Irrigation Means And Ends

While few can have failed to realize the important part played by Water

in the economy of vegetation, I judge that the question--"How can I

secure to my growing plants a sufficiency of moisture at all

times?"--has not always presented itself to the farmer's mind as

demanding of him a practical solution. To rid his soil and keep it free

of superfluous, but especially of stagnant water, he may or may not

accept as a nece sity; but that, having provided for draining away

whatever is excessive, he should turn a short corner and begin at once

to provide that water shall be supplied to his fields and plants

whenever they may need it, he is often slow to apprehend. Yet this

provision is but the counterpart and complement of the other.



I had sped across Europe to Venice, and noted with interest the

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?