AGRICULTURAL OPERATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
A detailed account of all of Washington's agricultural experiments would
require several hundred pages and would be tedious reading. All that I
shall attempt to do is to give some examples and point the way for any
enthusiast to the mass of his agricultural papers in the Library of
Congress and elsewhere.
At the outset it should be stated that he worked under extremely
different conditions from those of to-day. Any American farmer of the
present who has a problem in his head can have it solved by writing to
the nearest government experiment station, a good farm paper, an
agricultural college, the department of agriculture, or in some favored
districts by consulting the local county "agent." Washington had no such
recourse. There was not an agricultural college or agricultural paper in
the whole country; the department of agriculture was not created until
near the end of the next century; county "agents" were as unthought of
as automobiles or electric lights; there was not a scientific farmer in
America; even the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Agriculture
was not founded until 1785. In his later years our Farmer could and did
write to such foreign specialists as Arthur Young and Sir John Sinclair,
but they were Englishmen unfamiliar with American soils and climate and
could rarely give a weighty answer propounded to them by an American. If
Washington wished to know a thing about practical farming, he usually
had to find it out for himself.
This state of affairs accounts for his performing some experiments that
seem absurd. Thus in the fall of 1764 we find him sowing "a few Oats to
see if they would stand the winter." Any country boy of to-day could
tell him that ordinary oats sown under such conditions in the latitude
of Mount Vernon would winter kill too badly to be of much use, but
Washington could not know it till he had tried.
In another category was his experiment in March, 1760, with lucerne.
Lucerne is alfalfa. It will probably be news to most readers that
alfalfa--the wonderful forage crop of the West, the producer of more
gold than all the mines of the Klondike--was in use so long ago, for the
impression is pretty general that it is comparatively new; the fact is
that it is older than the Christian era and that the name alfalfa comes
from the Arabic and means "the best crop." Evidently our Farmer had been
reading on the subject, for in his diary he quotes what "Tull speaking
of lucerne, says." He tried out the plant on this and several other
occasions and had a considerable field of it in 1798. His success was
not large with it at any time, for the Mount Vernon soil was not
naturally suited to alfalfa, which thrives best in a dry and pervious
subsoil containing plenty of lime, but the experiment was certainly
worth trying.
In this same year, 1760, we find him sowing clover, rye, grass, hope,
trefoil, timothy, spelt, which was a species of wheat, and various other
grasses and vegetables, most of them to all intents and purposes unknown
to the Virginia agriculture of that day.
He also recorded an interesting experiment with fertilizer. April 14,
1760, he writes in his diary:
"Mixed my composts in a box with the apartments in the following
manner, viz. No. 1 is three pecks of earth brought from below the hill
out of the 46 acre field without any mixture. In No. 2 is two pecks of
sand earth and one of marle taken out of the said field, which marle
seemed a little inclined to sand. 3 has 2 pecks of sd. earth and 1 of
river sand.
"4 has a peck of Horse Dung
"5 has mud taken out of the creek
"6 has cow dung
"7 has marle from the Gulleys on the hillside, wch. seem'd to be purer
than the other
"8 sheep dung
"9 Black mould from the Gulleys on the hill side, wch. seem'd to be
purer than the other
"10 Clay got just below the garden
"All mixed with the same quantity and sort of earth in the most
effective manner by reducing the whole to a tolerable degree of fineness
and rubbing them well together on a cloth. In each of these divisions
were planted three grains of wheat, 3 of oats, and as many of barley,
all of equal distances in Rows and of equal depth done by a machine made
for the purpose. The wheat rows are next the numbered side, the oats in
the middle, and the barley on the side next the upper part of the
Garden. Two or three hours after sowing in this manner, and about an
hour before sunset I watered them all equally alike with water that had
been standing in a tub abt two hours exposed to the sun."
Three weeks later he inspected the boxes and concluded that Nos. 8 and 9
gave the best results.
The plows of the period were cumbersome and did their work poorly.
Consequently in March, 1760, Washington "Fitted a two Eyed Plow instead
of a Duck Bill Plow", and tried it out, using his carriage horses in the
work. But this new model proved upon the whole a failure and a little
later he "Spent the greater part of the day in making a new plow of my
own Invention." Next day he set the new plow to work "and found She
answerd very well."
A little later he "got a new harrow made of smaller and closer teethings
for harrowing in grain--the other being more proper for preparing the
ground for sowing."
Much of his attention in the next few years was devoted to wheat
growing, for, as already related, he soon decided gradually to
discontinue tobacco and it was imperative for him to discover some
other money crop to take its place. We find him steeping his seed wheat
in brine and alum to prevent smut and he also tried other experiments to
protect his grain from the Hessian fly and rust. Noticing how the
freezing and thawing of the ground in spring often injured the wheat by
lifting it out of the ground, he adopted the practice of running a heavy
roller over the wheat in order to get the roots back into the ground and
he was confident that when the operation was performed at the proper
time, that is when the ground was soft and the roots were still alive,
it was productive of good results.
In June, 1763, he "dug up abt. a load of Marle to spread over Wheat Land
for experiment." In 1768 he came to the conclusion that most farmers
began to cut their wheat too late, for of course cradling was a slow
process--scarcely four acres per day per cradler--and if the acreage was
large several days must elapse before the last of the grain could be
cut, with the result that some of it became so ripe that many of the
kernels were shattered out and lost before the straw could be got to the
threshing floor. By careful experiments he determined that the grain
would not lose perceptibly in size and weight if the wheat were cut
comparatively green. In wheat-growing communities the discussion as to
this question still rages--extremists on one side will not cut their
wheat till it is dead ripe, while those on the other begin to harvest it
when it is almost sea-green.
In 1763 Washington entered into an agreement with John Carlyle and
Robert Adams of Alexandria to sell to them all the wheat he would have
to dispose of in the next seven years. The price was to be three
shillings and nine pence per bushel, that is, about ninety-one cents.
This would not be far from the average price of wheat to-day, but, on
the one side, we should bear in mind that ninety-one cents then had much
greater purchasing power than now, so that the price was really much
greater, and, on the other, that the cost of raising wheat was larger
then, owing to lack of self-binders, threshing machines and other
labor-saving devices.
The wheat thus sold by Washington was to be delivered at the wharf at
Alexandria or beside a boat or flat on Four Mile Run Creek. The delivery
for 1764 was 257-1/2 bushels; for 1765, 1,112-3/4 bushels; for 1766,
2,331-1/2 bushels; for 1767--a bad year--1,293-1/2 bushels; for 1768,
4,994-1/2 bushels of wheat and 4,304-1/2 bushels of corn; for 1769,
6,241-1/2 bushels of wheat.
Thereafter he ground a good part of his wheat and sold the flour. He
owned three mills, one in western Pennsylvania, already referred to, a
second on Four Mile Run near Alexandria, and a third on the Mount Vernon
estate. This last mill had been in operation since his father's day. It
was situated near the mouth of the stream known as Dogue Run, which was
not very well suited for the purpose as it ran from the extreme of low
water in summer to violent floods in winter and spring. Thus his miller,
William A. Poole, in a letter that wins the sweepstakes in phonetic
spelling, complains in 1757 that he has been able to grind but little
because "She fails by want of Water." At other times the Master sallies
out in the rain with rescue crews to save the mill from floods and more
than once the "tumbling dam" goes by the board in spite of all efforts.
The lack of water was partly remedied in 1771 by turning the water of
Piney Branch into the Run, and about the same time a new and better mill
was erected, while in 1797 further improvements were made. During the
whole period flatboats and small schooners could come to the wharf to
take away the flour. Corn and other grains were ground, as well as
wheat, and the mill had considerable neighborhood custom, the toll
exacted being one-eighth. Only a few stones sticking in a bank now
remain of the mill.
Washington divided his flour into superfine, fine, middlings and ship
stuff. It was put into barrels manufactured by the plantation coopers
and much of it ultimately found its way to the West India market. A
tradition--much quoted--has it that barrels marked "George Washington,
Mount Vernon," were accepted in the islands without any inspection, but
Mr. J.M. Toner, one of the closest students of Washington's career,
contended that this was a mistake and pointed to the fact that the
Virginia law provided for the inspection of all flour before it was
exported and the placing of a brand on each barrel. However this may be,
we have Washington's own word for it, that his flour was as good in
quality as any manufactured in America--and he was no boaster.
[ILLUSTRATION: Dogue Run below the Site of the Mill]
[ILLUSTRATION: On the Road to the Mill and Pohick Church]
That his flour was so good was in large measure due to the excellent
quality of the wheat from which it was made. By careful attention to his
seed and to cultivation he succeeded in raising grain that often
weighed upward of sixty pounds to the bushel. After the Revolution he
wrote: "No wheat that has ever yet fallen under my observation exceeds
the wheat which some years ago I cultivated extensively."
His idea of good cultivation in these years was to let his fields lie
fallow at certain intervals, though he also made use of manure, marl,
etc., and in 1772 tried the experiment of sowing two bushels of salt per
acre upon fallow ground, dividing the plot up into strips eight feet in
width and sowing the alternate strips in order that he might be able to
determine results.
He imported from England an improved Rotheran or patent plow, and,
having noticed in an agricultural work mention of a machine capable of
pulling up two or three hundred stumps per day, he expressed a desire
for one, saying: "If the accounts are not greatly exaggerated, such
powerful assistance must be of vast utility in many parts of this wooden
country, where it is impossible for our force (and laborers are not to
be hired here), between the finishing of one crop and preparations for
another, to clear ground fast enough to afford the proper changes,
either in the planting or farming business."
These were his golden days. He was not so rich as he was later nor so
famous, but he was strong and well and young, he had abundant friends,
and his neighbors thought well enough of him to send him to the
Burgesses and to make him a vestryman of old Pohick Church; if he felt
the need of recreation he went fishing or fox-hunting or attended a
horse race or played a game of cards with his friends, and he had few
things to trouble him seriously. But fussy kings and ministers overseas
were meddling with the liberties of subjects and were creating a
situation out of which was to come a mighty burden--a burden so
Atalantean that it would have frightened most men, but one that he was
brave enough and strong enough to shoulder and with it march down to
immortality.