Arizona republican., 1913-02-26
FARMING DONE
 SCIENTIFICALLY
Head of an Agricultural Enterprise Owning Forty Thousand Acres Describes the Methods in Red River Valley, North Dakota


 which the head is now J. H Reed who 1, is spending the winter in Phoenix The | farms consisting of 41,4S0 acres of land lie in about thirty-five sections in three general groups on the Red River val ley near Fargo. Large as this tract of land is it is famed for the scientific manner of it's cultivation rather than for the acreage cultivated. Nothing is left to chance
 The land is held by corporation called the Amenia X Sharon Land company founded by E. w. Chaffee the father-in-law of MT. Reed. The farm ing is mostly done by tenants but un- der rigid rules laid down by the man. agcment of the company, lnsurng the cultivation of the land scientifically. The farms generally consist of a sec ton or half section. but Mr. Reed says
 that four -fifths of a section is q prefer able area Each farm is divided into six nearly equal parts one of which contains the houses and other buildings and fields for pasture for such stock as the tenant may raise for himself, and such crops as are necessary for the | living of the family. The other five | divisions are devoted to the real busi- ness of farming. There are blank forms | of agreement to be signed and plats 1 showing the divisions of the farm l There are three essentials for farm CTS on the farms of this company: q scientific rotation of crops. seed selcc- ] ton and deep and thorough cuItiva- ! ton. The rotation comes in the fol- | lowing order: corn. wheat. barley, flax
 and oats. though in the smaller grains
 this order is sometimes slightly ! changed.
 There is a common impression that 1 flax is an eXhausting crop But Mir 1 Reed says it is not more so than other ] crops. Every crop effects the soil eith- ! CT by communicating something to it ! poisonous to itself or by extracting 1 from it some element necessary to 1t. l Hence the need of rotation This need of change is more marked in the case i of flax which after four or five years
 on the same ground. ceases to produce 1 Nature rotates crops, said MT. Reed. | if given a chance He mentioned one | thing about forestry that is not gen i erally known. If pine firest is de- stroyed, the next crop of trees that make their appearance will not be pine i but poplar trees and when they grdW up and are destroyed they will be sue ceeded by birch trees. Then pines will follow.
 Mir Reeds description of the seed selection was most interesting. The seeds used on the farms of his com pany are all pedigreed seeds. The
 l;..t.~ I,rs manner: One goes through q wheat
 field and selects the best head of wheat
 he can find. The best grains are se- lected and planted and from the result ant crop. selections are made in like manner until d pedigreed wheat has
 been created
 In selecting corn only the best is
 taken and the best is determined by several things the size of the ears, the
 weight and earliness of maturity etc. one row of about thirty hills is planted
 with grains from each ear. These rows are planted in parallels and each
 is numbered At the end of the season account is taken of the crop of each
 row and from the best another selec-
 tion is made.
 . Wheat is the principal crop in that part of the country At first corn
 would not grow and it was by a sort
 of an accident that a seed was de veloped A man planted several kinds of corn in field together and out of that mixture came a dent which is adapted to tine climate and the soil. The company maintains an eXperi- mental and trial farm and also seed department and Of the seeds. the lit crature of the company says: We of fer you only such varieties as we are growing ourselves and know to be su- pcriOr. We do not ask you to buy un tried varieties of grain about which we weave wonderful tales as to pro- l ductiveness and ask you d price which will make you think it is truly wonder ful. Do not be deluded into thinking
 that you can buy a few bushels of such grain and get rich out of farming in a year or two"
 The company owns it's own elevators ! and has secured lines from the North ern Pacific and the Great Northern to- wards it's various tracts of land so that the farthest acreage is not more than five miles from a railway station Everything is done that can make ] the tenants and their families content 1 ed. And in this connection, Mir. Reed 1 said: "I will be selfish enough not to | tell them what I have seen il the Salt River valley and what I think of it" This great agricultural enterprise had i it's beginning in a financial misfortune | almost forty years ago. This land bee | longed to the Northern Pacific whose l bonds Jay Cooke & co. of Philadelphia | were trying to float. Among the pur- | chasers of the bonds was F.. w. Chaffee | the father law of Mir. Reed who was | then living in western Connecticut. MT 1 Reed though q native of New York was | also living there and had purchased | some of the bonds. When things went
 wrong with the bonds, Mir. Craffee
 went west for the purpose of taking | lands for his bonds and then selling it.
 But after he had looked over the sit | uation instead of selling he began buy ing more land and an organization was formed Its scale from the beginning
 was a large one. Gradually nearly all
 except the members of his family dropped out of it.
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