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Show DYNAMITE TO DIG DITCHES I I Western Farmers Now Blow Up Earth to Let Water Through Swamp Lands Difficult to Ditch. Western farmers are now employing dynamite to dig drainage ditches. The method is simple and effective in wet and damp ground. The first step necessary is to -determine on where to put ttie ditch and how wide and how deep it shall be. Then holes are punched with a crowbar crow-bar at two foot intervals along the course of the center of the proposed ditch. In to each hole an eight-inch dynamite cartridge is dropped and tamped in with the mud. After punching 75 or 100 of these holes and loading them, a time fuse and blasting cap is applied to the center one. When it explodes all the rest follow suit. A long sheet of mud flies into the air, and there is left a fairly well made ditch. The excavated excavat-ed dirt is scattered over the adjacent land, much to its enrichment, and there is little need for the shovel except ex-cept to even up the sides. The first time the water goes through it trues up these banks. The depth of the ditch is regulated entirely by the depth to which the cartridges are sunk. When an extra wide ditch is required all that is necessary nec-essary is to put in a double row of cartridges. This center firing method has been found to be possible onlv where the soil is damp and compact. In sandy or other dry and loose soils the charge cannot be depended upon to set off each of the others, but a separate cap and fuse must be placed on each to maSJ sure. Swamp lands, it has been found, are difficult to ditch in this way, be-cause be-cause almost invariably they are underlaid un-derlaid with hardpan, through which the water has never been able to escape. es-cape. This hardpan is usually several feet in thickness, and the plan followed fol-lowed is to bore a hole with an extension exten-sion auger down almost to the bottom bot-tom of the hardpan. Several cart ridges are usually necessary to secure force enough to break open the hard-pan hard-pan and allow the water i to seep through, thus draining it off snd leaving leav-ing heavy top soils of great richness. |