The free press. (Poplarville, Miss.) 1890-19??, 1899-02-09
WORLDS LARGEST FARM.
SITUATED IN CANADA AND CON-
TAINS 100 SQUARE MILES.


che public, though we'll understood to
the grain trade of the Northwest, that
in the new and far Canadian North
west, in province whose very name
is synonym for desolation, in Assipi-
boia, 1000 miles to the north and
west from the head of Lake Superior,
are situated some of the largest and
most successful wheat farms in the
world. One of them, the Bell Farm,
is without much doubt, the largest
connected block of land devoted to
the raising of wheat to be found on the
globe. This farm is owned by syn
dictate of Englishmen, who have made
it sort of stalking out ground for
their younger sons, in SO far as they
have been able, land have subsequent
ly wondered why their profits were no
greater, though the yield of grain was
so large, forgetting that these same
younger sons had to be provided for
and that salary lists mounted up.
It is named after Major Bell, the
military manager of the estate, and
has an area of ten miles aquare, or 100
square miles, of which $4,000 acres,
Dr. about three-quarters, is under Gull
tivation. This farm is in a country
which few years ago was the last
stalking ground of the buffalo, and
where the relics of buffaloes and of
Indian battles are still thick on the
ground. A few miles southerly from
Regina is an alkali plain, sixty miles
across, that is covered with the bones
of buffaloes and Indians, the latter
from the results of the last fierce bat
tie of the Crows and Blackfeet, not
many years ago. All through this
country piles of buffalo bones, some of
them 500 to 1000 feet long, and per-
haps 100 feet wide, and as high as a
man could reach, have been gathered
together and shipped east to fertiliz-
ing works.
In this district, where for hundreds
of miles the train passes no houses
nor titled soil, where there are millions
and millions of acres apparently as
good as those that are yielding thirty
to forty bushels of wheat to the acre,
where these lands can be bought for
from 50 to SO an acre, with the best of
rail facilities, the Bell Farm people
have been able to sell thousands of
acres at SIS to $40 an acre, and in one
case the purchaser was subsequently
enabled to turn his purchase of $40
acres at $25 all acre to an incoming
farmer. This latter price, though it
bIoh tho oct
stretches of arabic and unoccupied
land all around are considered, is not
80 high but that it permits good inter
est on the investment, year after year,
by wheat farming.
The problems of farming in these
great plains that stretch northwesterly
$500 miles from the head of Lake Su-
perior, into a latitude that further
east is a region of cold so intense that
scarcely any vegetation will grow,
have been long in solution, and have
ruined many man who has struggled
against them. The soil is, generally
speaking, a heavy, black loan, and
the rainfall is very little, sometimes
amounting to but few light showers
during an entire summer. 1t has been
found necessary to so handle this soil
as to preserve the moisture and to
keep all the water that comes from
the melting SHOWS of the long, cold
winters, and to do this new method
of soil culture has been inaugurated.
Fall blowing, so common and so much
desired in the prairies of the DakotaS
and Western Minnesota, is said to bt
worse than no blowing at all, an6
nothing is done to lands after harvest
ing. A third of the land under Guilt
walton is allowed to lie fallow all the
time, so that but two-thirds is in crol
in any one season. By such farming
methods Northwestern farmers are
able to raise crops of from thirty tc
forty bushels of hard Scotch fife wheat
to the acre.
Such farm as tho Bell, with As,
900 to 1000 acres under cultivation
and two thirds of this immense lane
in crop every year, yielding at the
rate of thirty bushels to the acre, give.
crop of from 100000 to 900, 00(
puSuelS VI Sralu. ouo Wills WY Is
nearly 1000 miles from navigation on
Lake Superior, where the wheat Of
the Canadian lands comes in direct
competition for the export and East
ern markets with that of the North
western prairies of the United States.
Wheat is worth within six to seven
cents as much on these farms, 1000
miles beyond the jumping off place, as
it is in Duluth, where buyers for the
worlds food are congregated. These
far-off farmers are now getting actually
more money for their grain than are
those of the famed Red River Valley,
$50 miles from one of the chief mar
kets of the world. The demand from
mills in Western Canada, those of the
Ogilvies and others, and their success
in selling flour in both Europe and
the antipodes, has had much to do
with this condition.
In these hyperborean regions, along
the fifty first parallel, the cold is not
far different from that of the prairies
to the south of the American line.
The thermometer sometimes gets to