The prairie farmer’s two prime foes are frost and drought. To defeat frost, early-ripening varieties of wheat are necessary; for, if possible, the entire process from seeder to binder should be completed within 110 days. The evolution of Red Fife and later of Marquis wheat largely solved the frost problem, though it is still true, despite the issuance of much literature, that the nearer you approach the North Pole the chillier the nights are prone to be. There is no denying that over a considerable proportion of the treeless prairies the climate tends to scarcity rather than abundance of rain. Through the late eighties it was commonly said that while wheat might possibly be grown around Regina, the ultima thule of wheat farming was Moose Jaw, forty miles west. The Government’s maps of the pre-railroad era showed Battleford, the capital of the North West Territories, at the junction of the Battle and North Saskatchewan rivers, 300 miles north of the international boundary, as the northern apex of the great American desert. The flora of the country was of drought-resisting species, like that of the middle northwestern states. Conservation of moisture in cultivated soil was thought to be entirely a matter for unassisted Divine Providence. It was found to be good to let a third of the broken ground lie fallow each year--to give it a rest, and to clean it of weeds. The farmer saw last year’s stubble swiftly hidden by weeds in May and early June. Towards the end of June he plowed the weeds in, using a logging or other chain from his off-horse’s whippletree to the coulter, with a dragging loop to pull the long plants straight into the furrow, and entirely bury them. The heavier the green crop plowed in, the more, when rotted, it enriched the soil. But the heavier the weeds, the stronger their roots and the easier for the sun to dry out the loose covering soil. When the summer-fallow had been plowed, the farmer left it untouched. The sun thoroughly dried the land. Rains in the fall, and the melting snows of spring did the less soaking because of the more drying of the torrid summer time. Experience has changed all that, thanks mainly to the experiments of a wheat-grower below the line, who became famous as “Dry-Farming Campbell”. The wise farmer, with his gang plow, turning two or more furrows at a time, harrows as he plows, and makes a mulch of finely powdered soil, through which the sun cannot suck up the moisture as he did through unmulched soil. By frequent harrowing during the summer the mulch is kept efficient, and the moisture wonderfully conserved. Next year, if there is drought all around, the sower will confidently expect twenty bushels from each acre of his dry-farmed land.