THE IRBIGATION AGE. 



273 



a quick clearance of the water after being on long 

 enough is essential. But you will naturally leave this 

 discovery until after wasting a lot of time wondering 

 why your stuff doesn't grow better. 



Assuming that your levees hold and you have the 

 highest points covered and some crop started you may 

 be surprised to find plants doing best on the highest 

 parts. On the lowest parts they maj not even have 

 sprouted, being locked up tight under a blanket of 

 paste. And even on the highest places they may look 

 bad. It does not take you long to discover that the 

 deeper the water the worse the results. This is due to 

 some extent on most soils by the greater pressure tight- 

 ening the soil and also to handling the water in such 

 a way that it is muddy instead of clear, when the 

 deepest parts get the most mud. Later on you may 

 find that you have been wasting one-half or two-thirds 

 of the water, because if the highest parts got enough 

 to make a good growth of vegetation it is quite prob- 

 able that the lowest parts had too much. Prom which 

 you finally conclude that the whole should be graded 

 down to a more uniform surface. A very sage con- 

 clusion, but you have little conception of the distance 

 you are from the profitable part of its realization. 

 You are quite apt to think that you have a fine eye to 

 tell a level. But let me tell you that the longer a 

 surveyor uses a fine level the more certain he will be 

 to rely on the telescope and rod instead of his eye. 

 There is but one thing of which you may feel sure, 

 and that is that when you are looking toward high 

 mountains a level on the plains below will look down 

 hill and a ditch running out from a canon will seem 

 to run up hill. 



Belying on your eye you are quite sure to over- 

 look such little trifles as a swell of two or three inches 

 if it is broad enough. Or if you notice it you are quite 

 likely to say it will amount to nothing and that the 

 water will go over it anyhow. Still more certain you 

 are to do this if the swell happens to be at the upper 

 side where the water is delivered so that it will have 

 to go over it to get into the check at all. This latter 

 conclusion is all the worse because as long as the ground 

 is bare it may be correct or nearly so. But when covered 

 with a heavy stand of vegetation like grain or alfalfa 

 it may collect all floating leaves or rubbish on its upper 

 edge and throw the water off on the sides leaving a spot 

 too dry when the rest of the field has enough. And 

 in time this may become worse instead of better, the 

 water swinging farther away and wasting in the lower 

 places that would have enough without it. And this 

 you may not notice until the growth become too valu- 

 able to change. This may happen when you are well 

 aware of the necessity of perfect grading, for one is 

 often inveigled into the snare through haste or anxiety 

 to see something green. I have thirty acres of alfalfa 

 scratched in hastily to get green pasture for the horses 

 six years ago, although I knew better twenty years 

 before that. It is the bane of my existence now, taking 

 fully twice the water and work required by other tracts 

 properly graded, yet paying too heavily to plow up. 

 California is full of orchards in the same situation for 

 it is about equally bad under all methods of applying 

 water. You may be fortunate if right here you make 

 the worst sort of a failure. For in no other way can 

 most people be made to understand the supreme im- 



portance of proper grading. Those who have been 

 through the torment may talk and talk in vain. You 

 will insist that the ground looks all right and is all 

 right when nothing but the level, or leveling by water 

 itself can tell you whether it is or not. 



Proper grading is no serious matter if you only 

 realize its importance at the outset and determine to 

 allow nothing else. You do not have to make any 

 large area flat or anywhere near it. But in whatever 

 way you handle the water it should travel at a uniform 

 velocity whether the head of water be large or small 

 or whether it is to run a long time or a short time. 

 And this does not have to be on one face or plane so 

 as to shave off too much top soil. Even a small place 

 may be laid out on several planes so that it can be 

 evenly flooded, and, though in a certain sense this is 

 like terracing, it may be quite free from the expense of 

 terracing such as one commonly sees on hillside gardens. 



In a book of this size it is impossible to go far 

 into the subject of grading because it will vary so much 

 with the area to be graded, the quality of the soil, the 

 kind of vegetation on it and so many considerations. 

 On the Mojave Desert in California I sweep brush, 

 hillocks and everything with two large railroad bars 

 slightly curved so as to keep the cutting edges down. 

 One is set behind the other with strong chains and five 

 or six horses are put on each end. With that power 

 and two drivers I don't have to plow at all. Nor do 

 I have to plow in making the checks. I first set four 

 level stakes with the telescope and move the earth above 

 that level with a carrying scraper and four horses 

 abreast direct to the levees. The soil is so dry and 

 loose that this is very easily done. The work is finally 

 tested with water and then polished off with a grading 

 machine when dry. Plowing, when unnecessary, is a 

 nuisance because it increases so much the bulk of the 

 soil that it is harder to work to the grade stakes. 



But this would not do for many soils, while for 

 small areas it might not pay to have such an outfit. 

 A drag with a cutting and carrying edge is often better 

 than the railroad iron if brush is not too heavy. But 

 it should be so long and stiff that it will not climb 

 bumps and sink into depressions, but shave the bumps 

 and drop the shavings into the depressions. This 

 should often be forty feet long and loaded with sand 

 bags so as to take a dozen horses or more. No kind of 

 a gouging scraper such as the common "slip scraper" 

 will do good work, though on a small scale fair work 

 may be done with the "buck scraper" by an expert. 

 It may pay you at the start to have a good road grader, 

 while for small garden work you had better grade 

 with shovel and hoe than not at all. When you thor- 

 oughly realize its importance you will find a way to do 

 it according to the size and quality of your soil, the 

 value of your crop and the balance in bank. And be- 

 ware how you try to economize on it for every dollar 

 you save may cost you two or three without your know- 

 ing it. 



You can now buy a fair level for twenty dollars, 

 though you had better pay twice that. Its use is no 

 such great trick as is commonly imagined. Any boy or 

 girl of fifteen can soon learn to use it well enough 

 and so can any man, no matter how old, if he can add 

 and subtract two figures. No irrigated ranch should, 



