Before many years there will be thousands of acres pierced with
drains. But the inducements to it which make it wise in England and
New England do not yet, generally, exist in the West. The expense of
draining one acre would buy two. Many farmers have already more arable
land than they can till to advantage. Land redeemed from slough would
not pay for itself in many years.
But although a general introduction of draining would not be wise,
there are many cases in which, to a limited extent, it should be
practised. Lands lying near to cities are sufficiently valuable, and
the market for farming products sure enough, to justify the reclaiming
of wet pieces of land. On small farms of forty and eighty acres,
surrounded by high-priced lands, not easily procured for enlarging his
farm if the owner should wish it, draining might be employed with
advantage. A man with a _small_ farm can _afford_ expenses for high
cultivation which would break a _large_ farmer.
Some times a large meadow or arable field is marred by a wet slash
through the middle of it; a farmer would not begrudge the labor of
draining for the sake of having his favorite field without a blemish.
Sometimes farms are intersected by wet lands, which make the passage
from one part of the farm to another difficult at all times, and
almost impassable at some seasons of the year. Draining might be
resorted to in such a case, not so much for the sake of the land
reclaimed, as for the convenience of the whole farm.
We know pieces of wet, peaty meadow land lying close by the
farm-house, the only drawback to the beauty of the place. A good
farmer would wish to recover such a spot for the same reason that he
would prefer a handsome house to a homely one—a fine horse over a
coarse-looking animal—a sightly fence, rather than a clumsy one. There
is much strong land—but high, flat, and cold—which is wet through all
the spring, resisting seed till long after other portions of the farm
are at work, and which would, but for this backwardness, be regarded
as the best land. If without great expense, such land could be cured,
few farmers would mind the trouble or labor.
There are three kinds of draining which may be employed according to
circumstances—subsoil-plowing, furrow-draining and ditch-draining.
When a soil is underbound by a compact, impervious _subsoil_, all the
rain or melting snow is retained in the soil until it can _exhale_ and
evaporate. For the subsoil acts like a water-tight floor, or the
bottom of a tub. Subsoil-plowing, by thoroughly working through this
under crust, gives a downward passage to the moisture; water sinks as
it does in sandy loams. Nor will such treatment be less useful to
prevent the injury of summer drought; for the depth of soil affords a
harbor for roots from whence they can draw moisture when the top-soil
is dry as ashes.
But there is a limit put to this treatment by the amount of clay
contained in the subsoil. It has been experimentally ascertained in
England, that when the soil contains as high as forty-three per cent
of alumina (clay) sub-soil-plowing is useless, because the clay soon
_coalesces_ and is as impervious as ever. In such cases, if the land
has a slight inclination in any direction, furrow-draining may, in
some measure, relieve it. The ground is marked out in lands as for
sowing grain and plowed with back-furrows, throwing the earth toward
the centre. The rain and snow will run to either side, and flow off by
the channels left between each strip. This treatment does not relieve
the land, to any great extent, of water contained in it, but acts as a
preventive, by carrying off the rain and snow before they are absorbed.