George Washington: Farmer Part 6

Young was as good as his word. Although English law forbade the exportation of some of these things--a fact of which Washington was not aware--he and Sir John Sinclair prevailed upon Lord 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 over, with the result that they overheated--a thing that troubled Washington whenever he imported seeds--but on the whole the consignment was in fair order, and our Farmer was duly grateful.

The plows appeared excessively heavy to the Virginians who looked them over, but a trial showed that they worked "exceedingly well."

To Young's plan for a barn and barnyard Washington made some additions and constructed the barn upon Union Farm, building it of bricks that were made on the estate. He later expressed a belief that it was "the largest and most convenient one in this country." It has now disappeared almost utterly, but Young's plan was subsequently engraved in the _Annals_.

In return for the exertions of Young and Sinclair in his behalf Washington sent over some American products and also took pains to collect information for them as to the state of American agriculture.

His letters show an almost pathetic eagerness to 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 could not learn anything from a specialist. The trait was most commendable and one that is sadly lacking in many of his countrymen, some of whom take pride in declaring that "these here scientific fellers caint tell me nothin' about raisin' corn!"

Young and Sir John Sinclair were by no means his only agricultural correspondents. Even Noah Webster dropped his legal and philological work long enough in 1790 to propound a theory so startlingly modern in its viewpoint that it is worthy of reproduction. Said he:

"While therefore I allow, in its full extent, the value of stable manure, marl, plaster of Paris, lime, ashes, sea-weed, sea-sh.e.l.ls & salt, in enriching land, I believe none 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 collected & applied to land with very little labor and expense.

This store is the _atmosphere_, & the process by which the fertilizing substance may be obtained is vegetation."

He added that such crops as oats, peas, beans and buckwheat should be raised and plowed under to rot and that land should never be left 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 plants are able to "fix it," and he half expects to find Webster advocating "soil innoculation" and speaking of "nodules" and "bacteria."

Throughout the period after the Revolution our Farmer's one greatest concern was to conserve and restore his land. When looking for a new manager he once wrote that the man must be, "above all, Midas like, one who can convert everything he touches into manure, as the first trans.m.u.tation 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 judicious rotation of crops to accomplish his object. "Unless some such practice as this prevails," he wrote in 1794, "my fields will be growing worse and worse every year, until the Crops will not defray the expense of the culture of them."

He drew up elaborate plans for the rotation of crops on his different farms. Not content with one plan, he often drew up several alternatives; calculated the probable financial returns from each, allowing for the cost of seed, cultivation and other expenses, and commented 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 const.i.tuted that he was most contented when he had something to do. Perhaps if he had had to engage in hard manual toil every day he would have had less inclination for such employment, but he worked with his own hands only intermittently, devoting his time mostly to planning and oversight.

One such plan for Dogue Run Farm is given on the next page. To understand it the reader should bear in mind that the farm contained five hundred twenty-five arable acres divided into seven fields, each of which contained about seventy-five acres.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ No. of | | | | | | | | Fields | 1793 | 1794 | 1795 | 1796 | 1797 | 1798 | 1799 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Corn | |Buckwheat | Clover | Clover | Clover | 3 | and | Wheat | for | Wheat | or | or | or | |Potatoes| | Manure | | Gra.s.s | Gra.s.s | Gra.s.s | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Clover | Corn | |Buckwheat | Clover | Clover | 4 | or | and | Wheat | for | Wheat | or | or | | Gra.s.s |Potatoes| | Manure | | Gra.s.s | Gra.s.s | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Clover | Clover | Corn | |Buckwheat | Clover | 5 | or | or | and | Wheat | for | Wheat | or | | Gra.s.s | Gra.s.s |Potatoes| | Manure | | Gra.s.s | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Clover | Clover | Clover | Corn | |Buckwheat | 6 | or | or | or | and | Wheat | for | Wheat | | Gra.s.s | Gra.s.s | Gra.s.s |Potatoes| | Manure | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Clover | Clover | Clover | Corn | |Buckwheat 7 | Wheat | or | or | or | and | Wheat | for | | | Gra.s.s | Gra.s.s | Gra.s.s |Potatoes| | Manure | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |Buckwheat | Clover | Clover | Clover | Corn | | 1 | for | Wheat | or | or | or | and | Wheat | | Manure | | Gra.s.s | Gra.s.s | Gra.s.s |Potatoes| | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |Buckwheat | Clover | Clover | Clover | Cornr | 2 | Wheat | for | Wheat | or | or | or | and | | | Manure | | Gra.s.s | Gra.s.s | Gra.s.s |Potatoes| ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of this rotation he noted that it "favors the land very much; inasmuch as there are but three corn crops [i.e. grain crops] taken in seven years from any field, & the first of the wheat crops is followed by a Buck Wheat manure for the second Wheat Crop, wch. is to succeed it; & which by being laid to Clover or Gra.s.s & continued therein three years will a ford much Mowing or Gra.s.sing, according as the Seasons happen to be, besides being a restoration to the Soil--But the produce of the sale of the Crops is small, unless encreased by the improving state of the fields. Nor will the Grain for the use of the Farm be adequate to the consumption of it in this Course, and this is an essential object to attend to."

In a second table he estimated the amount of work that would be required each year to carry out this plan of rotation, a.s.suming that one plow would break 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 ordinary walking plow, but the negro farmer lacked ambition, the plows were c.u.mbersome, and much of the work was done with plodding oxen. The table follows:

[ILl.u.s.tRATION (TABLE): PLANTING CHART]

He estimated that seventy-five acres of corn would yield, at twelve and a half bushels per acre, 937-1/2 bushels, worth at two shillings and sixpence per bushel 117.3.9. In this field potatoes would be planted between the rows of corn and would produce, at twelve and a 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-five pounds. Three fields in clover and gra.s.s and the field of buckwheat to be turned under for manure would yield no money return. In other words the whole farm would produce three thousand three hundred seventy-five bushels of grain and potatoes worth a total of 539.1.3.

A second alternative plan would yield crops worth 614.1.3; a third, about the same; a fourth, 689.1.3; a fifth, providing for two hundred twenty-five acres of wheat, 801.11.0; 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 the fields receive no rest," as it provided for neither gra.s.s nor pasture, while the plowing required would exceed that of any of the other plans by two hundred eighty days.

On a small scale he tried growing cotton, Botany Bay gra.s.s, hemp, white nankeen gra.s.s and various other products. He experimented with deep soil plowing by running twice in the same furrow and also cultivated some wheat that had been drilled in rows instead of broadcasted.

In 1793 he built a new sixteen-sided barn on the

[ILl.u.s.tRATION: Part of Washington's Plan for His Sixteen-Sided Barn]

Dogue Run Farm. The plan of this barn, drawn by Washington himself, is still preserved and is reproduced herewith. He calculated that one hundred and forty thousand bricks would 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 half inches wide left between the floor boards so that the grain when trodden out by horses or beat out with flails would fall through to the floor below, leaving the straw above.

This floor was to furnish an ill.u.s.tration of what Washington called "the almost impossibility of putting the overseers of this country out of the track they have been accustomed to walk in. I have one of the most convenient barns 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 came home about the middle of September, I found a treading yard not thirty feet from the barn-door, the wheat again brought out of the barn, and horses treading it out in an open exposure, liable to the vicissitudes of the weather."

I think we may safely conclude that this was one of those rare occasions when George lost his temper and "went up in the air!"

Under any conditions treading or flailing out wheat was a slow and unsatisfactory process and, as Washington grew great quant.i.ties of this grain, he was alert for a better method. We know that he made inquiries of Arthur Young concerning 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 by two men and was capable of threshing about two bushels of wheat per hour--pretty slow work as compared with that of a modern thresher. And the grain had to be winnowed, or pa.s.sed through a fan afterward to separate it from the chaff.

Finally in 1797 he erected a machine on plans evolved by William Booker, who came to Mount Vernon and oversaw the construction. Next April he wrote to Booker that the machine "has by no means answered your expectations 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 costing between eight and ten pounds. Booker replied that he had now greatly improved his invention and would come to Mount Vernon and make these additions, but whether or not he ever did so I have failed to discover.

By 1793 the burden of the estate had become so heavy that Washington decided to rent all of it except the Mansion House Farm and accordingly he wrote to Arthur Young telling his desire in the hope that Englishmen might be found to take it over. One man, Parkinson, 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 regarding Mount Vernon, so that we may be grateful that he had the intention even though nothing came of it. The whole of Mount Vernon continued to be cultivated as before until the last year of his life when he rented Dogue Run Farm to his nephew, Lawrence Lewis.

As a public man he was anxious to improve the general state of American agriculture and in his last annual message to Congress recommended the establishment of a board of agriculture to collect and diffuse information and "by premiums and small pecuniary aids to encourage and a.s.sist 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 if Congress had heeded the advice, but public opinion was not then educated to the need of such a step and almost a century pa.s.sed before anything of much importance was done by the national government to improve the state of American agriculture.

In farming as in politics Washington was no standpatter. Notwithstanding many discouragements, he could not be kept from trying new things, and he furnished his farms with every kind of improved tool and implement 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. Yet most of his countrymen remained content to drop corn by hand, to broadcast their wheat, to tread out their grain and otherwise to follow methods as old as the days of Abel for at least another half century.

He was the first American conservationist. He realized that man owes a duty to the future just as he owes a debt to the past. He deplored the already developing policy of robber exploitation by which our soil and forests have 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 we should concern ourselves for posterity?" His care for the lands of Mount Vernon was evidence of the G.o.d-given trait imbedded in the best of men to transmit unimpaired to future generations what has been handed down to them.

His agricultural career has its lessons for us, even though we should not do well to follow some of his methods. The lessons lie rather in his conception of farming as an honorable occupation capable of being put on a better and more scientific basis 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 Statesman. Patient, hard-working, methodical, willing to sacrifice his own interests to those of the general good, he was one of those men who have helped raise mankind from the level of the brute and his whole career reflects credit upon human nature.

Peace hath its victories no less renowned than war, and the picture of the American Cincinnatus striving as earnestly on the green fields of Mount Vernon as he did upon the scarlet ones of Monmouth and Brandywine, is one that the world can not afford to forget.

CHAPTER IX

THE STOCKMAN

A various times in his career Washington raised deer, turkeys, hogs, cattle, geese, negroes and various other forms of live stock, but his greatest interest seems to have been reserved for horses, sheep and mules.

From his diaries and other papers that have come down to us it is easy to see that during his early married life he paid most attention to his horses. In 1760 he kept a stallion both for his own mares and for those of his neighbors, and we find many entries concerning the animal.

Successors were "Leonidas," "Samson," "Steady," "Traveller" and "Magnolia," the last a full-blooded Arabian and probably the finest beast he ever owned. When away from home Washington now and then directed the manager to advertise the animal then reigning or to exhibit him in public places such as fairs. Mares brought to the stallion were kept upon pasture, and foal was guaranteed. Many times the General complained of the difficulty of collecting fees.

During the Revolution he bought twenty-seven worn-out army mares for breeding purposes and soon after he became President he purchased at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, thirteen fine animals for the same use. These last cost him a total of 317.17.6, the price of the highest being 25.7.6 and of the cheapest 22.10. These mares were unusually good animals, as an ordinary beast would have cost only five or six pounds.

In November, 1785, he had on his various Mount Vernon farms a total of one hundred thirty horses, including the Arabian already mentioned.

Among the twenty-one animals kept at the Mansion House were his old war horses "Nelson" and "Blewskin," who after bearing their master through the smoke and dangers of many battles lived in peace to a ripe old age on the green fields of Virginia.

In his last days he bought two of the easy-gaited animals known as Narragansetts, a breed, some readers will recall, described at some length by Cooper in _The Last of the Mohicans._ A peculiarity of these beasts was that they moved both legs on a side forward at the same time, that is, they were pacers. Washington's two proved somewhat skittish, and one of them was responsible for the only fall from horseback that we have any record of his receiving. In company with Major Lewis, Mr.

Peake, young George Washington Custis and a groom he was returning in the evening from Alexandria and dismounted for a few moments near a fire on the roadside. When he attempted to mount again the horse sprang forward suddenly and threw him. The others jumped from their horses to a.s.sist him, but the old man got up quickly, brushed his clothes and explained that he had been thrown only because he had not yet got seated. All the horses meanwhile had run away and the party started to walk four miles home, but luckily some negroes along the road caught the fugitives and brought them back. Washington insisted upon mounting his animal again and rode home without further incident. This episode happened only a few weeks before his death.

Like every farmer he found that his horses had a way of growing old.

Those with which he had personal a.s.sociations, like "Blueskin" and "Nelson," he kept until they died of old age. With others he sometimes followed a different course. In 1792 we find his manager, Whiting, writing: "We have several Old Horses that are not worth keeping thro winter. One at Ferry has not done one days work these 18 Months. 2 at Muddy hole one a horse with the Pole evil which I think will not get well the other an Old Mare was not capable of work last summer. Likewise the Horse called old Chatham and the Lame Horse that used to go in the Waggon now in a one horse Cart. If any thing could be Got for them it might be well but they are not worth keeping after Christmas." No doubt a sentimental person would say that Washington ought to have kept these old servants, but he had many other superannuated servants of the human kind upon his hands, so he replied that Whiting might dispose of the old horses "as you judge best for my interest."

Now and then his horses met with accidents. Thus on February 22, 1760, his horse "Jolly" got his right foreleg "mashed to pieces," probably by a falling limb. "Did it up as well as I could this night." "Sat.u.r.day, Feb. 23d. Had the Horse Slung upon Canvas and his leg fresh set, following Markleham's directions as well as I could." Two days later the horse fell out of the sling and hurt himself so badly that he had to be killed.

Of Washington's skill as a trainer of horses his friend De Chastellux writes thus: "The weather being fair, on the 26th, I got on horseback, after breakfasting with the general--he was so attentive as to give me the horse he rode, the day of my arrival, which I had greatly commended--I found him as good as he is handsome; but above all, perfectly well broke, and well trained, having a good mouth, easy in hand, and stopping short in a gallop without bearing the bit--I mention these minute particulars, because it is the general himself who breaks all his own horses; and he is a very excellent and bold horseman, leaping the highest fences, and going extremely quick, without standing upon his stirrups, bearing on the bridle, or letting his horse run wild,--circ.u.mstances which young men look upon as so essential a part of English horsemanship, that they would rather break a leg or an arm than renounce them."

Comparatively few farmers in Virginia kept sheep, yet as early as 1758 Washington's overseer at Mount Vernon reported sixty-five old sheep and forty-eight lambs; seven years later the total number was one hundred fifty-six. The next year he records that he "put my English Ram Lamb to 65 Ewes," so that evidently he was trying to improve the breed. What variety this ram belonged to he does not say. Near the end of his career he had some of Bakewell's breed, an English variety that put on fat rapidly and hence were particularly desirable for mutton.

During his long absences from home his sheep suffered grievously, for sheep require a skilled care that few of his managers or overseers knew how to give. But sheep were an important feature of the English agriculture that he imitated, and he persisted in keeping them. In 1793 he had over six hundred.

"Before I left home in the spring of 1789," he wrote to Arthur Young, "I had improved that species of my stock so much as to get 5-1/4 lbs of Wool as the average of the fleeces of my whole flock,--and at the last shearing they did not yield me 2-1/2 lbs.--By procuring (if I am able) good rams and giving the necessary attention, I hope to get them up again for they are with me, as you have declared them to be with you, that part of my stock in which I most delight."

In 1789, by request, he sent Young "a fleece of a midling size and quality." Young had this made up into cloth and returned it to the General.