56 TILE DRAINAGE. 



reclaiming nearly 65 acres, and fitting it for tillage and rota- 

 tion of crops, and bringing it up to a high and paying grade 

 of fertility. If I had sooner known the real value of super- 

 phosphates on my soil as plant-food (not mere stimulant, 

 " whisky"), and as a means of starting successful wheat and 

 clover growing and rotation if I had known this, I say, 

 fifteen years ago as well as I do now, I could certainly have 

 brought up the farm far more rapidly, and I think, too. With 

 much better net financial results. As it was, I at nrs.t 

 bought a good deal of manure from town, and, of course, 

 made and saved all I could, But that was greatly insuffi- 

 cient. A shrewd neighbor, Judge S. II. Thompson, once 

 said to me, " Of course, you raise good wheat. There's just 

 about enough stable manure in Hudson village for one clay 

 farm, and you buy all of that!" 



As to whether tile drainage followed by tillage has paid 

 oh my own farm, which is a fair sample of the noii-arable 

 clay farms of the Western Keserve, as to this question I have 

 not now a shadow of doubt. Twenty-six years ago I began 

 with sheep-farming. That did not give work for man and 

 team, and a team the farmer must have. But horses w r ill 

 soon "eat their own heads off" if not kept at steady and 

 profitable work. 



Then I tried dairying, and, as I did not want my wife to be 

 a dairy drudge. I sold the milk at the cheese-factory, and 

 finally to customers on a village milk-route. That paid bet- 

 terthe last quite well. But still there was not steady and 

 remunerative work for man and team when milking and de- 

 livery were over each day. Then I tried (as already stated) 

 plowing in narrow lands with deep dead-furrows for surface- 

 drainage ; but this drained off only the water on the surface 

 and near the surface, and frequent crop -failures, partial or 

 entire, followed, especially where I plowed more than I could 

 heavily manure; and clover was very uncertain, as it heaved 

 out badly with frost the first winter. This convinced me 

 that our clayey soils not tile- drained are not fitted for ex- 



