Bonanza Farming

[Delmonico]

Wheat farming on a large scale scale on the great plains came about after the Civil War for several reasons, one of course was there was a market for cheap flour.  The second was with the coming of the railroads which allowed the cheap flour to be shipped to where the market was.  Another reason was the industrial revaluation was going full throttle, along with inventors having ideas for labor saving devices of all kinds, including but not limited to agriculture.  Another recent invention coming in from Central Europe was the roller mill method of grinding flour.  This had a lot of advantages over the older stone grinding methods, to most significant being as long as everything was working right, wheat could go in one end and flour could come out the other end, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if one desired.  Stone grinding required stops to move the product along the line.

The availability of cheap land also made this possible, we've seen how a person could get 480 acres from the government, but the railroads also had large amounts of land for sale cheap.  The railroads sent land agents all over Europe for buyers of their land, they brought in a lot of folks who were looking for farm land and had a hard time finding it in their home countries.  


One of the groups that contributed to this were the Volga Deutsch, often called Germans from Russia.   These were Mennonites who settled mostly on the Volga river in Central Russia in the 18th Century  during the rule of Catherine the Great.  She exempted them from service in the Russian Army.  Many moved to avoid mandatory service in Germany.  The railroads sent agents to Russia and many moved to the Great Plains, bring both improved dry land farming methods and improved strains of wheat.  Their story although interesting is beyond this thread, but the wheat they brought is not.

The wheat they brought was known as Turkey Red, this is a hard winter variety of wheat, meaning it is high in gluten and is planted in the late summer/ early fall and harvested in the late spring to early summer.  Improved strains dominate the country today.  Perhaps a thread on varieties of wheat flour needs to be done in Cosie's Corner in the future.

A lot of the larger of  these wheat farms were in the valley of The Red River of the North in North Dakota because  The Norther Pacific RR had a lot of suitable land for sale.  This was documented by  F. A.  Pazandka  and part of his collection is owned by the Institute for Regional Study at North Dakota University at Fargo.  Mr. Pazanka was a farmer as well as a photographer.  I have cleaned up several photographs from this collection and put together this piece on large or Bonanza Farming.  Similar farms were in South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska and Kansas.  

The pictures can be found here:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/ndfahtml/ngphome.html


The search on this collection will not bring them up by number, if you want to view them as they are, type traction engine into the search and find them on the gallery view.  

Before wheat can be planted, the ground has to be tilled,:




45 HP Minneapolis double tandem compound steamer pulling 14 14 -inch breakers on virgin psod, John Deere plow, Jack Anderson owner operator.  Taken N>W> of Fullerton ND.



Notice there are 3 men operating this rig, one running the plow, one fireman and a driver.  I've shown this picture to several farmers I know and they say few if any modern tractors could pull a plow that size in virgin praire, although with smaller plows they could plow a lot more acres in less time.

The steam traction engines started coming into more common use in the 1880's.  

Around 1900 another type traction engine started coming into use.  These used internal combustion engines and burned either kerosine or gasoline.  

The Big 4 tractor pictured here was the first US internal combustion tractor with more than 4 cylinders.



Fall of 1910, hand levered 10-bottom plow, mfg. By J.I. Case Plow Works  Racine, Wis.  F.A. Pazandak on tractor.  Self-steering attachment, and before drive wheel extensions were added.










Rear view of Big 4 tractor pulling seven 6 foot disks hooked in tandem.  Cira 1910-1915.



Side view of Big 4 tractor seeding with three drills hitched in tandem followed by packers.  



Rear view of three drills seeding in a field pulled by Twin City "25" tractor.  Cira 1916-1921.

Shows a better view of the grain drills and a more advanced, easier to use packer.

The mechanical reaper was developed by several men in the 1830's although they still required the sheaf to be tied by hand, in 1872 the self -tying wire reaper was invented and in 1879 the self-tying twine reaper was invented.  The reaper made sheaf's of wheat that were stacked in shocks for threshing later.



Rear view of Twin City "25" tractor pulling three Deering binders. Men seated on each binder and two men holding grain bundles by tractor

Cira 1918



Pazandak Bros. Farm, Fullerton, N.D., photo by F.A. Pazandak. First area tractor harvesting, with Hansman Binder hitches using five 8 ft. Deering binders. One four horse binder, to cut remnants. Up to 13 transient shockers were used in heavy grain seasons. Twine and water wagon service was required. 30 H.P. Big 4 tractor, mgf by Gas Traction Co., Minneapolis, Minn.  Cira 1910-1915.



Drawing of a Deering binder/reaper.

The shocks of wheat were allowed to dry for a few days and were loaded up on wagons and hauled to a central point where a threshing machine was belted to either a steam engine or an internal combustion engine.  The grain was separated from the straw and chaff in this operation.  



Anders Hultstrand's threshing rig, Fairdale North Dakota.   Cira 1909.



Steam engine being watered from a tank wagon.



A group of fifteen men and one woman, sitting in the field eating lunch. In the background is a thresher, a Minneapolis steam engine, two hay racks, and a straw pile. Likely taken in North Dakota.  Before 1910.



Six grain wagons behind a Hart Parr internal combustion traction engine, cira 1911.



Tractor with man on it pulling grain wagons which appear loaded withgrain  Five wagons in view with last one partially in granary entry. Granary a large structure with drive through door in center. On the Pazandak farm near Fullerton, N.D.   Cira 1910-1915.

The large machinery required mechanics and repair shops.



Geiser steam engine with three men in front of back wheel around engine parts.  Before 1910.




Samuel Holland's repair shop, Park River North Dakota.  Before 1910.



1913-Repair shop on Pazandak Farm F. A. finishing rebabbited conecting rods of the Big 4 tractor,  because of the exposed valve lifters and dirt, the valve had to be reground after about 10 days of hard work.  Bore was 6" and stroke was 8" on this 4 cylinder engine.

One might notice if you took this:



And added this to the front:



you would have the beginnings of a modern combine harvester.

These were being developed and were on the market before WWI.  This film is cira 1938

it shows a horse drawn combine, a steam engine powered threshing machine and a combine powered by a tracked Catapiller tractor.  This was filmed in southeastern Washington and though a bit out of our period it is very interesting.  

The self propelled combine would come into it's own after WWII.

The drop in wheat prices and The Great Depression would do to this type of farming, what the bad winters of 1886 and 1887 would do to the ranching business.  Both would survive, but in a vastly changed form.

[JimBob]

Well Delmonico, we got an ice storm and a blizzard blowing in,looks like I'll have something new to study.Those early efforts to tame the prairie are fascinating.Everything seems to be of heroic size,from the landscapes stretching as far as the camera can see to those oversize pieces of machinery,huge even compared to todays equipment used to farm with.Those steam traction engines are endlessly fascinating,especially seeing  one in operation in person.LOL,so many thing-a-mobs and whatsits turning and whirring and those towers of smoke coming out the stack.It's also amazing how many of those company names you see on the machinery are still around in one form or another while others faded away or were taken over.I can remember a Deering binder sitting in the woods at Grandads when I was a small child,it's day past like the horses that had pulled it.

[Will Ketchum]

The neighbors near our cabin still hold a thresherie (Spl?) every year.  They use a steam thresher and people from miles around bring shocks to be threshed. They bring food and have a potluck lunch.  It's a great time. It happens right across from our cabin but I have been unable to attend for several years.

Will Ketchum

[Delmonico]

There are lots of those events around, some very small like the one you describe and some very large taking up acres andacres just to park the machinery.  There are a couple I attend from time to time.

[Delmonico]

I went to this forum my late Dad was a member on and found this schedule for 330 shows around the country:

http://www.ytmag.com/cgi-bin/showgd.cgi

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

I remember when I was short enough to sleep on the wicker covered seats of a passenger rail car drawn by a steam engine.  We travelled out to a farm in Saskatchewan.  I spent a lot of time watching one of those treshing machines at work.  I got to ride on the grain load when a team of horses took the grain to the local elevator in a high sided wagon.  I think it was the summer of '47?

Del said;  "The wheat they brought was known as Turkey Red, this is a hard winter variety of wheat, meaning it is high in gluten and is planted in the late summer/ early fall and harvested in the late spring to early summer.  Improved strains dominate the country today.  Perhaps a thread on varieties of wheat flour needs to be done in Cosie's Corner in the future.'

Here is the famous Canadian wheat with a similar provenance, RED FIFE;

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0010468

[Shotgun Franklin]

The invemtion of the self-cleaning plow made a big difference too.

[Delmonico]

The invemtion of the self-cleaning plow made a big difference too.

And that's all there is?

I would guess you are talking about US Patent #46,454 the self scouring cast steel plow invented by John Deere?  For some reason the original patent is missing on it.

[Hangtown Frye]

Cool stuff, thanks for posting those.  Over in the Fort Walla Walla Museum in Walla Walla Washington (next door to the ACME plant of course) they have (or at least had) a display of one of those big harvesters, complete with the team.  It's impressive as all get-out, seeing all of those fibreglass horses in full harness, and they have build the display so that you can go up in a mezzanine and get a "driver's eye" view of the whole operation.  It's very cool.

Cheers!

Gordon

[Delmonico]

Here are a few pictures taken in 2009 at The Camp Creek Threshers Show at Waverly near Lincoln:

[Delmonico]

Another set-up:

[GunClick Rick]

http://visaliahistory.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html


The old mill was about two miles east of me,i know some of them grind stones came all the way from fFrance and were very exspensive,there is a fellow here in Ca that still grinds flour like this.