Across The Generations — First came the fur — then came the farms

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/10/2010 (5551 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A couple of columns back we looked at a bonanza farm in Canada.

The Bell Farm at Indian Head in Saskatchewan could not be described in any other way. At 53,000 acres in size and more than 100 buildings on those acres the Bell Farm was exactly that.

Bonanza is a word applied to almost any farm classification — whether it was 1,000 acres or 20,000 acres. But one of the best stories is this as found in "The Day of the Bonanza" by Hiram Drache.

"I was born at Casselton on 8th November in the year 1879. My father worked near Casselton for two or three years, back in the 70 s of the past century.

He worked for a man by the name of Dalrymple, and according to my father this man, Dalrymple, had the biggest farm that ever lay out of doors.

My father told me that this Dalrymple once set up stakes, for him to strike out a land of breaking, and he went along with four horses on a walking breaking plow, and plowed a furrow that was over 40 miles long, and so straight you could snap a chalk line in it from one end to the other without touching either side.

They headed in a northwesterly direction and plowed straight for two days.

When they stopped that night Dalrymple asked my father if he thought they had gone far enough and he replied, I hope you don t go any farther, or we may never get back. And this is how the town of Hope got its name, it being near there that they turned back at the end of the furrow."

By the year 1880, there were 82 farms located in the Red River Valley more than 1,000 acres and most of them contained four to six sections.

However, it would appear that by 1897, 7,000 acres was the average size of these large farms.

No matter how large they were it boggles the mind to think of servicing those farms with horse and plow.

It should be noted that even at that time the acreages could be far apart, even in different counties.

With humans and animals on many of these far apart farms, buildings were needed and often the number of buildings reached high numbers.

On the Downing farm near Mooreton in Richland County, 32 buildings were constructed including three large horse barns and an 80,000-bushel elevator.

Another farm which was not considered exceedingly large had three horse barns to house 170 working horses and 66 driving horses and a cattle barn for 75 milk and beef cattle as well as a 90-ton ice house containing a 6×8 foot meat cooler.

Another farm featured a separate dining hall and 10-room, two-storey dormitory, a butcher shop and a general store for the farm.

A second section of one of these farms had the following buildings: one-storey house (32×32 ft.), two-storey stable (56×60 ft.), two-story, 50,000-bushel granary (56×60 ft.) two-storey, 10,000-bushel wheat elevator (20×40 ft) a stable with capacity for 190 horses and storage space for more than 100,000 bushels of grain.

After the railroad arrived in 1892, the grain elevators were to be found not on the farm but at the side of the railway track.

In some areas sheep became one of the crops and sheep sheds appeared.

One farm constructed a shed measuring 32×100 ft. with a cattle barn 28×80 ft. which was one-storey high with a lean-to 14×80 ft.

It was necessary for those purchasing and running these huge farms to have excellent managers.

Most managers were appointed early on and were responsible for overseeing not only the running of the farms but the building of the necessary structures on the farms.

Budgets for purchase of materials became part of the manager’s lot and seeing to wages for the farm labourers as well as feeding and housing the men required a manager with a good knowledge of finance as well as the barter system.

Looking through the names of bonanza farm managers it was not unusual to see Scottish names.

The Scots had proved themselves with the Hudson s Bay Co. and so many American bonanza owners looked to Scotland to provide them with men to manage their huge farms in the West.

A very large investment had been made in the Red River Valley of the North.

The story of the investment in land, labour, machinery and buildings on the bonanzas tells us of the great magnitude of their operations. No less dramatic is the story of the great number of livestock, horses and mules, acreage involved and other characteristics that were peculiar to the bonanza.

The story of the bonanza farm has often been measured in dollars and cents but did not take into consideration the human contribution to the story.

There was great loneliness as well as great friendships made. Often there was tragedy as well as joy. The farms were small communities full of many different kinds of people speaking other languages with other customs.

Bonanza farms paved the way for the ethnic structure that prevails today in Western Canada and the U.S. — a credit to our ancestors.

Happy hunting!

» Beth Wall is a genealogist and history buff in the Brandon and Westman area.