In its heyday, the Bell Farm served as a model of large-scale farming practices and as an indication of the West's potential. Operated by the Qu'Appelle Valley Farming Company, a vast farming enterprise founded in 1882, it was an attempt to realize the maximum yield per hectare through the most efficient combination of land, labour and money. Its almost ten square miles (twenty-six square kilometres) near Indian Head, Northwest Territories, were to be linked together by telephone so that manpower, machinery and animals could be moved to where they were most needed. It was an ambitious enterprise that did not meet expectations and eventually collapsed with some workers losing their wages in the process.
Here, in an illustration which appeared in the 1855 Dominion of Canada Guidebook for Settlers, twenty-three reapers and a number of stookers are engaged in the most gruelling manpower intensive aspect of the farming operation. The reapers probably drew monthly salaries as permanent employees of the farm trained in the proper operation and maintenance of the machinery. The stookers would have been paid by the day if they were migrant workers hired for the duration of the harvest. The man on the horse is likely a professional manager or one of the owners of the enterprise.
In contrast to the method of operation used by the Qu'Appelle Valley Farming Company, the average prairie farmer working a quarter section of 160 acres (64 hectares) performed himself as many of the farming operations as he could. Because they were expensive and often unreliable, he hired migrant farm workers only as a last resort. He managed the farm, operated and maintained his own reaper-binder, and stooked the sheaves. His family was the first source of help and, if more was needed, he hired neighbourhood men, preferably those he could repay with a favour. The use of outside labour for at least part of the year was unavoidable for most farmers, however, because the frantic races against the weather during seeding and harvesting had to be won at any cost.
