106 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Afril 





IS IT BCONOMICAIi TO DRAIN? 



VR "Walks and 

 Talks" with the 

 farmers of New 

 Hampshire dur- 

 ing the late win- 

 ter, have devel- 

 oped the exist- 

 ence of a spirit 

 of inquiry ev- 

 erywhere, indi- 

 cating that there 

 is more interest 

 among farmers 

 in their vocation than 

 there has been at any 

 time during the last 

 ^^^^ twenty-five years. Trans- 

 ferring so much labor from human 

 hands to horses and machines has 

 afforded more opportunity for ob- 

 servation and thought, which in 

 many cases have led to more profitable results 

 in practice. 



In a conversation with Mr. Bexjamin Da- 

 vis, of Chester, N. H., he stated some modes 

 of operating in excavating for drains which 

 materially reduce the cost of the work, and 

 •which may be adopted by all. 



His farm is on one of those high swells 

 which are common in that region, and are 

 called granite soils; that is, soils made up, 

 as we suppose, mainly of three minerals, 

 quartz, feldspar and mica. But, as it is said 

 by geologists and chemists that some varie- 

 ties of granite contain lime and phosphates in 

 fair proportions, we presume these swells do, 

 for when not too wet they are fertile soils. 

 They are quite adhesive, too, for most of 

 them are underlaid by a stratum of clay, some 

 twelve to eighteen inches below the surface. 



Mr. D. commenced making ditches on some 

 of the highest portions of his land, which were 

 so soft as to make it slow and uncomfortable 

 for both men and teams. He first ploughed, 

 turning the furrows right and left as long as 

 the oxen could walk in the ditch. He then 

 made a yoke six feet long, which enabled the 

 oxen to walk one each side of the ditch, and 

 thus loosened the earth so that the woi'k pro- 

 ceeded twice as fast as when they broke it up 

 with pick and bar. 



After going down about three feet, the bot- 



tom of the ditch was brought to a regular 

 slope, stoned up on each side, and covered at 

 the top with stones, thus leaving a channel six 

 or eight inches square for the water to pass 

 through. The ditch was then filled to within 

 a foot of the surface with small stones and 

 covered with the soil which had been thrown 

 out. The bottom of the ditch was on the 

 smooth hard pan, and will probably form a 

 suilicient water-course for many years. No 

 seeding or fertilizing was done. He gave the 

 cold, standing water an opj)ortunity to run off, 

 and left Nature to pursue her own courses 

 afterwards. 



The results, he states, were surprising) and 

 exceedingly gratifying ; for where he had for- 

 merly cut less than a ton of hay, consisting 

 mainly of a variety of water grasses, with a 

 slight show of dwarfed timothy and redtop, 

 he gets nov7 from one and a half to two tons 

 per acre of the latter varieties. The water 

 grasses have disappeared. In another por- 

 tion of the town, on similar land, on the farm 

 of Mr. John West, the results of draining 

 alone, were equally favorable. He states that 

 in one year after the drainage was completed, 

 on land where the yield of grass was scarcely 

 worth harvesting, the crop of English grasses 

 was too heavy to be comfortably made into 

 hay on the ground where they grew ! 



Similar examples exist all over New Eng- 

 land, and still there are thousands of acres of 

 wet lands, — on the hills as well as in valleys, 

 — which bear only a meagre crop of poor 

 grass, which might be made, at little cost, to 

 yield a ton or more of the best quality of hay 

 per acre, annually. With cheaper modes of 

 digging the ditches, — as Mr. Davis' practice 

 suggests, — much more of this improvement 

 will undoubtedly take place hereafter. 



If farmers will make accurate ^comparisons 

 between the profit of getting twenty tons of 

 hay from twenty acres, and the same amount 

 of the same variety of hay from ten acres, 

 they will be much more likely to drain some 

 of their lands than they will without such 

 comparison. 



Taxes on twenty acres instead of ten, fenc- 

 ing, jiloughing and otherwise preparing, seed- 

 ing, cost of travel over twice as much land, 

 greater risk in drought, &c., are all to be 

 taken into account. In one case there might 

 be an abundantly compensatmg profit, — in the 



