Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/379

Rh costs anywhere in the neighborhood of one thousand dollars a mile.

Wherever the water comes from, it is usually conveyed into a tank or a reservoir, and then piped or ditched about over the farm wherever needed. A hand pump is a rarity in southern California. A windmill pumps the water into a high tank, which gives it the pressure needed for sprinkling. Hydrants are placed at the house, at the barn, in the garden, in the orchard, and at other points. With plenty of hose the fire protection is admirable. The farmer's wife is as well off as her city cousin in the matter of water conveniences.

Running through iron pipes near the surface of a blistering hot soil, the water gets warm, not to say hot, and so it does standing in the tank over the well. When wanted for drinking, it is put into a porous earthen jar called an alla, and the evaporation of the large part which soaks through the jar cools the contents. Always in the morning, and nearly always throughout the day, you can get a drink as cool as the stomach ought to have. Sometimes a barrel, covered with a cloth kept wet, is used for the same purpose.

The water thus piped to various points on the farm is sometimes carried from the hydrants through ditches which run along the highest parts of the ground. These ditches are the simplest possible in construction. They go winding about like natural streams. Sometimes a furrow of the large farm-plow answers every purpose. For the capillaries of the circulation the furrows made between the rows of vegetables in cultivating them are quite sufficient. When you have irrigated a few rows, a hoeful or two of earth applied to each furrow stops the water from them, and then the dam is removed farther down the main stream, and more rows are irrigated in the same way.

The method of irrigating trees is different. A circular depression, with a raised rim, is made about the tree. In a large orange orchard this is done with a machine a kind of complicated scraper dragged around each tree by horses. The saucer thus formed may be fifteen or twenty feet, but is usually much less, in diameter. The water is turned into it from a hose or through a surface ditch. An orange grove never looks prettier than when thus prepared for irrigation. Sometimes, instead of the circular basin about each tree, small ridges are thrown up midway between the rows, in both directions. This makes a larger irrigated surface, and, of course, requires more water.

All these methods of irrigation are simply extensions of ordinary garden watering. I have seen two other quite different methods in operation. One of them is the simplest and cheapest, the other the most complicated and expensive of all.