George Washington: Farmer

Howe and Clinton and Cornwallis that he could give little time or thought to agriculture. For more than six years, in fact, he did not once set foot upon hi

w himself with renewed enthusiasm into his old occupation. His observation of northern agriculture and conversations with other farmers had broadened his views and he was more than ever progressive. He was now th

ere. No diary exists for 1784 except that of the trip to the Ohio, but from the diary of 1785 we learn that he found time to experiment with plaster of Paris and

ustible fund" of it, but the task of getting it on the land was a heavy one. Having heard of a horse-power dredge called the Hippopotamus that was in use on the Delaware River, he made inquiries concerning it but feared that it would not serve his purpose, as he would have to go from one hundred to eight hundred or a thousand yards from high water-mark for the mud--too far out for a horse to be available. Mechanical difficulties

going to waste enough muck to make all of our land rich. But the cost of getting this fertility back to the soil has thus far proved too great for us to undertake the

orn in such myriads that our Farmer found "hundreds of them & their young under the blades and at the lower joints of the Stock." By the middle of August "Nature had put on

ver, but as for his fields--it tantalizingly passed by on the other side, and "not enough fell here to wet a handkerchief." On the eighteenth, nineteenth and twenty-second clouds and t

rst he was able to note that it was coming up. For several years thereafter he experimented with this wheat. He found that it gr

n. He noted down that his experience showed that corn ought to be planted not later than May 15th, preferably by the tenth or perhaps even as early as the first, in which his practice would not differ much from that of to-day. But he came to an erroneous conclusion when he decided that wheat ought to be sown in August or at the latter end of July, for this was playing into the hands of his enemy, the Hessian fly, which is particularly destructive to early so

s--on 4 others So. Et. corner 40 bushels--and on the remaining 4-20 bushels. This Marle was spread on the rods in these proportions--to try first whether what we have denominated to be Marie p

garden and the spinner's house. But he had experimental plots on most or all of his plantations, and each day as he

s the experience of every scientific farmer or horticulturist who ventures out o

f the kind. Washington tried to make a machine that would do the work more expeditiously and succeeded, though it should be said that his plans were not altogether original with him, as there was a plan for s

decreasing or increasing the number of holes the grain could be planted thicker or thinner as desired. To prevent the holes from choking up he found it expedient to make them larger on the outside than on the inside, and he also found that the machine worked better if the barrel was not kept too full of seed. Behind th

l to your most sanguine expectation, for Indian corn, wheat, barley, pease, or any other tolerably round grain, that you may wish to sow or plant in this manner. I have sown oats very well with it, which is among the most inconvenient and unfit grains for this machine.... A smal

se in the barrel, the purpose of the band being to prevent the seeds issuing out of more than one hole at the same time. This band had to be "slackened or braced" according to the influence of the atmosphere upon the leather, and sometimes the holes in the band ten

ss implement simply because he had made it. He even used it to sow very small seed. In the summer of 1786 he records: "Having fixed a Roll

hrow the earth back into the two first, which made ridges of five furrows. These, being done some time ago, and the sowing retarded by frequent rains, had got hard; therefore, 4. before the seed was sown, these ridges were split again by running twice in the middle of them, both times in the same furrow; 5. after which the ridges were harrowed; and, 6. where the ground was lumpy, run a spiked roller with a harrow at the tail of it, which was found very efficacious in breaking the clods and pulverizing t

his respect. Often the seed he bought was foul with weed seeds, and at other times it would not grow at all. Once he ment

some farmers out of false ideas of economy still make the mistake of doing, and he fo

this line. He laboriously calculated the number of seed in a pound Troy of various seeds and ascertained, for example, that the number of red clover was 71,000, of t

s of a Continent engaging in such minute labor is

st half with a Bushel of Poland Oats--The east half of No. 4 with half a bushel of the Poland Oats and the west half with a bushel of the George Town Oats. The objects, and design of this experiment, was to ascertn. 3 things--1st. which of these two k

on the manured ground and showed that two bushels of seed were preferable to four. But if he

kept his eyes and ears open for agricultural information. He learned how the Pennsylvanians cultivated buckwheat and visited the farm of a certain Jones, who was getting good results from the use of plaster of Paris. With his usual interest in la

y acres, in oats four hundred acres, in corn seven hundred acres, with sev

ere not dug till December and in consequence some were badly injured by the frost. An experim

e persisted in frowning. In 1785 the rain seemed to forget how to fall, and in 1786 how to stop falling. Some crops failed or were very short and soon he was

n the first I was obliged to buy corn, and this year have none to sell, and my wheat is so bad I can neither eat it myself nor sell it to others, and tobacco I make none. Those who owe me money cannot or will not pay it without suits

bellion broke out, the rebels being largely discouraged debtors. A state of chaos seemed imminent and would have resulted had not the Federal Convention, of which Washington was a member, created a new government. Ultimately this governme

f Sheep.... We scarcely passed a farm house that did not abd. in Geese." His judgment of New England stock was that the cattle were "of a good quality and their hogs large, but rather long legged." The shingle roofs, stone and brick chimneys, stone fences and cider making all attracted his attention. The fact that wheat in that section produced an average of fifteen

ed, but also made him very desirous of adopting a regular and systematic course of cropping in order to conserve his soil. Taking advantage of an offer made by Young, he ordered (August 6, 1786) through him English plows, cabbage, turnip, sainfoin, rye-grass and hop clover seed and eight bushels of winter vetches

Grenville to issue a special permit and in due course everything reached Mount Vernon. Part of the seeds were somewhat injured by being put into the hold of the vessel that brought them ov

Virginians who looked them over, but a trial

ing it of bricks that were made on the estate. He later expressed a belief that it was "the largest and most convenien

o please these good friends and it is evident that in his farming operations he regarded himself as one of Young's disciples. He was no egotist who believed that because he had been a successful soldier and was now President of the United States he

Noah Webster dropped his legal and philological work long enough in 1790 to propound a t

ne of them are absolutely necessary, but that nature has provided an inexhaustible store of manure, which is equally accessible to the rich and the poor, & which may be co

ft bare. As one peruses the letter he recalls that scientists of to-day tell us that the air is largely made up of nitrogen, that pla

touches into manure, as the first transmutation toward gold; in a word, one who can bring worn-out and gullied lands into good tilth in the shortest time." He saved manure as if it were already so much gold and hoped with its use and with j

ted upon the respective advantages from every point of view of the various plans. The labor involved in such work was very great, but Washington was no shirker. He was always up before sunrise, both in winter and summer, and seems to have been so constituted that he wa

next page. To understand it the reader should b

93 1794 1795 179

at for Manure Wheat Clover or Gra

es Wheat Buckwheat for Manure Whe

Corn and Potatoes Wheat Buckwhea

Clover or Grass Corn and Potatoe

Grass Clover or Grass Corn and P

er or Grass Clover or Grass Clove

t Clover or Grass Clover or Grass

into seven fields, each of which

ond Wheat Crop, wch. is to succeed it; & which by being laid to Clover or Grass & continued therein three years will a ford much Mowing or Grassing, according as the Seasons happen to be, besides being a restoration to the Soil--But the p

up three-fourths of an acre per day. This amount is hardly half what an energetic farmer with a good team of horses will now turn over in a day with an or

ING C

half bushels per acre, 937-1/2 bushels, worth at one shilling per bushel ￡46.17.6. Two fields in wheat, a total of one hundred fifty acres, at ten bushels per acre, would yield one thousand five hundred bushels, worth at five shillings per bushel three hundred seventy-fi

.11.0; a sixth, ￡764. Number five would be most productive, but he noted that it would seriously reduce the land. Number six would be "the 2d. most productive Rotation, but

arious other products. He experimented with deep soil plowing by running twice in the same

a new sixteen-s

n's Plan for His

ld be required for it and these were made and burnt upon the estate. The barn was particularly notable for a threshing floor thirty feet square, with interstices one and a hal

in this or perhaps any other country, where thirty hands may with great ease be employed in threshing. Half the wheat of the farm was actually stowed in this barn in the straw by my order, for threshing; notwithstanding, when I ca

as one of those rare occasions when George

ing a threshing machine invented by a certain Winlaw and pictured and described in volume six of the Annals, and in 1790 he watched the operation of Baron Poelnitz's mill on the Winlaw model near New York City. This mill was operated

ons or mine," At first it threshed not quite fifty bushels per day, then fell to less than twenty-five, and ultimately got out of order before five hundred bushels had been threshed, though it had used up two bands

kinson, of whom more hereafter, came to America and looked at one of the farms, but decided not to rent it. Washington's elaborate description of his land in his letter to Young, with an accompanying map, forms one of our best sources of information regardi

uniary aids to encourage and assist a spirit of discovery and improvement." In this recommendation the example of the English Board of Agriculture and the influence of his friend Arthur Young are discernible. It would have been well for the country

lement calculated to do better work. At his death he owned not only threshing machines and a Dutch fan, but a wheat drill, a corn drill, a machine for gathering clover seed and another for raking up wheat. Y

been despoiled, for he foresaw the bitter fruits which such a policy must produce, and indeed was already producing on the fields of Virginia. He was no misanthropic cynic to exclaim, "What has posterity ever done for us that

asis by the application of brains and intelligence; in his open-minded and progressive seeking after better ways. Many of his experiments failed, it is true, but for his time he was a great Farmer, just as he was a great Patriot, Soldier and Stat

cinnatus striving as earnestly on the green fields of Mount Vernon as he did upon the s