374 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[October, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 106. 
Mr. decides has been to see me. He is almost 
as enthusiastic in regard to farming as our mu¬ 
tual friend John Johnston. It is a real pleasure 
to talk with such people. “ When j-ou get your 
south land drained,” he said, “you will have 
one of the finest farms in the State.” Thanks 
to the new drainage law, that will now soon be 
done. Nearly all opposition has ceased. Even 
the Deacon is now anxious to have the creek 
cleaned out and deepened and the low land 
drained. And Mr. Root has explained away 
his article, and says he had no intention of dis¬ 
couraging the drainage of swamps. He only 
thought it would not pay to underclrain them. 
He has a perfect right to his opinion in this 
respect. A farmer need not underdrain unless 
he likes. It hurts no one hut himself. But op¬ 
posing the opening or cleaning out of main 
ditches through swamps injures the whole 
neighborhood. One pig-headed farmer may 
completely block the etforts of a dozen enter¬ 
prising men whose land lies above him. It is 
to meet such cases that our new drainage law 
was passed. It does no one an injustice. Those 
benefited by the work have to pay in proportion 
to the benefit; if any are injured they can re¬ 
cover damages. In our case, one man claims 
that we shall do him a great damage by drain¬ 
ing five acres of his black-asli swamp. Another 
says that his land is non’’ so dry in summer that 
the pasture burns up, and he thinks when the 
ditch is deepened it will produce nothing at all 
in a dry season? 
Mr. Geddes was much interested in a tile- 
drain I am laying from five to six feet deep. 
The land on both sides is high and rolling, 
sloping down gradually to the drain. It has 
always been wet, and there was a shallow open 
ditch running through it. But while it carried 
off a large quantity of surface water in the 
spring and fall it did not dry the land. I have 
been gradually deepening this ditch, as I could 
get an outlet below. I also laid ten or a dozen 
lateral underdrains up into the higher land on 
each side. The ditch was a crooked one, and 
cut the field into a bad shape, and I finally de¬ 
termined to tile it and close it up. It has been 
a tough job. Many parts of the ditch were full 
of large stones that went down much deeper 
than I proposed to make the ditch. When 
these stones were got out we found water, and 
we cut the ditch deep enough to carry it off. 
To make a long story short, we found little or 
no water at four feet deep. The soil in some 
places was a tough clay. Underneath this we 
found, at the depth of five feet, a stratum of 
gravel, and the moment w T e struck it the water 
appeared. It was so full of little springs, that 
in a distance of eight or ten rods ave found water 
enough in July to form a stream that would fill 
a two-inch pipe—and that requires more water 
than many people imagine. There was so much 
water that the men had to dam it up while 
working below, and in two hours it would flow 
over a dam eighteen inches high. This, mark 
you, was during a severe drouth, with the sun 
shining so hot in the ditch that the men could 
barely stand the heat. We put in the tiles and 
covered up the ditch, and the water continued 
to run through the tiles for two weeks, or until 
about the last of July. 
The point that interested Mr. Geddes was 
this: At four feet deep we found no water, but 
when we got below the clay into the gravel we 
Struck the springs. He thinks, and I quite agree 
with him, that this one large, deep ditch will 
drain a great many acres of my farm, and do 
away with the necessity of laying so many 
lateral drains. 
It is not exactly the Elkington system, be¬ 
cause the drain itself is carried down below the 
clay into the porous and springy stratum. 
Elkiugton reached this stratum by digging a 
drain three or four feet deep, and then making 
holes with an augur down 'into the porous 
stratum—the water rising up through these 
holes into the drain. Elkington himself was 
wonderfully successful in draining extensive 
tracts of land in this way at a small expense, 
but since his day the system seems to have been 
pretty generally abandoned in favor of the 
“ gridiron ” plan of laying drains. So far as my 
farm is concerned, I do not think there is any 
necessity of laying down drains at regular dis¬ 
tances apart. If I can get rid of springs and 
accumulated surface water (or water flowing 
from the high land into the valleys), I think 
there will be little necessity for drains to carry 
off the water that falls on the land in the form 
of rain. Of course, there are a great many 
farms where this is not the case. But I can not 
help thinking that many writers make a mistake 
in advocating a fixed system of laying down 
drains “ two rods apart.” 
It was not a had system in England, when 
the landlord found the tiles, and when it was 
thought better to create work for farm laborers 
at 25 to 30 cents a day rather than to force them 
“on the parish.” But that day has passed, 
never I hope to return. In this country, at any 
rate, we can not afford to waste labor. IVe 
must exercise thought and good judgment in 
planning our drains. I have no sort of doubt 
that in England, and wherever the “gridiron” 
system of drainage is adopted, a pretty high 
percentage of the drains are useless. 
I said Mr. Geddes is an enthusiastic farmer. 
He has faith in good farming. 
“ If I was ten years younger,” lie said, “ I 
would go to Michigan and buy two thousand 
acres of good wheat land. I would hire men 
and clear it up, and make the necessary fences 
and improvements, just as I would build a rail¬ 
road or make a canal.” 
“But would it pay?” I asked. 
“ There can be no doubt about it,” he replied; 
and went into figures to show how he could 
make the interest on over one hundred dollars 
per acre. He would raise wheat and clover, 
and keep sheep. He thought land newly cleared, 
and with the stumps still standing, might be 
kept in grass and pastured with sheep, and pay 
the interest on one hundred dollars an acre. 
For my part, I always distrust estimates in 
regard to the profits of farming, especially 
where the work has to be performed by hired 
men, but I was nevertheless pleased to know 
that Mr. Geddes had such faith in the profits of 
wheat and wool growing. A man who has 
lived all his life on the farm where he was born 
has a right to speak on such a subject. I felt 
quite cheered by his visit, and encouraged to go 
ahead with my improvements. 
I spent last week in Canada. The winter- 
wheat was represented as a failure, but the 
spring-wheat, much of it (Aug. 15th) still in the 
field, is a capital crop. The straw was stiff and 
bright, and the heads well filled. With here and 
there an exception, I am not sure that the Cana¬ 
dians are any better farmers than we are. 
There, as here, many of the farms are evidently 
running down. The weeds are getting posses¬ 
sion of the land. The low price of produce 
and high wages are pleaded as an excuse for 
not employing the necessary labor to keep the 
crops clean. Turnips are much more exten¬ 
sively grown than with us. It is quite evident 
that there is nothing in the climate to prevent 
us from growing good root crops. One farmer 
who had a field of splendid mangels said the 
same land was in mangels last year, and would 
be put in mangels next year. He thought the 
crop, like onions, did better when grown j r ear 
after year on the same land. This year he used 
no other manure except salt, ashes, and plaster. 
He has great faith in salt as a manure. He says 
he can put enough on the laud to destroy the 
weeds without any injury to the mangels. He 
gets damaged salt for about $4 per ton, and 
uses it freely on wheat and barley. He thinks 
it a sure preventive of rust on spring-wheat, 
sown broadcast at the rate of from three to 
four hundred pounds per acre. 
Mr. Straub, of Hagerstown, Md., writes me 
that for the past two years the clover crop has 
proved almost a total failure, owing, he thinks, 
to the long-continued dry weather. “ Now you 
will see at once,” he says, “this leaves us in a 
bad shape for hay and pasture. For hay I shall 
rely largely on my%t and barley straw, which 
I find my stock quite fond of. I will also cut 
my corn-fodder with a horse-power and cutter, 
which makes it better suited for easy digestion, 
and the rejected portion passes into manure to 
better advantage.” This is an excellent plan. 
If either wheat, barley, or oat straw is bright, 
and has not been exposed to wet weather, it 
makes excellent fodder for sheep; but they 
should have some grain with it, say from half a 
pound to one pound for each sheep per day. If 
bran or fine middlings can be obtained at rea¬ 
sonable rates it makes excellent food for sheep, 
and also valuable manure. Two bushels of 
cut straw (say 14 lbs.), a peck of bran, and six 
quarts of corn-meal per day is an economical 
and nutritious food for a horse. The corn¬ 
stalks are best for cows, but I would give each 
cow two to three quarts of corn-meal per day 
with them. To use up our straw and corn-fodder 
to the best advantage we must feed more or less 
grain. On farms where straw is abundant, 
grain and straw together are a cheaper and 
better food than hay. 
“To meet the lack of clover,” Mr. S. contin¬ 
ues, “I will sow 20 acres of ground, now in 
corn, with rye, for the purpose of getting early 
pasture to carry the stock until my other grasses 
take its place; then let the rye grow until it is 
eighteen inches or two feet high, and then put a 
chain on the plow and turn the rye under for a 
wheat crop. What think you of the plan, and 
how does rye compare in value as a fertilizer 
with clover?” As a renovating crop, clover is 
far superior to rye. Rye is a good crop to grow 
for early pasture for sheep, but so far as my ob¬ 
servation extends its growth and consumption 
on the land add little or nothing to the fertility 
of the soil. I should as soon think of growing 
wheat to turn under as a manure for wheat as 
to grow rye for this purpose. Still, I may be 
mistaken. 
Mr. James M. Budd, of Cecil Co., Maryland, 
also writes me in regard to the failure of clover 
in that section. Such a drouth, lie says, has 
never been known there before. “ Wells all 
dry or deepened.” The same thing is true here. 
I have had to drill three of my wells down into 
