CHICKENS — DITCHES. 169 



good-sized, fair layers, and not inveterate setters. A cave 

 adjoins the hen-house for the chickens in cold weather ; it 

 has clean nests, the inside is whitewashed and there is glass in 

 the southwest to admit sunshine. 



To make my hens lay I feed plucks boiled and chopped 

 fine, together with a mixture of wheat shorts and boiled pota- 

 toes. Lime is air-slacked and put in boxes around the yard. 

 The water is kept in rusty iron kettles, and charcoal is sprinkled 

 around the house to disinfect it. Scraps of meat, hogs' heads, 

 and egg shells are put in the way of the fowls. 



DITCHES. 



To make a new open ditch, I employ a good surveyor at 

 the start. I direct him to run two or three lines, and then see 

 which will drain the most land, with the least ditching, as the 

 deeper the ditch the slower the water will run. I always make 

 an open ditch with plows and scrapers. I plow two furrows 

 on the off side, and scrape the dirt back at least fift}' feet, on 

 the side that needs filling up the most. I make the bank one 

 foot rise to four feet back. I do not have the bottom too wide, 

 eighteen to twenty-four inches will suffice, as when the ditch 

 is full, no matter how fast the top may be running, the watei- 

 on the bottom is nearly stationary. And another thing, a nar- 

 row bottom ditch is much easier to clean out than a wide one. 

 The banks must have a good slope, or else the musk-rats con- 

 stantly work and fill up the ditch. Again, a side ditch run- 

 ning into a main ought never to empty at a right angle, because 

 it will wash the opposite bank, and cause a bar to form below 

 its mouth. A scraped ditch will not cost one-half as much as 

 a ditch dug with spades. A good team will scrape out 

 from fifty to fifty-five square yards of dirt each day, and carry 

 it back fifty to seventy-five feet. I have in the ditch one extra 

 man, to load the scrapers, to every four teams. I do not hurry 

 them, but let every scraper come out as full of dirt as possible. 

 It will cost twenty-two dollars to make an open ditch half a 

 mile long, eight feet wide on the top, and two feet wide on the 

 level — deeper, of course, through the ridges. This is equiva- 



