Both here and in England, much of the land requires no under-draining, as it has already a subsoil porous enough to allow free passage for all the surplus water; and it is no small part of the utility of understanding the principles of drainage, that it will enable farmers to discriminate—at a time when draining is somewhat of a fashionable operation with amateurs—between land that does and land that does not require so expensive an operation.
CHAPTER IV
DRAINAGE OF HIGH LANDS—WHAT LANDS REQUIRE DRAINAGE.
What is High Land?—Accidents to Crops from Water.—Do Lands need Drainage in America?—Springs.—Theory of Moisture, with Illustrations.—Water of Pressure.—Legal Rights as to Draining our Neighbor's Wells and Land.—What Lands require Drainage?—Horace Greeley's Opinion.—Drainage more Necessary in America than in England; Indications of too much Moisture.—Will Drainage Pay?
By "high land," is meant land, the surface of which is not overflowed, as distinguished from swamps, marshes, and the like low lands. How great a proportion of such lands would be benefitted by draining, it is impossible to estimate.
The Committee on Draining, in their Report to the State Agricultural Society of New York, in 1848, assert that, "There is not one farm out of every seventy-five in this State, but needs draining—yes, much draining—to bring it into high cultivation. Nay, we may venture to say, that every wheat-field would produce a larger and finer crop if properly drained." The committee further say: "It will be conceded, that no farmer ever raised a good crop of grain on wet ground, or on a field where pools of water become masses of ice in the Winter. In such cases, the grain plants are generally frozen out and perish; or, if any survive, they never arrive at maturity, nor produce a well-developed seed. In fact, every observing farmer knows that stagnant water, whether on the surface of his soil, or within reach of the roots of his plants, always does them injury."
The late Mr. Delafield, one of the most distinguished agriculturists of New York, said in a public address:
"We all well know that wheat and other grains, as well as grasses, are never fully developed, and never produce good seed, when the roots are soaked in moisture. No man ever raised good wheat from a wet or moist subsoil. Now, the farms of this country, though at times during the Summer they appear dry, and crack open on the surface, are not, in fact, dry farms, for reasons already named. On the contrary, for nine months out of twelve, they are moist or wet; and we need no better evidence of the fact, than the annual freezing out of the plants, and consequent poverty of many crops."
If we listen to the answers of farmers, when asked as to the success of their labors, we shall be surprised, perhaps, to observe how much of their want of success is attributed to accidents, and how uniformly these accidents result from causes which thorough draining would remove. The wheat-crop of one would have been abundant, had it not been badly frozen out in the Fall; while another has lost nearly the whole of his, by a season too wet for his land. A farmer at the West has planted his corn early, and late rains have rotted the seed in the ground; while one at the East has been compelled, by the same rains, to wait so long before planting, that the season has been too short. Another has worked his clayey farm so wet, because he had not time to wait for it to dry, that it could not be properly tilled. And so their crops have wholly or partially failed, and all because of too much cold water in the soil. It would seem, by the remarks of those who till the earth, as if there were never a season just right—as if Providence had bidden us labor for bread, and yet sent down the rains of heaven so plentifully as always to blight our harvests. It is rare that we do not have a most remarkable season, with respect to moisture, especially. Our potatoes are rotted by the Summer showers, or cut off by a Summer drought; and when, as in the season of 1856, in New England, they are neither seriously diseased nor dried up, we find at harvest-time that the promise has belied the fulfillment; that, after all the fine show above ground, the season has been too wet, and the crop is light. We frequently hear complaint that the season was too cold for Indian corn, and that the ears did not fill; or that a sharp drought, following a wet Spring, has cut short the crop. We hear no man say, that he lacked skill to cultivate his crop. Seldom does a farmer attribute his failure to the poverty of his soil. He has planted and cultivated in such a way, that, in a favorable season, he would have reaped a fair reward for his toil; but the season has been too wet or too dry; and, with full faith that farming will pay in the long run, he resolves to plant the same land in the same manner, hoping in future for better luck.
Too much cold water is at the bottom of most of these complaints of unpropitious seasons, as well as of most of our soils; and it is in our power to remove the cause of these complaints and of our want of success.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves."