East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1906-08-29
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Of
THE CANADIAN NORTHWEST

which is your deed. Well, we are
tailors and know more about needles
and shears than plows and binders
but we learned as we went along |
Most OF our neighbors are farmers
from eastern Oregon, and they show
ed us how to go at 1t. We harvested |
fair crop the first year, but we were
so busy putting up our fences and
breaking new land that we did not
have a chance to put our seed In that
fall so we dsked the stubble and |
seeded it in March expecting to get
10 or 1S bushels, and what do you
suppose we took, off of that disked
land?" ~ give 1t up" 1--WE harvested
AZ bushels to the acre from that field. !
OF course, the land is new and full
of strength, being full Of humus or
else we could not have made such a
crop. We do not summer fallow here
but crop 1t each season."
At Nanton / met Dan Mcintyre,
formerly of Athena. Dan is an en-
thuslastic booster for the country Of
his adoption.
"a new country like this is always
good country for young fellow
with his way to make, or for a poor
man. he said. "Take up homestead
and when your three years are up you
have made your living and have saved
whatever your farm is worth, and 1t
is poor farm that isn't worth IS
or $40 an acre; and If your farm is
only worth $500, why, you have
saved $500 year, and that is a good
deal more than you can save at most
! jobs
Dan hitched up his rig and took me
out for drive. We drove past NOV
ing fields of wheat, past fields of oats
SO heavy they had lodged.
What do you think of that for
oats?" asked Dan. pointing to a field
where the oats stooh waist high.
Oats In this country run from so
bushels to as high as 1875 bushels to
the acre. though once in a while they
run higher. one man here harvested
14l bushels to the acre. They are
very heavy, running from 40 to so
I -. 70 q
splendid garden and then a field of
potatoes. "How about frost?" l in
potatoes occasionally but you will
find that we always get good yields"
and he gave me some figures that
won't set down here for fear am ac-
cused of drawing the long bow, land
the beauty of 1t is that we get three
yields without a drop Of water for fr-
rigation," he concluded. We drove
by 4 short cut across the smooth,
grass-clad prairie to where one of the
> farmers had struck an artesian flow
os water by boring 165 feet. l said
Smooth" but | must modify that
statement 1t is smooth looked at
from a distance, but when you drive
; over II you keep crossing the deeply
; worn 'uails worn by the vast herds of
bufiaio in going 10 water at the Bow
river and on all sides you see the
l -. ~. H.,
along toward the state line one may
see quantities of the bleaching skulls
oc the buffalo many of them with the
horns still attached. The heavily
grassed country was at one time a
buffalo heaven. Around Claresholm
and Nanton the country rs becoming
thickly settled and most OF the new
corners are from the United States
Oregon and Washington furnishing a
large quota. 81 could readily think
g was in the United States II it were
not FOR the British flag there" I said
to one of the American settlers who
had come in for load Of Alberta
red seed wheat. Don't let that worry
you" he responded. "Two-thirds of
the people here are Americans, and
you will see that the question of an
neXation will come up some of these
days, and when 1t does we will split
Alberta into two states and then the
way your geography will read will be
Oregon, Washington, Lincoln and
$ Roosevelt, and when we add the stars
of Lincoln and Roosevelt to the union
we will put two new stars in Old
, Glory. When our grandchildren go
to school they will be studying the
map of Greater America or the
Greater United States, a country that
: extends from the Hudson bay to the
Gulf of Mexico, or possibly to the
Isthmus OF Panama"
While there are more small wheat
farms here than in eastern Oregon,
r still in places farming Is done on a
: large scale here, also.
A Chicago syndicate purchased 36
: townships not far from Claresholm at
1896 an acre. They still retain 49,
! 900 acres, having sold the rest at
+. from IS to 80 an acre. They use
steam plows to do their plowing.
They call the settlement Carmongoy