The Pioche Weekly Record

Marvels of Dakota Territory.

Twenty-seven miles north of Fargo is the world-renowned Grandin farm. It covers about 40,000 acres, embracing both railroad and Government land, and is close to the Red river. The farm is divided into four parts and has dwellings, granaries, blacksmith shop, elevators, etc., and has a stabling capacity for 200 horses and a granary capacity for 1,000,000 bushels. In addition to the wheat farm there is a stock farm of 20,000 acres.

During the seeding season they employ about 70 men, and in harvest time 200 men are busily employed. Seeding commences about the 9th of April and ends the 1st of May. The work is done very systematically, the machines following each other about the field four rods apart. Cutting commences about the 8th of August and ends the fore part of September: then comes threshing, which is done by eight steam-threshers.

After threshing, the stubble ground is plowed with gang plows that cut two furrows, drawn by three horses, and this work continues until it "freezes up," which is about the first of November.

The largest cultivated wheat farm in the world having been described, I will take the reader to Casselton, twenty miles west of Fargo, passing by hundreds of 60-acre farms, worked by the homesteader. It has something about 100 families, three hotels and several large stores, all of which do a large business.

In this vicinity may be seen some very large farms run on the same scale as the Grandin farm; they are the Alton, Cass, Cheney and Smith-Dodge. To describe these farms would be to repeat the description of the Grandin, only on a somewhat smaller scale. The surface of the land here is nearly level, and the soil is rich and black. The yield of one field of 2,315 acres, as given by elevator weight (57,285 bushels), shows an aggregate of twenty-five bushels to an acre.

-[Corr. New Haven Union.