ag ditches

[bueller]

I have a manmade ag ditch along one of my borders. It has tall steep banks up to the elevation of the surrounding area. It is about 10 yards or so wide. The water looks to be a couple feet deep with a low amount of flow. Any guesses as to why it would not be frozen during this extended cold period. There is some shoreline ice and some spots with ice thick enough to support the coyotes leaving tracks, but most of it is open. Everything else around here including flowing creeks and rivers are and have been iced over for some time now.

 

[Honker]

Are there field tile lines running into it?

 

[bueller]

Are there field tile lines running into it?

I have no idea. From what I know the ditch was made back in the 50's to drain swampland for conversion to farmland. It begins less than a mile north of me and ends less than a mile south of me where it empties to the river. There are a couple farms just north of me but I don't think tiling is common around here because of the well drained sandy soil.

 

[wiscwhip]

I was going to mention that I doubt there are tiles under that sand, there is absolutely no need for them. Are you on the trout ditch or one of the other ones up there bueller?

 

[bueller]

Not the trout ditch. Just an ag ditch put in a few years after the flowages were made. It flows into the Yellow, which is frozen pretty good.

 

[wiscwhip]

Strange, I would have to say that it is groundwater seepage then and since it's supply is primarily underground it maintains a constant temperature that is likely well above freezing when it comes out of the ground and since it only flows a couple miles, even the relatively slow flow rate is enough to keep it thawed. If it were draining a marsh or some other surface water source then I would suspect that it would be more apt to be frozen. How far below the rest of the terrain is the actual surface of the water? 6 to 10 feet like the ditches flowing out of the Refuge?

 

[bueller]

Strange, I would have to say that it is groundwater seepage then and since it's supply is primarily underground it maintains a constant temperature that is likely well above freezing when it comes out of the ground and since it only flows a couple miles, even the relatively slow flow rate is enough to keep it thawed. If it were draining a marsh or some other surface water source then I would suspect that it would be more apt to be frozen. How far below the rest of the terrain is the actual surface of the water? 6 to 10 feet like the ditches flowing out of the Refuge?

The surface of the water is easily 10+ feet below the rest of the terrain.

Come to think about, since the creation of this ditch drained the lands around it north of me, there must be some underground culverts and/or pipes feeding it upstream of me. Whether they are tiles from the farm fields or not I don't know.

 

[wiscwhip]

The groundwater in that area is 10' or less below the surface in many areas as well, it was only about 8' down at my dad's old place.

 

[bueller]

The groundwater in that area is 10' or less below the surface in many areas as well, it was only about 8' down at my dad's old place.

Depending on time of year and recent rainfall it's usually about 12' or so down on my pop's place. Haven't checked at the new place yet but I imagine it's about the same as both places and in between is very flat.

Those groundwater fed ponds that people dig around here freeze.

 

[bueller]

They didn't dig those ditches for kicks and giggles...fields drain into them. Way back in the day (20's-30's?) many of the low areas in the sand counties were covered by peat. Repeated burning removed that peat layer and...left the sand that was underneath them.

:D but nothing is melting/draining from those fields and there is very little flow at all right now in the ditch. Groundwater trickling away that is just warm enough not to freeze?

 

[dipper]

I used to fish the ditches of portage county chasing fat native Brookies. U see those ditches cross i39. There is also a ditch around pettenwell I used to chase Browns in. Good fishing and very common

 

[bueller]

As long as it's not toxic runoff preventing it from freezing, and I have no reason to suspect that it is, I welcome the year round open water for the wildlife. Just surprised that even in -20 weather it wasn't completely frozen.

 

[bueller]

I used to fish the ditches of portage county chasing fat native Brookies. U see those ditches cross i39. There is also a ditch around pettenwell I used to chase Browns in. Good fishing and very common

Yep the west petenwell ditch, about a mile from me, can have some very good fishing. I just wish I had more time to explore it.

 

[wiscwhip]

They didn't dig those ditches for kicks and giggles...fields drain into them. Way back in the day (20's-30's?) many of the low areas in the sand counties were covered by peat. Repeated burning removed that peat layer and...left the sand that was underneath them.

Stuart is correct, dates are a tiny bit off but otherwise correct. Most of the peat was lost to fires during the late 1890's, but the burning continued well into the 1910's and early 20's. Then many of the ditches were dug to drain the fields or divert water for early cranberry production. I have seen both peat moss(the stuff that is thousands of years old and under the water) harvest demonstrations on the Refuge and commercial harvest operations of sphagnum moss(the green stuff growing on top). The reason the area around beuller's place is mostly devoid of moss is that area(between the Yellow River and the Wisconsin River) was affected most by the fires, the areas to the west of the Yellow River inside what is now the Refuge boundaries were mostly spared from repeated fires. The Refuge was created in 1939, but the lands that it sits on were being "protected" by some local residents of the area all the way back in the mid to late 1910's. In high school I dated a gal who's grandfather was one of the primary proponents of preserving that land and got the US Government to start the process of preserving that area. Rynearson Flowage, one of the largest water bodies on the Refuge and located right behind the visitor center, is named after him. In a few of the lower fields there were crude drainage tiles in some of those areas, but many areas were just dug low enough that natural seepage from the water table was enough to maintain a "flow", as the water would naturally filter towards the low spot(ditch) and then flow to the nearest natural drainage, the Wisconsin or Yellow(and Little Yellow) Rivers. Occasionally you will find a piece of the broken, old, red clay drainage tiles in the ditches or protruding from the banks. Many of them were buried, broken, or crushed as the ditches were reworked many years later. Kind of funny how now those very same fields that they drained during the early 20th century are now irrigated to produce crops.

 

[bueller]

I have some old aerials dating back to before this ditch was built in the 50's. Back then the farm fields adjacent to where the ditch now lays were irregular shaped because of the oxbows and wetland swamps along the Yellow. After the ditch was built these farm fields were expanded and they became nice and squared off as the wetlands disappeared. Couldn't have been too successful as the ditch was never extended past the mile or two it was originally constructed and new farms didn't exactly pop up and line the banks.