Tile Draining Swales, Cat Swamp, etc. 87 



bottom of barrel and can be removed with long handled shovel 

 from time to time. In case the barrel should get filled with mud, 

 no harm will be done drain. Mud will not run up hill in the 

 tiles more than a foot or so. Clean out the barrel, and away it 

 goes again all right. Frost has never done any harm, as the end 

 of tile is lower than ice will freeze. Water in top of barrel may 

 freeze and stop drain, but as soon as it thaws, away it goes again. 

 Pretty cheap thing, wasn't it? But it is perfect. Well, when I 

 let the water in I started for the outlet of drain some 80 rods 

 away and didn't get there much too soon, and I had the satis- 

 faction of seeing my neighbor's swamp drained, cheaply, so low 

 that the leakage would never harm us more. It took a two-inch 

 pipe some time to run the water down, but once down it kept it 

 so without the least trouble, and in case of an overflow at O, I 

 could shut off N for a few hours. My neighbor has since drained 

 his swamp south through my land, entirely at his own expense, 

 but the barrel stands there as a safeguard in case his drain should 

 ever stop up. The barrel device really used at that point N is 

 slightly different from the 'one pictured. I improved on it after- 

 wards and gave picture and description of latest and best. It is 

 working, however, and has been for many years, exactly as de- 

 scribed at D in Lot i (see plan of farm). Here I had just the same 

 problem to solve, only the swamp was on my own land, in middle 

 of horse pasture. I did not care to drain it could not very well, 

 any more than just take surface water into the tiles from a shallow, 

 open ditch. From D to E (in plan of farm) was a swale dividing 

 this lot really into two. For forty years men had plowed and 

 mowed and worked these pieces separately, unless it was a very 

 dry time, when they might plow through the swale, but they 

 never would get a crop there. Well, I had got to go straight 

 through , have long rows and less turning and take that water under 

 the field out of my way. I was awful poor, but could afford a 

 salt barrel and some three-inch tiles. Six-inch would not take 

 all the water at once that comes down here from many acres 

 around, together with what my side drains in Lot i brought in. 

 Probably an eight-inch would have been taxed. But where 

 there is a will there is a (cheap) way. Six or eight-inch pipes 

 were out of the question. It so happened that the swale at D 

 was only about a rod wide between banks, and banks several 

 feet high. I put in my barrel device right under the fence, and 

 then just to the west in Lot i built a dam of earth high enough 

 to hold back in the swamp above, on two or three acres, any 

 flood that might come, and hold it till it can get through the 

 three-inch drain. The overflow in pasture does no harm. It 

 would ruin a crop below. Now it goes under with entire safety. 

 I am master. That original salt barrel stands down in there to- 

 day, friends. It works automatically, year in and year out, and 

 perfectly. The land above is in grass. No. mud to speak of 



