Winter-sown grain should be corru-
When to . , , r • ,• t^

Corrugate gated before sprmg stoolmg. Best re-
sults are obtained when the corrugations
for irrigation are made in the fall before winter sets
in. The spring-seeded grain should be corrugated
before it begins to stool. This gives the grain an op-



IW Avicrican Irrigation Farming

portunity to recover from the severe digging out of the
grain plants, which corrugation always renders neces-
sary. Drilling the grain so it will enable the farmer
to corrugate or flood with the slope of the land is al-
ways advisable. For all systems of irrigation perma-
nent supply ditches bring the water to the fields, the
farmer runs his field ditches as he finds he can most ad-
vantageously use the water for field irrigation.
For long level stretches of ground
Making where water can be carried a considerable

Ditches distance and a large head of water effect-

ively used, a regular ditching plow is
sometimes used. This plow requires eight to ten
horses, and both digs and cleans the ditch. This
makes a ditch three to four feet wide on top and two
and a half to three feet deep. A Wyoming ranch
growing many hundred acres of grain has these large
field ditches more than a mile long and straight as a
gun.
The smaller ditches — two to three
Use of a £gg^ wide on top and nine to eighteen

Crowder inches deep — are made with a double

mold board plow and a V or crowder,
which smooths the banks and removes the loose soil.
This crowder is a V-shaped tool usually homemade,
of 2 X i2-inch plank, some six to ten or even twelve
feet long, steel shod and joined in a V-shaped edge.
