The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1903-07-19

4
| and plenty of plain, yet wholesome grub
for his men while the farmers wife furn-
ishes the meal for twelve or fourteen
men secured by the farmer. 1t requires
from eighteen to twenty-five men to
thresh wheat from the shoc6 in this sec
! ton
When all the wheat has been threshed
| from the shock the machine man dis
misses all but four of his pitchers; some
keep FIVE or six, according TO the size Of
the machine and the farmer keeps his
| three men to haul the grain away. one TO
| load the golden grain in the wagons, and
| two to scoop 1t into the granary
The wheat in Kansas has been harvest
ed in the best of condition this year.
! The call for harvest hands had the de-
| sired effect. 1t brought many men who
worked through harvest at wages of two
dollars per day and up. but there were
men enough to handle the crop. Some
header crews were short a man or two,
| but not enough to handicap the farmer.
AS far as known there is just one man
| in Kansas who has adopted the Cali
fornia method of harvesting Near Lar
! ned one man has a machine which cuts
I a swath thirty-two feet wide and the
straw and grain runs directly into a
threshing machine where the grain is
threshed, the straw returned to the
ground and the wheat sacked all in one
process. These machines cost money and
ii requires thirty horses &c draw them
and they are not likely to be generally
adopted in this state as the fields are
not large enough TO make such expen-
sfve machinery profitable. This machine
harvests nifty acres of wheat day cuts,
threshes and sacks 1t. In California
where such machines are common, the
grain is left on the ground for weeks
after being threshed but the great wheat
section of California has wet and dry
season. The Kansas farmer who uses
one of the machines must gather up the
sacks Immediately as it does rain once
in a while in Kansas and the ground is
usually moist enough to cause the grain
to rot within q few days.
Last Sunday q reporter for the Eagle
took a run southwest of Conway Springs,
then east along the Missouri Pacific to
Belle Plain and back to Wichita He once
lived and raised wheat in a part of the
territory through which he passed, but
during his twelve years residence in the
state he had never seen so many wheat
shocks In fields he has this year and
the farmers told him that they had the
greatest crop they ever raised. Twenty
five bushel wheat was the rule with the
farmer. From g hill just east Of An
son. the first station east of Conway
Springs the reporter counted eighty three
nc
crop, while it seemed that less than half
the wheat had been stacked or cut by a
header. He counted eleven stacks Of
wheat in field Of eighty acres near
Belle Plain.
Several farmers who had threshed told
the reporter that they had thirty bushels
per acre and II was first-class No. 2
wheat The general average seemed TO
be about twenty-five to twenty-eight
bushels per acre. The straw is exceed |
ingly heavy this year and some machine |
men have kicked pretty hard about this |
as they cannot thresh as much per day |
with heavy straw even If the heads are |
heavy and they are paid and pay their |
men by the number of bushels threshed
per day.
Within a week or ten days the yellow
stubble fields will have changed their ap-
pesrance again. The stubble will be
turned under and the ground prepared for
another crop of wheat. Those who har-
vested their wheat with a header have
already begun their blowing and those
who have their grain stacked are get
ting into the fields.
The sulky pillow. cutting sixteen inches
and pulled by three horses is the only
plow the Kansas farmer will look at now
The ground gets hard and the farmer has
to work very, very hard to keep the old
time walking plow in the ground and he
likes TO take things easy when he can,
so he pays a little more for a sulky and
rides
The man with the fields of more than
a hundred ares have two Flows or use
gang as two plows will handle hum
dred acres a year. In the western part
of the state where there are four and
hundred acre fields some steam plows
have come into use. but they are not gen
eral as they are expensive. first cost and
operation. while good horses are cheap.