I didn't have many charts and stuff to post about Saskatchewan so I had to set out to find some. My apologies if some of the writing is too small to read. I know, it makes me crazy too.
Map of location in Canada and main highways and communities
Saskatchewan is roughly 500 to 1000 metres above sea level
Saskatchewan settlers initially tended to clump together by ethnic group
The Grand Trunk Pacific (later the CNR) by 1908 was providing competition to the CPR. The main line from Winnipeg to Edmonton, through Saskatoon was unique in that the designated stations were all named in alphabetical with some exceptions. Coblenz (Cavell from 1915) was my home town.
Regina temperatures and precipitation are typical for the province. Hot in summer, cold and dry in winter. Average provincial precipitation ranges from 350 to 450 mm, mostly in May through August which makes dryland farming of spring crops the best alternative.
Wheat was king until the early 2000s when Canola production increased sharply and gross revenue surpassed wheat. Barley production, mainly for feed, averaged 3 million t (between 2 and 4 million t)
Durum wheat is a major crop in Saskatchewan, suiting the dryer areas. The 30 year average for wheat not durum was 9.2 million t and for durum 3.9 million t. It gets shipped around the world and some makes its way back to our grocery stores as pasta where it says made in Italy.
I used this before showing the long term decline in wheat price in real dollars
Any time I can talk about cows, I will. The hump in the mid 2000s was a result of finding Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease(CJD) in Canadian cattle in 2003 and all exports instantly shut off. We eventually ate some and the borders reopened, so we are now down to around a million cows which is more or less the long term average for Saskatchewan
Some farms still have a few cows but economics drives increased herd size, mainly the cost of winter feed
Roughly 60% of farms reporting beef cows have 20% of the provincial cow herd, averaging 30 cows per farm. 40% of the farms reporting beef cows account for 80% of the provincial cow herd and average 188 cows per farm
I collect scraps of useless information. I used to Xerox it but now it is much easier and takes less space on a hard drive. Also easier to find IF I label and sort right. Here are some bits of Canadiana for your enjoyment. Totally random.
Not every Canadian uses every slang term but we all use some of them
Our population tends to be concentrated in the cities of Ontario and Quebec
Roads tend to be few and far between in most of Canada
Farming in western Canada occurs mainly in the Dark Grey to Brown soil zones, the shape of which corresponds to the road density in the photo above.
Declining Saskatchewan wheat prices in constant dollars drive farm expansion and mechanization which in turn drives the price down further in a never ending cycle.
It is all downhill from Thunder Bay to the Atlantic
I am ashamed to admit I have only been to a few of our National Parks. Decades ago, a friend and I talked about applying to be Wardens in one of the High Arctic Parks. Our wives said we could visit them in Montreal.
Sable Island is a 44 km long sandbar about 160 km east of Nova Scotia. This is a list of known wrecks since 1585. There are feral horses living on the island that were deliberately brought there a couple hundred years ago to raise for meat. They are now protected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sable_Island_horse
Most Canadians live south of the 49th parallel while Europeans are spread out over a wide range of latitude
Once the grain was in the hopper on the
combine, the question became what to do with it. On our farm in the early 50s
that was a problem. Dad had neither a truck nor an auger; he had two rubber
tired wagons of questionable vintage that held maybe 50 bu and 75 bu. They did
not have hoists so grain would have to be shoveled off into the bin, if you
look at old wooden grain bins, you will usually see a window near the top. That was to shovel the grain from the wagon
into the bin.
Some background is required here. At that time, Dad farmed
640 acres, of which 320 were deeded and cultivated, while 320 were rented. The
rented land had 80 cultivated acres. There was a total of 400 cultivated acres
of which 100 acres were summerfallow. Crop rotation was usually 100 acres
summerfallow wheat, 100 acres stubble wheat and 100 acres barley or oats grown
on stubble after the two wheat crops. Being generous that would mean 5,000 to 6,000
bushels of grain to harvest and store.
A bushel is a unit of volume. A bushel of wheat weighs 60
lbs, of barley 48 lbs and of oats 34 lbs. They all occupy the same space as in
an Imperial bushel is 0.78 cubic feet and an American bushel is 0.80 cubic
feet. A wooden grain bin 12’x14’x8’ would hold roughly 1,000 Imperial bushels.
It would need to be cross braced inside about 1/3 up with wire or rods to
prevent the pressure of the grain from forcing out the walls. I have no idea
what the farm had for storage in the very early 50s but I know several wooden rectangular
bins were added over a few years.
Typical rectangular wooden granaries, usually on wooden floors, sometimes with foundations other times just skids
The grain would be hauled to the local elevator
(Saskatchewan Wheat Pool) beginning in the fall and through out the winter and
following spring as quotas opened up and if there was room in the elevator. With
luck the bins would be empty in time to hold the harvest. Cleaning them for
fall meant sweeping out the bird droppings and any rotten grain that stayed in
the corners. I hated that job. We never heard of Hantavirus in those days. My
brother remembers cutting the ends out of tin cans and nailing them over mouse
holes in the walls and floors
A 15’ diameter round bin would also hold
about 1,000 bu with the advantage of not needing inside bracing, just strapping
around the outside. It was filled through a hole in the centre of the roof with
an auger. Round wooden bins painted red with black or green roofs were quite
popular by the end of the 60s and you still see them abandoned, out in the
middle of a field or rotting away in a row of round and rectangular bins. The
disadvantage was you had to buy them as most lacked the skill to build them
themselves. And had to have an auger long enough to reach.
Typical round wooden bins, usually with wooden floors set on skids
Back to the combine. The simplest solution was to clean off
a place and pile the grain on the ground, hauling it home after harvest. Usually,
he would make a circle with snow fence and line it with tarpaper to reduce the
amount of grain in contact with the ground. Dad borrowed a short auger from our
neighbour and filled the wagon, hooked the auger behind it, and drove it home
slowly. The auger went into the little window and he would shovel the grain to
the back of the wagon and then distribute it in the bin as required. Sometimes
he got tired of hauling the auger home and would just shovel off the load. Next
time he would take the auger.
In 1955, my Grandfather Johnson sold out and Dad bought his
49 Mercury 1 ton truck with a grain box and hoist. Life changed dramatically
and that truck was our go-to work horse for 15 years (until he bought the Ford
Louisville about 1971). About the same time as he bought the 1949 Mercury, he
bought a new Versatile 28’ 6” auger with a (very dependable) Wisconsin gas
engine. Grain handling became much easier. He had a hired man in the fall to
drive the truck until I was big enough. The hired man drove it on the road; I
had to drive it cross country which was simple as our land was all connected.
Three or four combine hopper dumps would fill the truck and
you hoped that Dad wouldn’t have to wait too long for it to get back. I checked
the hopper capacity of the new big combines 400 bu and up. No wonder farmers
buy semis to haul from the combine.
Dad purchased another 320 cultivated acres and 160 of native grass and later broke up the remaining 80 acres of grass on the one quarter and That gave him five quarters of cultivated land of which he summerfallowed one quarter each year. This all added to his need for grain storage.
This is pretty much how it stayed until the early 1970s. My
youngest brother filled in some details as I was long gone by then. Dad bought
a steel bin (3,000 bu?) in 1972 and put it on a concrete base. He bought
several after that but on wooden floors with skids under them. At the estate
sale in September 2002, the farm kept three bins including the one on concrete.
In 2013 my two brothers, two renters and “two other guys” set the two bins on
hopper bottoms as the wooden floors were starting to rot.
Setting the steel bin on the hopper bottom
Note the ability to insert a grain aerator fan into the
hopper. Depending on the situation grain aeration can be used dry it, keep it
from heating or bring the moisture level up to the legal maximum to market.
Dad
finishing his last harvest 2001. The yellow truck was to jumpstart the auger
engine. Dad only farmed the home quarter the last few years and rented the rest out. The other auger in
the picture was also Dad’s and was sold at the estate sale.
Temporary
storage belonging to one of the renters. The auger was purchased at the estate
sale. The family continues to own the land and rent it out
My first memory of harvest on our farm was possibly 1950
when I was coming 4 years old. Dad had the crop custom combined by a neighbour
who had a self-propelled combine. Dad was not happy with him because he went
too fast and threw too much grain out the back.
The next year Dad bought a new Massey Harris Clipper
combine, with a 6 foot cutter bar, a canvas table to feed the crop to the
cylinder, and a five foot cylinder. (For non-farm people – the cylinder turns
at high speed and rub bars on the cylinder beat the grain out of the heads by
running very close to the concave. Grain, chaff and straw exit the cylinder/concave
to the straw walkers, and sieves, where a fan and sieves separate the grain, weed
seeds and chaff, sending the grain to the hopper, and the chaff, weed seeds and
straw out the back).
The Clipper pull-type combine was manufactured from
1938 to 1958 and was one of the most popular pull-type combines that
Massey-Harris produced.
The Massey Clipper had one major fault in that it could
thresh a heavy stand but there was no way to adjust the fan speed and sieves to
prevent grain loss out the back unless you went slow. Dad pulled it with an
Oliver 77 which had a live PTO to drive the combine but had no inboard
hydraulics, so adjustments were by lever, manually. It had one other major fault
which I will get to later in the post.
Dad made a simple straw buncher which was pulled behind the
combine to catch the straw, chaff, and any grain for winter feed for the cows.
When the buncher would get full, Dad would manually lift it to clear the
contents.
I do not remember how long we used the Massy (it sat in the
yard for years as Dad was always “going to do something with it”. But sometime
before 1960, I think, he bought a John Deere 12A Clipper. Much the same rig as
the Massey but did a much better job of separating the grain from the chaff and
putting it in the hopper, instead of the straw buncher (which carried on with
the new machine). By this time, we had an Oliver 88 tractor with in-board
hydraulic so no more manual levers, except for the straw buncher.
By selling over 116,000 units
between 1939 and 1952, the John Deere 12A became the company’s most popular
PTO-driven model ever.
However, the John Deere Clipper came with its own headaches.
The canvass on the Massey could be tightened by straps and buckles. That wasn’t
fancy enough for John Deere. The canvass bolted together and was tightened or
loosened by adjusting the rollers on the combine. Except in hot weather the
canvass got slightly more slack than the adjustment could tighten. A slightly
slack canvass tends to stall and plug. A crowbar carried on the tractor was
useful in prying the canvass to get it moving again. There were many times when
both Dad and I (I was running the combine myself by then) were sorely tempted
to throw the crowbar into the machine and as Hamlet put it “and by opposing end
them”.
The pictures and videos show the combines straight cutting, i.e.
cutting standing crop straight into the combine. In Saskatchewan at the time, swathing
was the norm. Standing grain would be cut into a swath which lay on top of the
stubble to dry and to let the green spots mature. A pickup would be mounted on
the cutter bar and would pick up the swath and the canvas would feed it into
the cylinder.
The pickup on the Massey consisted of spring loaded teeth
that went round and round under the swath, feeding it onto the table. It also
picked up rocks, flipping them up onto the swath. The distance between the rub
bars and the concave was very small and needless to say, rocks were deleterious
to its health. Little rocks were sometimes caught in a tray in front of the
cylinder but something half the size of your fist would bring everything to a
grinding halt. Rub bars would be removed and straightened, sometimes the concave
needed to be removed and beaten back into shape. Any combine that used that type of pickup had
the same problem. There were several custom pickup builders in those days and
the one on the John Deere Clipper was vastly superior. I cannot recall the name
of it to save my life.
We were still using the John Deere Clipper when I left home
in 1965 to go to University. Dad eventually traded it to a First Nations farmer
from North Battleford area for a red and while cow with a heifer calf at foot.
Best deal he ever made. She was an awesome cow and by the time Dad sold the cattle,
she had several daughters and granddaughters in the herd.
If you are a JD history fan, this link will give you all the
diagrams, and instructions for the 12A:
