admirable, effective irrigation of the great plain of Lombardy, before I
could call any land my own. I saw there a region perhaps thirty miles
wide by one hundred and fifty along the east bank of the Po, rising very
gently thence to the foot of the Austrian Alps, which Providence seems
to have specially adapted to be improved by irrigation. The torrents of
melted snow which in Spring leap and foam adown the southern face of the
Alps, bringing with them the finer particles of soil, are suddenly
arrested and form lakes (Garda, Maggiore, Como, etc.) just as they
emerge upon the plain. These lakes, slowly rising, often overflow their
banks, with those of the small rivers that bear their waters westward to
the Po; and this overflow was a natural source of abiding fertility. To
dam these outlets, and thus control their currents, was a very simple
and obvious device of long ago, and was probably begun by a very few
individuals (if by more than one), whose success incited emulation,
until the present extensive and costly system of irrigating dams and
canals was gradually developed. When I traversed Lombardy in July, 1851,
the beds of streams naturally as large as the Pemigewasset, Battenkill,
Canada Creek, or Humboldt, were utterly dry; the water which would
naturally have flowed therein being wholly transferred to an irrigating
canal (or to canals) often two or three miles distant. The reservoirs
thus created were filled in Spring, when the streams were fullest and
their water richest, and gradually drawn upon throughout the later
growing season to cover the carefully leveled and graded fields on
either side to the depth of an inch or two at a time. If any failed to
be soon absorbed by the soil, it was drawn off as here superfluous, and
added to the current employed to moisten and fertilize the field next
below it; and so field after field was refreshed and enriched, to the
husbandman's satisfaction and profit. It may be that the rich glades of
English Lancashire bear heavier average crops; but those of Lombardy are
rarely excelled on the globe.
Why should not our Atlantic slope have its Lombardy? Utah, Nevada, and
California, exhibit raw, crude suggestions of such a system; but why
should the irrigation of the New World be confined to regions where it
is indispensable, when that of the Old is not? I know no good reason
whatever for leaving an American field unirrigated where water to flow
it at will can be had at a moderate cost.
When I first bought land (in 1853) I fully purposed to provide for
irrigating my nearly level acres at will, and I constructed two dams
across my upland stream with that view; but they were so badly planned
that they went off in the flood caused by a tremendous rain the next
Spring; and, though I rebuilt one of them, I submitted to a
miscalculation which provided for taking the water, by means of a
syphon, out of the pond at the top and over the bank that rose fifteen
or twenty feet above the surface of the water. Of course, air would work
into the pipe after it had carried a stream unexceptionably for two or
three days, and then the water would run no longer. Had I taken it from
the bottom of the pond through my dam, it would have run forever, (or so
long as there was water covering its inlet in the pond;) but bad
engineering flung me; and I have never since had the heart (or the
means) to revise and correct its errors.
My next attempt was on a much humbler scale, and I engineered it myself.
Toward the north end of my farm, the hill-side which rises east of my
lowland is broken by a swale or terrace, which gives me three or four
acres of tolerably level upland, along the upper edge of which five or
six springs, which never wholly fail, burst from the rocks above and
unite to form a petty runnel, which dries up in very hot or dry weather,
but which usually preserved a tiny stream to be lost in the swamp below.
North of the gully cut down the lower hill-side by this streamlet, the
hill-side of some three acres is quite steep, still partially wooded,
and wholly devoted to pasturage. Making a petty dam across this runnel
at the top of the lower acclivity, I turned the stream aside, so that it
should henceforth run along the crest of this lower hill, falling off
gradually so as to secure a free current, and losing its contents at
intervals through variable depressions in its lower bank. Dam and
artificial water-course together cost me $90, which was about twice what
it should have been. That rude and petty contrivance has now been ten
years in operation, and may have cost $5 per annum for oversight and
repairs. Its effect has been to double the grass grown on the two acres
it constantly irrigates, for which I paid $280, or more than thrice the
cost of my irrigation. But more: my hill-side, while it was well
grassed in Spring, always gave out directly after the first dry, or hot
week; so that, when I most needed feed, it afforded none; its herbage
being parched up and dead, and thus remaining till refreshed by generous
rains. I judge, therefore, that my irrigation has _more_ than doubled
the product of those two acres, and that these are likely to lose
nothing in yield or value so long as that petty irrigating ditch shall
be maintained.
I know this is small business. But suppose each of the hundred thousand
New-England farms, whereof five to ten acres might be thus irrigated at
a cost not exceeding $100 per farm, had been similarly prepared to flow
those acres last Spring and early Summer, with an average increase
therefrom of barely one tun of Hay (or its equivalent in pasturage) per
acre. The 500,000 tuns of Hay thus realized would have saved 200,000
head of cattle from being sent to the butcher while too thin for good
beef, while every one of them was required for further use, and will
have to be replaced at a heavy cost. Shall not these things be
considered? Shall not all who can do so at moderate cost resolve to test
on their own farms the advantages and benefits that may be secured by
Irrigation?
XIII.
THE POSSIBILITIES OF IRRIGATION.
I have given an account of my poor, little experiment in Irrigation,
because it is one which almost every farmer can imitate and improve
upon, however narrow his domain and slender his fortune. I presume there
are Half a Million homesteads in the United States which have natural
facilities for Irrigation at least equal to mine; many of them far
greater. Along either slope of the Alleghenies, throughout a district at
least a thousand miles long by three hundred wide, nearly every farm
might be at least partially irrigated by means of a dam costing from
twenty-five to one hundred dollars; so might at least half the farms in
New-England and our own State. On the prairies, the plans must be
different, and the expense probably greater, but the results obtained
would bounteously reward the outlay. I shall not see the day, but there
are those now living who _will_ see it, when Artesian wells will be dug
at points where many acres may be flowed from a gentle swell in the
midst of a vast plain, or at the head of a fertile valley, expressly, or
at least mainly, that its waters may be led across that plain, adown
that valley, in irrigating streams and ditches, until they have been
wholly drank up by the soil. I have seen single wells in California that
might be made to irrigate sufficiently hundreds of acres, by the aid of
a reservoir into which their waters could be discharged when the soil
did not require them, and there retained until the thirsty earth
demanded them.
An old and successful farmer in my neighborhood affirms that Water is
the cheapest and best fertilizer ever applied to the soil. If this were
understood to mean that no other is needed or can be profitably applied,
it would be erroneous. Still, I think it clearly true that the annual
product of most farms can be increased, and the danger of failure
averted, more cheaply by the skillful application of water than by that
of any other fertilizer whatever, Plaster (Gypsum) possibly excepted.
I took a run through Virginia last Summer, not far from the 1st of
August. That State was then suffering intensely from drouth, as she
continued to do for some weeks thereafter. I am quite sure that I saw on
her thirsty plains and hillsides not less than three hundred thousand
acres planted with Indian Corn, whereof the average product could not
exceed ten bushels per acre, while most of it would fall far below that
yield, and there were thousands of acres that would not produce one
sound ear! Every one deplored the failure, correctly attributing it to
the prevailing drouth. And yet, I passed hundreds if not thousands of
places where a very moderate outlay would have sufficed to dam a stream
or brooklet issuing from between two spurs of the Blue Ridge, or the
Alleghenies, so that a refreshing current of the copious and fertilizing
floods of Winter and Spring, warmed by the fervid suns of June and July,
could have been led over broad fields lying below, so as to vanquish
drouth and insure generous harvests. Nay; I feel confident that I could
in many places have constructed rude works in a week, after that drouth
began to be felt, that would have saved and made the Corn on at least a
portion of the planted acres through which the now shrunken brooks
danced and laughed idly down to the larger streams in the wider and
equally thirsty valleys. Of course, I know that this would have been
imperfect irrigation--a mere stop-gap--that the cold spring-water of a
parched Summer cannot fertilize as the hill-wash of Winter and Spring,
if thriftily garnered and warmed through and through for sultry weeks,
would do; yet I believe that very many farmers might, even then, have
secured partial crops by such irrigation as was still possible, had
they, even at the eleventh hour, done their best to retrieve the errors
of the past.
For the present, I would only counsel every farmer to give his land a
careful scrutiny with a view to irrigation in the future. No one is
obliged to do any faster than his means will justify; and yet it may be
well to have a clear comprehension of all that may ultimately be done to
profit, even though much of it must long remain unattempted. In many
cases, a stream may be dammed for the power which it will afford for two
or three months of each year, if it shall appear that this use is quite
consistent with its employment to irrigation, when the former alone
would not justify the requisite outlay. It is by thus making one expense
subserve two quite independent but not inconsistent purposes that
success is attained in other pursuits; and so it may be in farming.
As yet, each farmer must study his own resources with intent to make the
most of them. If a manageable stream crosses or issues from his land, he
must measure its fall thereon, study the lay of the land, and determine
whether he can or cannot, at a tolerable cost, make that stream
available in the irrigation of at least a portion of his growing crops
when they shall need water and the skies decline to supply it. On many,
I think on most, farms situated among hills, or upon the slopes of
mountains, something may be done in this way--done at once, and with
immediate profit. But this is rudimentary, partial, fragmentary, when
compared with the irrigation which yet shall be. I am confident that
there are points on the Carson, the Humboldt, the Weber, the South
Platte, the Cache-le-Poudre, and many less noted streams which thrid the
central plateau of our continent, where an expenditure of $10,000 to
$50,000 may be judiciously made in a dam, locks and canals, for the
purposes of irrigation and milling combined, with a moral certainty of
realizing fifty per cent. annually on the outlay, with a steady
increase in the value of the property. If my eye did not deceive me,
there is one point on the Carson where a dam that need not cost $50,000
would irrigate one hundred square miles of rich plain which, when I saw
it eleven years ago, grew nought but the worthless shrubs of the desert,
simply because nothing else could endure the intense, abiding drouth of
each Nevada Summer. Such palpable invitations to thrift cannot remain
forever unimproved.
In regions like this, where Summer rains are the rule rather than the
exception, the need of irrigation is not so palpable, since we do or may
secure decent average crops in its absence. Yet there is no farm in our
country that would not yield considerably more grain and more grass,
more fruit and more vegetables, if its owner had water at command which
he could apply at pleasure and to any extent he should deem requisite.
Most men, thus empowered, would at first irrigate too often and too
copiously; but experience would soon temper their zeal, and teach them
"The precious art of Not too much;"
and they would thenceforth be careful to give their soil drink yet, not
drown it.
* * * * *
Whoever lives beyond the close of this century, and shall then traverse
our prairie States, will see them whitened at intervals by the broad
sails of windmills erected over wells, whence every gale or breeze will
be employed in pumping water into the ponds or reservoirs so located
that water may be drawn therefrom at will and diffused in gentle
streamlets over the surrounding fields to invigorate and impel their
growing crops. And, when all has been done that this paper faintly
foreshadows, our people will have barely indicated, not by any means
exhausted, the beneficent possibilities of irrigation.
The difficulty is in making a beginning. Too many farmers would fain
conceal a poverty of thought behind an affectation of dislike or
contempt for novelties. "Humbug!" is their stereotyped comment on every
suggestion that they might wisely and profitably do something otherwise
than as their grandfathers did. They assume that those respected
ancestors did very well without Irrigation; wherefore, it cannot now be
essential. But the circumstances have materially changed. The
disappearance of the dense, high woods that formerly almost or quite
surrounded each farm has given a sweep to the heated, parching winds of
Summer, to which our ancestors were strangers. Our springs, our streams,
do not hold out as they once did. Our Summer drouths are longer and
fiercer. Even though our grandfathers did not, we _do_ need and may
profit by Irrigation.
XIV.
PLOWING--DEEP OR SHALLOW.
Rules absolutely without exception are rare; and they who imagine that I
insist on plowing all lands deeply are wrong for I hold that much land
should never be plowed at all. In fact, I have seen in my life nearly as
large an area that ought not as I have that ought to be plowed, by which
I mean that half the land I have seen may serve mankind better if
devoted to timber than if subjected to tillage. I personally know
farmers who would thrive far better if they tilled but half the area
they do, bestowing on this all the labor and fertilizers they spread
over the whole, even though they threw the residue into common and left
it there. I judge that a majority of our farmers could increase the
recompense of their toil by cultivating fewer acres than they now do.
Nor do I deny that there are soils which it is not advisable to plow
deeply. Prof. Mapes told me he had seen a tract in West Jersey whereof
the soil was but eight inches deep, resting on a stratum of copperas
(sulphate of iron,) which, being upturned by the plow and mingled with
the soil, poisoned the crops planted thereon. And I saw, last Summer,
on the intervale of New River, in the western part of Old Virginia, many
acres of Corn which were thrifty and luxuriant in spite of shallow
plowing and intense drouth, because the rich, black loam which had there
been deposited by semi-annual inundations, until its depth ranged from
two to twenty feet, was so inviting and permeable that the corn-roots
ran _below_ the bottom of the furrow about as readily as above that
line. I do not doubt that there are many millions of acres of such land
that would produce tolerably, and sometimes bounteously, though simply
scratched over by a brush harrow and never plowed at all. In the infancy
of our race, when there were few mouths to fill and when farming
implements were very rude and ineffective, cultivation was all but
confined to these facile strips and patches, so that the utility, the
need, of deep tillage was not apparent. And yet, we know the crops often
failed utterly in those days, plunging whole nations into the miseries
of famine.
The primitive plow was a forked stick or tree-top, whereof one prong
formed the coulter, the other and longer the beam; and he who first
sharpened the coulter-prong with a stone hatchet was the Whitney or
McCormick of his day. The plow in common use to-day in Spain or Turkey
is an improvement on this, for it has an iron point; still, it is a
miserable tool. When, at five years old, I first rode the horse which
drew my father's plow in furrowing for or cultivating his corn, it had
an iron coulter and an iron share; but it was mainly composed of wood.
In the hard, rocky soil of New-Hampshire, as full of bowlders and
pebbles as a Christmas pudding is of plums, plowing with such an
implement was a sorry business at best. My father hitched eight oxen and
a horse to his plow when he broke up pebbly green-sward, and found an
acre of it a very long day's work. I hardly need add that subsoiling was
out of the question, and that six inches was the average depth of his
furrow.
I judge that the best Steel Plows now in use do twice the execution that
his did with a like expenditure of power--that we can, with equal power,
plow twelve inches as easily and rapidly as he plowed six. Ought we to
do it? Will it pay?
I first farmed for myself in 1845 on a plat of eight acres, in what was
then the open country skirting the East River nearly abreast the lower
point of Blackwell's Island, near Fiftieth-st., on a little indentation
of the shore known as Turtle Bay. None of the Avenues east of Third was
then opened above Thirtieth-st.; and the neighborhood, though now
perforated by streets and covered with houses, was as rural and secluded
as heart could wish. One fine Spring morning, a neighbor called and
offered to plow for $5 my acre of tillage not cut up by rows of box and
other shrubs; and I told him to go ahead. I came home next evening, just
as he was finishing the job, which I contemplated most ruefully. His
plow was a pocket edition; his team a single horse; his furrows at most
five inches deep. I paid him, but told him plainly that I would have
preferred to give the money for nothing. He insisted that he had plowed
for me as he plowed for others all around me. "I will tell you," I
rejoined, "exactly how this will work. Throughout the Spring and early
Summer, we shall have frequent rains and moderate heat: thus far, my
crops will do well. But then will come hot weeks, with little or no
rain; and they will dry up this shallow soil and every thing planted
thereon."
The result signally justified my prediction. We had frequent rains and
cloudy, mild weather, till the 1st of July, when the clouds vanished,
the sun came out intensely hot, and we had scarcely a sprinkle till the
1st of September, by which time my Corn and Potatoes had about given up
the ghost. Like the seed which fell on stony ground in the Parable of
the Sower, that which I had planted had withered away "because there was
no root;" and my prospect for a harvest was utterly blighted, where,
with twelve inches of loose, fertile, well pulverized earth at their
roots, my crops would have been at least respectable. When I became once
more a farmer in a small way on my present place, I had not forgotten
the lesson, and I tried to have plowed deeply and thoroughly so much
land as I had plowed at all. My first Summer here (1853) was a very dry
one, and crops failed in consequence around me and all over the country;
yet mine were at least fair; and I was largely indebted for them to
relatively deep plowing. I have since suffered from frost (on my low
land), from the rotting of seed in the ground, from the ravages of
insects, etc.; but never by drouth; and I am entirely confident that
Deep Plowing has done me excellent service. My only trouble has been to
get it done; for there are apt to be reasons?--(haste, lateness in the
season, etc.)--for plowing shallowly for "just this time," with full
intent to do henceforth better.
* * * * *
I close this paper with a statement made to me by an intelligent British
farmer living at Maidstone, south of England. He said:
"A few years ago there came into my hands a field of twelve acres, which
had been an orchard; but the trees were hopelessly in their dotage. They
must be cut down; then their roots must be grubbed out; so I resolved to
make a clean job of it, and give the field a thorough trenching.
Choosing a time in Autumn or early Winter when labor was abundant and
cheap, I had it turned over three spits (27 inches) deep; the lowest
being merely reversed; the next reversed and placed at the top; the
surface being reversed and placed below the second. The soil was strong
and deep, as that of an orchard should be; I planted the field to Garden
Peas, and my first picking was very abundant. About the time that peas
usually begin to wither and die, the roots of mine struck the rich soil
which had been the first stratum, but was now the second, and at once
the stalks evinced a new life--threw out new blossoms, which were
followed by pods; and so kept on blossoming and forming peas for weeks,
until this first crop far more than paid the cost of trenching and
cultivation."
Thus far my English friend. Who will this year try a patch of Peas on a
plat made rich and mellow for a depth of at least two feet, and
frequently moistened in Summer by some rude kind of irrigation?
The fierceness of our Summer suns, when not counteracted by frequent
showers, shortens deplorably the productiveness of many Vegetables and
Berries. Our Strawberries bear well, but too briefly; our Peas wither up
and cease to blossom after they have been two or three weeks plump
enough to pick. Our Raspberries, Blackberries, etc., fruit well, but are
out of bearing too soon after they begin to yield their treasures. I am
confident that this need not be. With a deep, rich soil, kept moistened
by a periodical flow of water, there need not and should not be any such
haste to give over blooming and bearing. The fruit is Nature's
attestation of the geniality of the season, the richness and abundance
of the elements inhering in the soil or supplied to it by the water.
Double the supply of these, and sterility should be postponed to a far
later day than that in which it is now inaugurated.
XV.
PLOWING--GOOD AND BAD.
There are so many wrong ways to do a thing to but one right one that
there is no reason in the impatience too often evinced with those who
contrive to swallow the truth wrong end foremost, and thereupon insist
that it won't do. For instance: A farmer hears something said of deep
plowing, and, without any clear understanding of or firm faith in it,
resolves to give it a trial. So he buys a great plow, makes up a strong
team, and proceeds to turn up a field hitherto plowed but six inches to
a depth of a foot: in other words, to bury its soil under six inches of
cold, sterile clay, sand, or gravel. On this, he plants or sows grain,
and is lucky indeed if he realizes half a crop. Hereupon, he reports to
his neighbors that Deep Plowing is a humbug, as he suspected all along;
but now he knows, for he has tried it. There are several other wrong
ways, which I will hurry over, in order to set forth that which I regard
as the right one.