by Merle Massie
What was even more shocking was that the practice of leaving land fallow (to allow it to rest every other year or every third year)—advice advocated vociferously in pamphlets, letters, public speeches, and newspaper articles—was heeded least in the area that needed it most: “At the southwestern extreme of the province most farms only began to use fallow as extensively as the rest of the prairies as a consequence of the post-war drought.”18 Russell’s work corroborates the charge found in much of the agricultural literature of the period, that wheat farmers were “miners.” Wheat mining was described by University of Toronto economist James Mavor in 1911 as follows:
The specialist wheat farmer finds that by cultivating his land to the fullest extent he may in many cases obtain so high a return as entirely to recoup the cost of his land [and implements] by the sale of two or three crops. Although the land is exhausted by this successive cropping, and its productive value seriously diminished, the farmer finds himself in possession of from 160 to 640 acres of land which have cost him almost nothing, in a country in which the price of land is rising rapidly. ... So long as it is possible for the farmer to make a considerable sum of money in a few years and then to sell the partially exhausted land at a good price, recommendations of summer fallowing have little practical effect.19
Wheat mining, as an economic and cultural practice, exhausted and pulverized some of the most delicate prairie land.
The Mixed-Farming Movement
Mixed farming was typically practised on small to medium-sized farm holdings in eastern North America, Britain, France, and eastern Europe. Mixed farming had many fans, so many that historian Paul Voisey likened its boosterism to a crusade.20 Agricultural scientists and newspapers, and various levels of government, consistently advocated a mixed-farming practice in contrast to a straight grain farm. The cliché, used time and again by mixed-farming promoters, was that farmers would do well to not “put all your eggs into one basket.” It is ironic that mixed-farm promoters used a mixed-farm metaphor—eggs—to refer to straight wheat farming. Diversity was the key to a successful farm. To withstand the volatility of environment and market, farmers would find a high degree of stability and resilience through mixed-farming practices.
In Ontario, the wheat staple dominated agriculture throughout the mid-nineteenth century, but by Confederation it had been largely replaced by mixed farming, emphasizing meat and dairy products in addition to wheat and other grains.21 It was, economist Marvin McInnis argued, an “interlude between two wheat staple periods,” because the rise of the western Canadian wheat economy after 1896 initiated another wheat boom.22 Mixed farming gained scientific credibility when it was taught at the Agricultural College at Guelph, which set important precedents. Vocal proponents of mixed farming in western Canada were fostered in Ontario during the mixed-farming push and came to prominence on the national stage: John G. Rutherford, the dominion livestock commissioner, and W.R. Motherwell, who became Saskatchewan’s minister of agriculture.23 Future farmers who either grew up or otherwise participated in the Ontario mixed-farming economy immigrated to the western interior of Canada. Many of these settlers, Voisey commented, agonized over the question of what kind of farm to create in the west. Settlers in the Vulcan area of Alberta, many of whom came from mixed-farming backgrounds in sub-humid environments either in Ontario or east of the 100th meridian in the United States, were “tormented” by self-doubt over wheat monoculture.24
Mixed-farming advocates developed a two-pronged approach to promote their ideas: farm economics and moral integrity. A mixed farm, it was believed, offered diversity and protection for farmers. If one crop or product should fail (for either environmental or market reasons), the farmer had other crops or products to tide the family through. Mixed farming was described primarily as a long-term investment. Year-over-year gains were smaller than those of wheat farms, it was usually admitted,25 but generally came out ahead over several years or a lifetime.26 Indeed, dominion scientist John Macoun noted the difference between wheat and bush farms in 1882. In his book Manitoba and the Great North-West, a series of illustrations graphically outlined the differences between bush farming and prairie farming. In the short term, the prairie looked like the quicker and easier path to a developed farm. Over the long term, however, the bush farm showed significant and comfortable prosperity. Overall, mixed farming was believed to hold appeal for farmers concerned about long-term resilience, stability, and risk management.
Figure 8. First year in the bush.
Source: Macoun, Manitoba and the Great Northwest, 48.
Figure 9. Fifteen years in the bush.
Source: Macoun, Manitoba and the Great North-West, 181.
Figure 10. Thirty years in the bush.
Macoun, Manitoba and the Great North-West, 211.
Advocates of mixed farming stressed environmental considerations. Soil depletion from continuous wheat monocropping was a serious concern. Mixed farming would add leguminous crops to the rotation to bolster soil nitrogen content. Manure from farm animals could be put back into the soil profile. Soil husbandry was an essential aspect of farm management, particularly intensive farm management over a long period of time. Farmers interested in developing a stable, resilient, and profitable farm could not afford to deplete their primary resource. In addition, animals found on a mixed farm could convert legumes, grasses, weeds, and frozen or otherwise poor crops to cash simply by eating them. A mixed farm offered a more balanced approach to a sufficient and reliable living.
Moral suasion was also an integral aspect of the mixed-farming literature. In Ontario, a prosperous mixed farmer enjoyed a prominent social status, with enough wealth to send his children for higher education.27 Social status derived not only from wealth but also from a mixed farmer’s interest in and knowledge of many aspects of agriculture. Expertise in everything from the causes of ear mites in sheep to the best feed to produce high-quality butterfat in dairy cattle enhanced a mixed farmer’s reputation for intelligence in local and regional circles. Another factor in promoting social status was independence. As Laura Ingalls Wilder explained in her semi-biographical book Farmer Boy (based on her husband’s experiences growing up on a mixed farm in New York State), a successful mixed farmer was beholden to no one else. Such a farmer “depends on himself, and the land and the weather. If you’re a farmer, you raise what you eat, you raise what you wear, and you keep warm with wood out of your own timber. You work hard, but you work as you please, and no man can tell you to go or come. You’ll be free and independent … on a farm.”28 Within the dry-farming ecology of the western Canadian interior, promoters suggested that mixed farmers added to their social stature as keepers of the soil. Crop rotation and soil fertility husbandry contrasted with the “wheat miners,” who mined, stripped, and otherwise abused the soil for short-term economic gains at the expense of long-term conservation practices.29 Mixed farming took the moral high ground of environmental stewardship, independence, intelligence, and long-term, stable wealth generation.
The idealism of the mixed-farming movement and its correlation to social status did not transplant successfully west of Ontario. Mixed farming in the western interior, despite its proponents and their persuasive arguments, did not sway everyone.30 S.D. Clark, in his 1931 investigation of Saskatchewan settlement, argued that mixed farming was “regarded with a feeling more or less of repugnance” due, in part, to the much heavier workload of a mixed farm. Clark suggested that “interminable chores, hard work during the whole twelve months of the year, [and] cleaning out stables” turned many farmers away from mixed farming to the easier load of wheat farming. In addition to less arduous work, wheat farming meant the possibility of immediate wealth generation, with “big returns, extensive operations, [and] the opportunity to play the role of farm manager with a certain amount of leisure,” Clark contended.31 Wealth was an important social characteristic, and a huge wheat crop, sold at a high price, could achieve that.
A wheat grower who obtained this golden ticket could spend his winters in leisure, perhaps in town, back east, in Europe, or in sunny California. There was nothing to hold him to the farm in the cold winter months, unlike the mixed farmer with stock to feed and look after every day.32 The life of a rich man at leisure conjured up images of a wealthy magnate, a patron of the arts and letters, a philanthropist, and possibly a politician. Clark went on to claim that a mixed farmer was looked upon with “general disfavour … by his more pretentious but frequently less substantial wheat growing brother.”33 Although advocates worked hard to present mixed farming as profitable, better for the soil, and more substantial in the long run, “wheat mining” continued to be a popular choice.
In some cases, the “pretentiousness” of the wheat farmer toward the mixed farmer was reflected in ethnic slurs. It was almost an axiom that certain settlers who had come en masse to the western interior of Canada from Germany, Ukraine, and Russia had a cultural preference for forested mixed farms.34 Saskatchewan provincial historian John Hawkes, writing in 1924, argued that immigrants from eastern Europe “would not settle on the open sections, preferring those which contained some wood and hay, although they had to contend with a good deal of scrub.”35 Cultural preference for farms away from the open plains filtered back through the division between the straight grain farmer and the mixed farmer. The “men in sheepskin coats,” smelling of garlic and pigs, were the mixed farmers; the grain farmers were clean, English-speaking men in suits organizing grain growers’ societies and taking prizes for wheat at agricultural fairs.
An intriguing gendered perception of the primacy of wheat farming over mixed farming was put forward by the monthly magazine Saskatchewan Farmer in 1911. The magazine, produced in Moose Jaw, actively advocated the mixed-farming ideal. Straight grain farming, it reported, retarded agricultural development. It made no sense, the editors claimed, for butter, canned milk, and other products to be shipped into western Canada or feed grain shipped out of it when a thriving mixed-farming community could use local feed to create milk, butter, eggs, bacon, and cheese to feed the burgeoning cities and general population. What stood in the way of creating more mixed farms was the unequal gender population. With over 90,000 more men than women, the article declared, bachelor farmers were skewing western agricultural development to favour wheat over mixed farms. Bachelors did not bother with cows or pigs or chickens. Saddled with animals, a bachelor mixed farmer would not be able to adapt and move to access seasonal off-farm job opportunities or take trips for business or leisure. The six-month wheat farm suited him best.36 The subtext of this contention, of course, was that women (and possibly children) were central to a successful mixed farm. The amount of work required on a mixed farm meant that it needed at least two people to manage the workload successfully.37
Despite reasoned and even impassioned advocacy of mixed farming, cereal crop monoculture and the wheat boom predominated on the open plains. Historian David Spector speculated that mixed farming did not achieve its celebrated potential on the plains for a variety of reasons. Wheat was a farmer’s “path to profit” since it required little outlay for equipment and only six months of labour (or slightly less) per year. The introduction of Red Fife and later Marquis wheat varieties (which matured much more quickly and could reliably be harvested at good quality) led to an expansion of wheat acreage. Animal husbandry of any sort required large cash investments at startup to purchase stock, build barns and silos, find an adequate water source, build fences, and invest land in non-cash forage crops for feed. The semi-arid landscape of the plains, devoid of trees and prone to droughts, placed an unusually complicated burden on farmers who might have wanted to diversify their holdings. Adequate water, either from a well to supply stock or as rain to raise fodder crops, was not reliable, and many farms had difficulty finding potable water. In a drought year, everything suffered: water quality and quantity for both humans and animals declined, and both commercial cash crops and hay/fodder crops burned from lack of moisture. The double whammy left both the farmer and the stock in a precarious position. Any land not put to commercial (wheat) production meant less cash in hand; a drought year, with no cash production and no hay or fodder, could bring devastation. Building a stock herd took time, money, and good fortune before there could be much expectation of return on investment. Finally, the homesteading system, geared to grain farming, did not consider land to be “improved” unless it was cultivated and growing crops. Special permission was necessary to obtain patent on land that was left as pasture or hay land for the purpose of stockraising, and often permission was not given.38 Many farmers on the plains, despite the advantages offered by mixed farming, either could not afford the original investment or make the switch down the road, even if that was the original intention.
The solution to the mixed-farming dilemma on the plains was location: those who wished to engage in so-called morally superior, environmentally responsible, and independent mixed farming were encouraged to locate their farms on lands suited to this endeavour. The mixed-farming ideal was specifically tied to landscape, a practical solution that meant building a successful farm on a piece of land that contained an ecological mix. Good soil would be used to grow cereal crops, and scrub land (such as marshy areas and forest glades) could be used for hay land, pasture, and fuel and lumber. Such a farm was described as efficient, for all land within the quarter section could be brought into productive commercial, domestic, or simply scenic use.39
A farm with such an ecological mix could be found or created. In a completely forested landscape, fields for cereal and rough grain crops could be cut, cleared, and grubbed—albeit only with a tremendous amount of work. The opposite—growing trees on the open plains—proved to be almost as difficult.40 Tipping the scales in favour of forest landscapes was their ability to usually provide an adequate water source. In the Prince Albert region, land south of the North Saskatchewan River was typically described as parkland or a natural ecological mix of open fields and bluffs of trees. North of the river, farmers could create mixed farms by opening fields via axe and fire.
Opening the North Prince Albert Region
James Isbister’s fledgling farming settlement on the fertile flats at what became known as Prince Albert alternatively thrived and languished in the decades between its founding and completion of the railway in 1890.41 The absence of a rail link limited the export potential of local farms, which—like the lumber industry—remained closely tied to the local market. The rail link south to access prairie and international markets, the acceleration of the local lumber industry, as well as the overland supply link to Montreal Lake and Lac La Ronge stimulated the local economy after 1890.42
In the 1890s, promotional pamphlets from the Prince Albert district were designed for a general British and Ontarian audience who had likely heard of the “valley of the Saskatchewan.” As early as 1872, the London Times began printing stories about the Saskatchewan country. Numerous writers, including Captain John Palliser, the Earl of Southesk, Henry Youle Hind, William Francis Butler, and other adventurers in the western interior of Canada, had written lengthy descriptions of the mighty Saskatchewan River and its environs, and their books were hugely popular. From 1882, when the four provisional districts of the North-West Territories were formed, to 1905, when the provincial boundaries were decided, Prince Albert was the seat of the District of Saskatchewan, with an identity built on the local landscape of the Saskatchewan River valley. The 1885 rebellion took the word Saskatchewan to the world. The events of that year were reported with breathless intrigue in newspapers and later books drawn from first-hand accounts. Novels depicting the North West Mounted Police and extolling the valley of the Saskatchewan delighted readers.43
Prince Albert boosters began promoting the region as a natural fit for mixed farming. The 1890 Lorne Agricultural Society pamphlet claimed that “there is no line, either of production or speculation, that ensures a satisfactory return equal to mix
ed farming when undertaken by practical men.” And mixed farming, the pamphlet was clear, would be most successful in the local mixed ecological landscape: “No country under the sun offers greater natural advantages for this independent occupation than the district of Prince Albert.”44 In that year, in addition to external migrants from Britain, Ontario, and the Red River region of Manitoba, the first internal migrants from the prairie began to trickle in. Families from the Estevan area abandoned their holdings to try their luck at Prince Albert.45 Completion of the railway link, while a major factor in the ensuing explosion of the Prince Albert lumber industry, also initiated an increased influx of both first-stop and inter-regional migrants for agricultural settlement.
Prince Albert’s agricultural development, despite the boosterism of the Lorne Agricultural Society and the promotion of mixed farming, enjoyed gradually increasing success but never exploded. Throughout the 1890s, local markets grew in response to the rise of the lumber industry, but in-migration was minimal until 1896–97, when three conditions merged to support extensive western migration. First, Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton initiated a massive advertising campaign designed to draw immigration into the western interior. Second, a worldwide recession/depression ended, allowing capital and people to move more freely. Third, the Yukon Gold Rush drew migrants from around the world overland through the western interior. Retailers in the fledgling urban centres turned their focus to outfitting gold seekers as well as homesteaders, hundreds of whom were passing through the west every day. Routes to the gold rush regions were advertised. Communities such as Prince Albert and Edmonton placed themselves firmly on the gold rush route.46 Boards of trade and territorial government officials were anxious to capture the interest of gold rushers, hoping that they would either stay or come back to build homesteads in the western interior.47 Many did.