64 Success with Small Fruits. 



(marked A on the map) is a small one, walled with stone on either side. 

 It answers my purpose, however, giving me as good strawberry land as I 

 could wish. On both sides of this open ditch, and at right angles with it, I 

 had the ground plowed up into beds 130 feet long by 21 wide. The 

 shallow depressions between these beds slope gently toward the ditch, and 

 thus, after every storm, the surface water, which formerly often covered 

 the entire area, is at once carried away. I think my simple, shallow, open 

 drain is better than tile in this instance. 



As may be seen from the map, my farm is peculiar in outline, and 

 resembles an extended city lot, being 2,550 feet long, and only 410 wide. 



The house, as shown by the engraving, stands on quite an ele- 

 vation, in the rear of which the land descends into another swale or 

 basin. The drainage of this presented a still more difficult problem. 

 Not only did the surface water run into it, but in moist seasons 

 the ground was full of springs. The serious feature of the case was that 

 there seemed to be no available outlet in any direction. Unlike the mellow, 

 sand)' loam in front of the house, the swale in the rear was of the stiffest 

 kind of clay just the soil to retain and be spoiled by water. During the 

 first year of our residence here, this region was sometimes a pond, some- 

 times a quagmire, while again, under the summer sun, it baked into 

 earthenware. It was a doubtful question whether this stubborn acre could 

 be subdued, and yet its heavy clay gave me just the diversity of soil I 

 needed. Throughout the high gravelly knoll on which the house stands, 

 the natural drainage is perfect, and a sagacious neighbor suggested that if 

 I cut a ditch across the clayey swale into the gravel of the knoll, the water 

 would find a natural outlet and disappear. 



The ditch was dug eight feet wide and five feet deep, for I decided to 

 utilize the surface of the drain as a road-bed. Passing out of the clay and 

 hard-pan, we came into the gravel, and it seemed porous enough to 

 carry off a fair-sized stream. I concluded that my difficult problem had 

 found a cheap and easy solution, and, to make assurance doubly sure, I 

 directed the men to dig a deep pit and fill it with stones. 



When they had gone about nine feet below the surface, I happened to 

 be standing on the brink of the excavation watching the work. A laborer 

 struck his pick into the gravel, when a stream gushed out which in its 

 sudden abundance suggested that which flowed in the wilderness at the 

 stroke of Moses's rod. The problem was now complicated anew. So far 

 from finding an outlet, I had dug a well which the men could scarcely bail 

 out fast enough to permit of its being stoned up. 



My neighbors remarked that my wide ditch reminded them of the Erie 



