Minneapolis market. Side tracks run
| from the main line of the railroads down
or up eight or ten miAes to elevators which
are built and used by but one farmer and
here the former loads his cars on his own
farm and the trains carry it away to
market for him. Riding on freight trains
is very uncertain mode of progression,
for the trains are left on the main track
and the engine goes off on a tangent to
some farm with empty cars or to return
in an hour or two with loaded ones and
by this delaying along the road person
is just as apt to get to his destination
next week as sooner. In threshing, no
grain bags are used; the wagons have
great boxes on them made on purpose
for hauling grain in and these are backed
up to the machine when the wheat is
run into the boxes by spouts and four
good mules haul it to the nearest eleva-
tor SO that everything is done with very
little manual labor. All of the machines
have self-feeder attachments and several
of them have the cyclone blowers which
blow the straw through a tunnel or fun
nel-shaped arrangement thus doing away
with "bucking" straw or having any men
to swallow dust in the straw pile. The
blowers will force the straw easily hun
dred feet from the machine. As to the
yield of grain in North Dakota I am not
prepared to make an estimate as it var
les considerably in different sections.
Some thresh as high as thirty bushels to
the acre while the lowest yield in the
area of territory described is twelve
bushels to the acre. A large majority
of farmers here are involved in debt, oc-
casioned by the poor crops of '92 and
'93 and also by the extravagant ways of
living and of farming which is in vogue.
Most farmers buy eggs, pork, butter and
such articles which should of course be
raised on the farm; these articles are ex-
ipensive and to pay for them with wheat
at 40 cents a bushel is poor fnanciering. g.
The good crop years of the SOS, too, put
high notions in peoples heads and fabu-
lous prices on farm lands so it is rather
a difficult matter for Dakotians to come
down to the ordinary frugal habits and
slow but surer ways of your farmers in
in Minnesota. North Dakota at present
has large floating population which
may be divided into but two classes: the
commercial men and the tramps or hobos.
Both of these have been enticed here by
the good crops and both in month from
now will have hied themselves eastward,
like birds of passage as they both are,
when the resident portion will figure up
a profit or loss from it's contact thus
with the outside world and settle down
to another winter. OF which class, the
hobos or the travelling men, the people
stand in greater dread am at loss to
conjecture, for both in this latter day
prey (do not set this up pray for iv-
ing and the farmer on these large farms
are necessary evil while the latter, if
not as necessary, are no less an evil to
the poor dealer who oft times is besieged
by at least half dozen drummers at the
same time who talk him into state Of
paralysis about the merits Of their wares
leaving their dement's to follow with the
goods and the dunning letters from
IN