TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 207 



water would not sink away so rapidly in such sandy soil as to render irri- 

 gation in open ditches impracticable, by pouring water from pails into 

 small ditches and observing how far successive pailsful would flow, and 

 from the first we have been surprised to see how far water can be con- 

 ducted over the hot, dry sand. Then the more serious question came, of 

 how to raise the large quantity of water we would need to the height of 

 more than forty feet. 



Two general plans presented themselves. One was to use a large wind- 

 mill or several smaller ones, and store the water in a reservoir until 

 needed. The question whether the windmills would do their part gave 

 us no trouble. We knew they would, but the building of a reservoir on 

 that sand ridge, to hold such a quantity of water, was more than we cared 

 to undertake. To merely scoop it out of the sand and try to fill it would 

 be like pumping water into a sieve; and whether we could fix it by pud- 

 dling with clay or by cementing the bottom and sides so it would hold 

 water and withstand the action of frost, were questions which we could 

 not answer; and, having an abundant water supply, we decided to force 

 the water where we wanted to use it, as fast as needed, without storing 

 it. We therefore procured a ten-horsepower traction engine, such as is 

 commonly used with threshing-machines, a rotary or centrifugal pump 

 with a capacity of twenty barrels per minute, and 2,500 feet of four-inch 

 iron pipe, with the requisite elbows, tees, plugs, water-gates, etc. We 

 lay the pipe through the middle of the field to be irrigated, as nearly as 

 may be, following a ridge when convenient, placing tee-openings or water- 

 gates every few rods. Then we make small ditches or furrows with a 

 horse and single shovel-plow, along the rows of trees or crops. Then, 

 where the land slopes away from the pipe, we admit the water directly 

 from the pipe into these ditches, dividing it between several of them, as 

 the flow is too great to be confined in one ditch, and it usually requires 

 two men to manage the water in the ditches. They dig shallow basins 

 around the trees, varying in size with the size of the trees, in which the 

 water is allowed to stand until the ground around the roots is thoroughly 

 soaked. We were at first greatly puzzled to know how to get over or 

 around the slight ridges and ravines that actually exist in a field which 

 appears to the eye to be quite level. It was evident that it would be 

 impracticable to be continually moving the heavy iron pipe so as to reach 

 all of the little elevations, and to reach them by conducting the water in 

 main ditches, by banking up through the depressions, or by going around 

 them, required much time and labor and resulted in great loss of water; 

 but we finally hit upon a plan for making water run up hill, by using a 

 home-made hose of heavy ticking or of duck, making it an inch or more 

 larger than the iron pipe, so as to reduce the pressure of the water; and 

 this plan works admirably. We can carry the water across small ridges 

 and ravines with but little loss, and much more expeditiously than we 

 could in open ditches. We make the hose in lengths of forty or fifty 

 feet, and for couplings had galvanized-iron pipes made about eighteen 

 inches long, a little smaller than the hose, and with a few ridges run 

 around each end, like those around the ends of a length of stovepipe. 

 With a little practice two pieces of hose can be quickly connected by 

 inserting the ends of this pipe into the ends of the two pieces of hose and 

 tying them firmly with twine. The ridges around the pipe keep the hose 



