92 Our Farming. 



Perhaps you think this is not in accord with my practice of 

 special farming and becoming an expert in one or two lines. 

 Well, there can be no certain success without a head manager, 

 who, at least, knows that everything is done rightly. A little 

 carelessness in grading, or a poor tile put in, will eventually cause 

 trouble. Do you think ditchers are better than other men that 

 they do not need watching ? The best of workmen, most honest 

 and faithful, sometimes " don't think." There should be one man 

 on the farm whose business is to think. I assure you, as much 

 as you may despise ditching as a business, that if you will go at 

 it rightly and put in a single drain properly and watch it draw the 

 water off, you will forget all about your former views. By the time 

 you have been down to the drain two or three times in the rain to 

 see the water come out of your tiles, you will begin to be enthu- 

 siastic like the writer. Again, many farmers cannot afford to hire 

 draining done right out, or could not raise the money to pay for 

 it. They can get it done in this way at little outlay except for 

 tiles. I drained some of those waste places told of in the last 

 chapter, when I know some farmers as hard up as I were sitting 

 around the house, thinking it too bad weather to be out, " and 

 then there is nothing one can do now, any way." 



My own draining has all been done by hand. I have not used 

 any machine or the horses. It was done in a small way, little by 

 little, usually in bad weather, when it was so soft and wet that 

 team work would be unsatisfactory. For draining a large field at 

 once, some labor can be saved by plowdng in lands, so as to bring 

 dead furrows where one wants to put the drains. Then one can 

 plow again in the dead furrow and shovel out the loose earth. A 

 horse or team on each side of ditch, with a long evener and a chain 

 attached to plow, and a light plow, will readily loosen up the 

 earth to a depth of eighteen inches or so. Part of filling can also 

 be done with a plow. But, of course, in this way one must cut 

 a wider ditch than when doing all the work with a spade. 



The following is the way I have done all my work, which 

 has always been on sod ground, draining just before we broke up 

 for a crop. Beginning at the outlet a line was stretched where 

 drain was wanted. Then with an axe I cut the sod by side of 

 line. Next moved line over and cut the other side. For my own 

 digging I w 7 ould not, for thirty to thirty-six inches deep, cut more 

 than ten inches wide. Then move the line on up the drain and 

 cut more. For digging I use an English spade fourteen inches 

 long. Well handled, this will take out about a foot at a cut. It is 

 about six inches wide. When placing the spade down I never 

 put the blade square across the drain, but always diagonally, 

 first one way and then the other, with one edge out, or nearly so. 

 This leaves but one side of the spadeful to break off, the outside. 

 This is one of the hardest things I have ever tried to teach a new 

 man to do. But it is the way all experts dig. After forcing the 



