Western Canada and its Great Resources
The Testimony of Settlers, farmer Delegates and high Authorities

APPENDIX. HON. W. D. PERLEY’S EXPERIENCE. Causes of Failure and Success in North-west Farming, Ihe Hon. Senator Perley, of Perley Farm, near Wolseley, Assiniboia, has been nearly eleven years in the North-west Territories, and has been farming for four years at his present place of residence. He is a practical farmer, and in the course of an interview with the editor of this pamphlet stated as follows :— I here is no use disguising the fact that a large number of persons who have gone into Manitoba and the North-west Territories, from other parts of the world, have made a failure of farming, but the causes have invariably been one of the following :— ‘ ‘1. The persons concerned never farmed before, and had no practical knowledge of the business ; or, “ 2. They may have farmed in Eastern Canada or elsewhere, but found the system of farming they had been accustomed to unsuited to the North-west, and they did not adapt themselves to the changes required by the altered condition of things in which they found themselves placed ; or, “ 3. Although practical farmers, and acquainted with the requirements for success- ful fanning in the orth-west, they acted upon theories of their own, devoting them- selves for example exclusively to the growing of Red Fyfe wheat, instead of going in for mixed farming. “ The greatest source of wealth in any country is its grasses, and in no country is that source so abundant and available for so long a period each year as in the Canadian North-west. When the snow is off the ground, or when, it is not too deep to be easily scraped away by the animals, the grass furnishes abundant and most nutritious food for all kinds of farm stock. Ihe true system to pursue is unquestionably mixed farming. A man who will start with the cow and the pig, and use ordinary intelligence in the care of these animals, cannot fail to succeed in making a good living for himself and family, and a balance at his banker’s. I say all this as the result of my own personal observation and experience. I have made a specialty of four lines, namely, butter, pork, beef and No. 1 hard wheat, and notwithstanding that many people in the same neighbourhood, and under exactly similar conditions, only succeeded in raising wheat which graded as No. 2 or No. 3, I have been able to produce No. 1 hard. I attribute this principally to the care I have always taken in the proper cultivation of the soil, and the preparation of my wheat land the year before. “The preparation of the soil of the seed'bed in the same spring in which the seed is to be sown may if circumstances are favourable produce a fair crop, but there is great risk in that case of damage from early frost or at best of a small yield. Still, if a man is engaged in mixed farming his wheat even in that case will pay him well, for he will be able to feed it to his pigs and convert it into a most useful and marketable article in the shape of good pork. Last season and the year before I sold my No. 1 hard wheat at 63 and 50 cents, respectively. I sold it at these prices because I found that I could buy lower class wheat in sufficient quantities to feed my pigs. Had I not been able to do this, it would have paid ine much better to feed my No. 1 wheat to the pigs, than to sell it at the prices mentioned. I sold my pork at 7 cents a pound, and thus actually realized $1 a bushel for the inferior wheat.