The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-01-16
FORTY SQUARE MILES OF WHEAT


 Thirty Years to Plough and Plant.
 What is said to be the largest single wheat field in California is now being planted to the grain that makes the staff of life. It covers over 25,00O acres, or forty square miles.
 This enormous field of grain is locat- ed on the banks of the San Joaquin river, near the town of Clovis, in Ma dera county. The field is part in Fres- no county and part in Madeira county.
 Clovis Cole is the man who is put ting in this vast acreage and he has undertaken one of the largest jobs that any man has yet dcne in California.
 While it is true that larger acreage of wheat have been planted by certain ranchers in this state there seems to be no record of an exact parelel to the present case. On the Miller X Lux ranch in Kern county 50000 acres were plant ed one year, but the fields were scat tered about in different places They
 
 wherever there was fertile spot. Few of the fields were 1000 acres, and in manyv instances there would be half mile of bare land between them. The acreage planted could not be called wheat field of 50,000 acres any more than all the wheat fields in the state could be classed under one head.
 The Clovis field, however, is an ideal wheat field. It is almost as flat as a floor, with a gentle slope toward the river. TThe outer lines of the field make it almost a perfect square. Each side is little over six miles, and if the day is clear every part of the field can be seen from any other part It will be a beautiful sight worth seeing when all | the grain is up and waves gently in the breezes of the springtime. There are | no roads through the Clovis wheat field. | It is to be one solid stretch of grain, | and every square foot of land is to be | utilized.
 Ploughing and planting began in the | big wheat field about the middle of last | July and will hardly be completed be- | fore the next two months at least. But | the grain will all mature at about the |
 
 lean task of harvesting it.
 To get an idea of the enormous size | of this great wheat field let us imagine | that it is close to San Francisco. If one end of it one mile wide touched on | Market street the rest of the field would stretch one mile wide almost to San Jose. This same wheat field is over four times the size of the improved portion of San rancisco. The whole city and county of San Ffancisco, including all the outlying district, is about the [ same size.
 With the big improved machinery it does not look as though there was much work spent on planting and har- vesting the field. But suppose one man had to handle the crop, if such were possible, how long would it take him?
 Suppose the field was one mile wide and forty miles long, and the one man had double gang plough cutting a furroW twenty yfour inches wide. He would start at a corner of the field in San Francisco and plough south toward San Jose, a distance of forty miles, Then he would come back and cut an- other furrow to San Francisco, making eighty miles for the round trip.
 ThTis amount of work would only be a tiny scratch four feet wide along one side of the forty-mile field, and the pro- cess would have to be repeated at least i 300 times, making a total distance of about 105, 600 miles.
 Suppose that the ploughman worked at the rate of twenty miles a day. To get over the 105,00o miles would take !, ,250 days. To plant would take about the same time, making a total of 10,- 800 days, or nearly thirty years. It would be like spending a lifetime, and the distance travelled would be equiva- lent to going around the world four times. And all in one California wheat field.
 To accomplish the necessary amount of work within the time at his disposal the owner of the Clovis wheat field has to employ over 200 men, over 1000 hors- ss and severaltons of big machinery. The men are working early and late now, and if the whole acreage is plant ed January and a sufficient quantity of rain falls there will be such a crop of wheat as has never been heard of, for the land is good land and the seed is 4 good seed Then will the bread eaters of the world give thanks for the existence 1f the largest field in Californa-From : he San Francisco Call. |