George Washington as the Farmer of Mount Vernon—The Dress, Manners, and Personality of John Hancock—Men Whose Names Live in Their Inventions—The Strange Story of a Revolutionary Spy and a Silver Bullet—Treasure Trove in Unexpected Hiding-Places—Political Routes That Have Led to the White House—With Other Items of Interest from Various Sources.
Compiled and edited for The Scrap Book.
THE THRIFTY FARMER OF MOUNT VERNON.
FIFTEEN SQUARE MILES OF LAND.
System of Crop Rotation Made the
Wheels Go Round Smoothly on
Washington's Plantation.
As military leader and statesman, George Washington is the great figure in our history. His greatness as a farmer is not so generally appreciated. Yet as soon as the Revolution ended he turned his attention to agriculture with a keen eye to improve his estate.
Finding that the cultivation of tobacco exhausted his land, he gradually substituted grass and wheat, as better suited to the soil. He began a new method of rotation of crops, drawing up an exact scheme by which all his fields were numbered and the crops assigned for several years in advance.
The extent of his farming operations appears in the following account, printed many years ago in the Maine Cultivator:
The farm of General Washington at Mount Vernon contained ten thousand acres of land in one body—equal to about fifteen square miles. It was divided into farms of convenient size, at the distance of two, three, four, and five miles from his mansion house. These farms he visited every day in pleasant weather, and was constantly engaged in making experiments for the improvement of agriculture.
Some idea of the extent of his farming operations may be formed from the following facts: In 1787 he had five hundred acres in grass; sowed six hundred bushels of oats, seven hundred acres of wheat, and as much more in corn, barley, potatoes, beans, peas, etc., and fifty with turnips.