Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 55, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 March 1912 — FLAX GROWING IS PROFITABLE [ARTICLE]

FLAX GROWING IS PROFITABLE

WESTERN CANADA FARMERB BECOMING RICH IN ITS PRODUCTION. So much has been written regarding the great amount of money made out of growing wheat In the prairie provinces of Manitoba. Saskatchewan and Alberta, Western Canada, that many other products of the farms are overlooked. These provinces will always groar large areas of wheat —both spring and wlnter-*-and the yields wffl continue to be large, and the general average greater than in any other portion of the continent. Twenty, thirty, forty, and as high as fifty bushels per acre of wheat to the acre —yields unuspal in other parts of the wheat growing portions of the continent — have attracted world-wide attention, but what of oats, which yield forty, fifty and as high as one hundred and ten bushels per acre and carry off the world’s prize, which, by the way, was also done by wheat raised in Saskatchewan during last November at the New Tork'Land Show. And then, there is the barley, with its big yields, and Its samples. Another money-maker, and a big one Is flax. The growing of flax Is extensively carried on in Western Canada. The writer has before him a circular issued by a prominent farmer at Saskatoon. The circular deals with the treatment of seed flax, the seeding and harvesting, and attributes yields of less than 20 bushels per acre, to later seeding, imperfect and illy-pre-pared seed. He sowed twenty-five pounds of seed per acre and had a yield of twenty-nine bushels per acre. This will probably dispose of at $2.50 per acre. Speaking of proper preparation of seed and cultivation of soil and opportune sowing, In the circular soken of there is cited the case of a r. White, living fourteen miles south of Rosetown, “who had fifteen acres of summer fallow a year ago last summer, upon which he produced thirty-three bushels to the acre, when many In tbe district harvested for want of crop. Now, there can be no proper reason advanced why Buch a crop should not have been produced on all the lands Of the same quality in the adjacent district, provided they had been worked and cared for In the same manner. This year (1911) the man had one hundred acres of summer fallow, had something over 3,800 bushels of wheat. He also had 1,800 bushels of oats and 800 bushels of flax.” There are the cattle, the horses, the" roots and the vegetable products of Western Canada farms, all of which individually and collectively deserve special mention, and they are treated of in the literature sent out on application by the Government agents.