Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-09-01

Most OF the buyers come from the east and
are doing ordinary farming-setting out
orchards and raising vegetables and ber-
ing into California. and the farms are push
ing over against the desert. The small
farmers are well satisfied. They make good
money from corn; vegetabies' airair n,;
fruits of all kinds 1t Is the ten-acre and
twenty-five-acre men who build up the
country. and with plenty of water those
years irrigation has become quite expen-
sive. Water rights are getting to be very
high, but since people are beginning TO f1nd
out that an artesian basin underlies the
whole country they are boring their own
wells and putting in windmills ana gasoline
pumps TO distribute the water. good
well will furnish all the water needed to
irrigate a farm of ten acres and the cos'
Is merely nominal.
Farming by steam Is going out of style; 1t
does not pay. Few of the big ranches are
now operated by steam power, but they are
still interesting. Griffith Bros, for example
who are operating Lucky" Baldwin's grain
ranch, cultivate 4,0o0 acres of wheat with
only six horSes-an average or less than one
horse to a section of land-and they are
used only for business purposes and for
hauling water and oil to the great traction
engine which draws six gangs of plows, or
six burrows each, and turns swath or
earth twenty-four1 feet wide at every
trip When the grain is ripe this engine is
attached to a combination of machinery
which does everything but grind the wheat
and bake the bread and eat it. There are
mills near by which do the grinding, and
they belong to the same proprietors. The
Griffith Bros recently tried an experiment.
One day they cut and threshed bunch or
wheat, hauled it mile and half to the
mill, ground 1t into graham flour and had 1t
baked into pancakes and mullins in exactly
one hour and thirty minutes.
The Largest Automobile.
The traction engine, upon which they de-
pend for power is probably the largest au-
tomobile in the world. 1t is capable OF
hauling seventy-fve tons and does the work
of sixty-fve horses. 1t combines harvester,
header, thresher and sacker, and moves
through the harvest fields at the rate OF
three and a half miles an hour, cutting,
threshng and sacking $50 acres of grain
every day 1t is used. There are three sep
arate engines at work furnishing power,
which is necessary because the condition re-
quires the cutter header and threSher to
move at different speeds. according to the
thickness of the grain, or whether the field
is hilly or level. Eight men are enough to
handle the leviathan.
Immediately after the headers begin to
nip the sheaves of wheat from the straw
the thresher is started. The heads are car
ried to 1t on moving belt. forty-elgnt
inches wide, called a "collander.' The grain
then is automatically conducted into
cleaner and screener and passes through a
chute to a bin where sacks are suspended
upon iron frames to receive II. AS fast as
sack is filled 1t is detached from the frame
and an empty one Is substituted. A few
stitches close the top and the sack-sewer
drops it into cart. Each cart holds twelve
sacks. and they are driven off as fast as
they are filled. Th3e is also an attachment
to be used in place of the carts-a sort of
self-dumper-which throws the sacks TO the
ground where they lie until they can be
picked up and hauled to the mill.
This monstrous machine Is a California
invention, and was built at San Leandro,
near Oakland Fifty-siX of them have been
constructed. Two are in Australia and the
remainder in this state. On several ranches
similar machines, which also do harvesting
by wholesale are used They are operated
by horse power, being made for twelve,
twenty-four and thirty-two horses. But as
1 have told you, they do not pay, and are
being used less and less every year No
new ones are being built AS one of the
bonanza farmers expressed it: The bigger
the farm. the more trouble and anxiety and
less profit"