GETTING IN THE CROPS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 258, 31 October 1928, Page 4

GETTING IN THE CROPS.

CANADA'S PHENOMENAL HARVEST

TIME THE ESSENCE,

Time is essentially the essence of the contract which faces the Canadian farmer in harvesting his grain. After the winter's snows have melted the 6eed is sown and in the long days of bright sunshine which feature the summer months the crop rapidly grows to maturity. But speedy though its growth, a touch of early winter in the shape of a severe hailstorm may completely ruin the grain just before harvest time. This explains the implied haste in the following news item supplied from Ottawa:—

"At the end of the first week in September wheat was pouring into elevators on _ _ the Letbbridge (Alberta) railway division of the Canadian Pacific Railway at the rate of one hundred thousand bushels daily, and the expectation was that this rate would be doubled in a week, and thereafter increased rapidly until the daily total exceeds half a million bushels. "Fifty per cent of the cutting had been completed and the grain was moving to the railways at an unprecedented rate. The reason for this is in the adoption of the modern combined reaper-thresher method of harvesting on a great many farms in this district this year. On the Lethbridge railway division it is reported that 551 of the combines are in operation. Last year in the whole of the province of Alberta the number was reported as 221. Swathers are also being used in large numbers, and are cutting at the rate of 25,000 acres daily, combines with pick-up attachments afterwards lifting the grain when dry and threshing it. Heavy yields are reported to be general and grades good, and with the new systems of harvesting the grain is rolling to market earlier than it ever has before."