DRAIN CLEARING

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 57, Issue 3946, 21 January 1948, Page 5

DRAIN CLEARING

DEMONSTRATION GIVEN “ CHEAPER AND EASIER ” AWAITI FARMER’S MACHINE A mt thod of drain digging and clearing, which according to its originator, Mr M. A. Carter, of Awaiti, would both cost less to use, and be simpler in operation than the present methods, was demonstrated on his property last week. Mr Carter claims that with the use of the type of “ grader ” that he has invented a farmer could have the drains on his property cleared in a day. The demonstration which was arranged by Mr Carter was attended by representatives of the various drainage boards in the Hauraki Plains district and the Thames Valley, and interested officers of Government departments. There were also a number of farmers from the neighbouring areas who had arrived to watch the drain clearing machine in operation. To look at the plough appears to be two planks joined together at one end to form a V. At right angles to one of the planks and at the edge of it is a length of angle iron which acts as the cutting blade of the machine. When in operation the blade is on the ground and with the forward motion of the grader it acts in a similar way to a plough share. Mr Carter has used heart kauri in making his graders, and the planks are about one foot wide and two inches in thickness. The three ploughs that were used in the demonstration were of different sizes, and were able to cut strips of three, six and ten feet respectively. In the walls of the grader were holes drilled to have the blades fitted to, and any of the graders could have had any size blade attached to it, Mr Carter informed the inspection party.

The method of operation was to construct drains to a shallow batter, one foot rise to two feet. By building them that way they could be regularly cleaned by the grader. The rate of cleaning the drains once they had been constructed that way was about a mile an hour, according to Mr Carter. Because it could work equally well under water or not, it was invaluable for clearing poa aquatics and other similar grasses from the banks of streams and canals, shearing the plants off below the water-line for a considerable distance into the stream.

On his property there were 12 miles of drain and he cleared them himself annually with his invention. They were all shallow bottomed drains, and they gave excellent service in flood time. Mr Carter claims that the shallow batter enabled stock to graze the banks and to consolidate them, encouraging the growth of pasture grasses and preventing slipping.

Mr Carter’s first demonstration was with the largest of his graders. He had it pulled up a drain from the Awaiti West road to the Awaiti canal, a distance of 30 chains. The trial showed that the grader would remove both weeds and mud from the water in the drain.

From there Mr Carter’s next demonstration was in the canal, where a smaller grader was dragged along one bank for a mile. Because the tide was too high in the canal at the time the cutting edge was not put into the water, but instead, the system that would be used was shown. Mr Carter then took the members of the inspection party round 126 chains of a partially constructed drain in his property. In the softer land of that drain the abaility of the grader was amply demonstrated. As the depth of the drain was what was required by Mr Carter there was not the full length of the blade attached to the grader during that demonstration, and the cutting effect was limited to the portion of the grader with the blade.

To show how an old drain that had been neglected for some time, and had been allowed to become overgrown with weeds, could be quickly cleared by the use of his grader, Mr Carter demonstrated in a portion of a drain that had not been cleared for two years. He first of all had a swamp-plough with a small grader behind it, pulled up the drain with a tractor. The furrow made by the plough was banked off by the grader on the first journey, and with the return trip a shallow V-shaped clearing had been made in the drain. Mr Carter had the next size grader pulled up and down the cutting once, that threw back soil six feet on either side. After the grader had been through it, he .’aimed, the drain was deeper than it had ever been before.