But it is time to turn to Binns' own record of his work. How desperately poor the yield of grain had become in Loudoun is shown by his statement that some of his unplastered land yielded but five bushels of wheat to the acre and not more than three bushels of corn on a place so worn out, when he took it over in 1793, that his friends thought he "must starve on it." By 1798 he was getting from that farm 151/2 bushels of corn to the acre and the next year, on that corn land, had 27 bushels of heavy wheat per acre. In another place he notes: "I put a parcel of it" (plaster) "on some corn in the hill which produced about 22 bushels, the other part of the field yielding about 12 bushels to the acre."
As an interesting sidelight he indicates that tobacco was being grown around Leesburg at that time. In 1803, as he wrote his book, he expected a crop of 40 bushels of wheat per acre on his farms. And by way of summarizing his work
"There are several places on the Catocton Mountain, that some few years past the corn stalks, when the tops were taken off, were not above three feet high, and which would not produce more than two or three barrels of corn to the acre, and from 5 to 6 bushels of wheat; and perhaps not yield grass enough to the acre to feed a horse for two weeks after the harvest was taken off; but from the use of plaster will now produce from six to eight barrels of corn, and from twenty to twenty-five bushels of wheat per acre; the luxuriant growth of the white and red clover after harvest gives the fields which once looked like a barren waste of country, the appearance of a beautiful meadow."
And upon sanitation he has this to say:
"... These circumstances made me anxious to cleanse my stables, stockyards, cow-pens, hog-pens, wood-yards and ash-heaps by the first June. This rule I have always followed ever since I began to farm for myself, and can say that my family have never experienced an intermittent or remittent" (fever) "unless attacked with them from home first, and upon their return they have immediately left them. In my travels where ever I have discovered those kind of fevers, I have always observed either dirty, filthy stables, hog-pens or water standing in their cellars or ponds of water not far off; I have also observed those places most liable to dysentaries...."
In contrast to present-day views, he was wholly opposed to growing rye on Loudoun lands, believing that it impoverished the soil and that wheat yielded more in bushels; that rye destroyed grass and clover and injured orchards. He approved the growing of wheat and oats in orchards to maturity and strongly recommended the use of plaster in them.
The result of Binns' work was acclaimed throughout Virginia. His methods became known as the "Loudoun system" and the term became as significant and popularly familiar as the "Norfolk system" of farming in England. Of his work and his book True says:
"In spite of the fact that 'it is not written in a scholastic style,' few books have been written in which more sound practical agriculture is crowded into so small a space. Binns' chapter on the life history of the Hessian fly stands as a piece of careful observation that might have done credit to Dr. Thomas Say himself. The three fundamental supports on which agriculture prosperity in Loudoun County rests were never more clearly or soundly appreciated: gypsum, clover and deep plowing. This was the background of the famous 'Loudoun System' which came to be recognized as the progressive practice for that part of the country a hundred years ago."[122]
Binns died in 1813. His will, dated the 11th January in that year, was offered for probate on the 1st November following. In it he makes provision for freeing his slaves after a certain period. As he left his estate to his wife and nieces, it is surmised that no children survived him. The family, however, is still represented in Loudoun. Captain John A. Tebbs, U.S.M.C., is a descendant of Charles Binns, Jr., the younger brother of our agronomist.