Hecker farmer Dale Haudrich looks out across some of the 165 acres of land he is having enhanced by installing field tiles.  (Alan Dooley photo)

People driving on Route 156 near Hecker recently observed a growing accumulation of huge spools of large plastic tubing on the farm of Dale Haudrich. 

“I have considered adding acreage to my farm interests,” Haudrich told the Republic-Times. “But land is so very costly now that I decided it was better to improve what I have. I am both enhancing future productivity and improving the general health and quality of the property,” he said. 

The huge spools were of four-inch diameter plastic tubing — each one containing some 3,250 feet — that were installed into the soil in a process known as field tiling.

Even to the untrained eye, much of the farmland in Illinois is relatively flat. Years like the one almost over now, with periods of excessive rainfall, leave flat fields riddled with puddle marks and often too saturated to enter with farm machinery. 

Excessively wet fields can also delay planting in the spring.

Field tiling tubes are laid in a calculated pattern and manner to drain excessive water  from the fields. When it rains heavily, they will take in water that soaks deep into the soil and channel it down ever-so-slight inclines to natural drainage areas like wooded creeks and ponds. 

There, the water will be better used by nature…>>>

Read the rest of the story in the December 26, 2018, newspaper.

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