96 Our Farming. 



scoop that pulls towards one. They dig a few feet and then take 

 scoop and clean it, and so on. One can not, particularly a new 

 hand at it, grade as perfectly as by doing my way and digging 



last cut about six inches wide. 

 I want to go along my drains 

 and trim the groove with scoop 

 until just right. But take your 

 choice. I have told you a 

 good way to do good work, 

 and do not, I beg of you, do 

 anything else. Do not put a 

 tile in until you know there 

 isn't a place too low and the 

 flow is quite uniform. If you 

 do much draining, the time 

 will come when you will thank 

 me for insisting on thorough 

 work, if you take my advice, 

 when you see drains put in 

 carelessly, failing. If you get 

 a spot dug too low, it is bad. 

 If on solid ground you can 

 tamp in clay or gravel to fill 

 it, but I would prefer to go 

 down below and scoop up till 

 I took it out, if possible. 

 Never lay tiles clear up as far 

 as you have dug, if you can 

 well avoid it, on this account. 

 You then have no fall to go 

 and come on. Once, when 

 digging through a deep bank, 

 and in rather soft bottom, in- 

 clining to quicksand, we got 

 a few feet of drain an inch too 

 low . Something must be done , 

 and that quickly, or we would 

 have a cave-in. I was laying 

 three-inch tiles, and almost 

 without the loss of a minute I 

 put in four-inch tiles, which 

 we happened to have near by, 

 in the low place. The inch 

 Tools Used in Draining. would fill with sediment and 



still leave room for a full three- 

 inch stream of water. This was about a dozen years ago, and 

 this drain runs full, often, so it is all right. When digging a 

 drain, if the subsoil is soft and inclined to mush up in water, 



