To appreciate and understand thoroughly the

farming activities at Monticello in Jefferson's

time a bird's-eye view of the methods and modes of

agricultural practice prevalent in Virginia during

the eighteenth century is essential.

The civilization in Virginia was uniformly and

universally ruraI. Agriculture was the one great

industry and to this all others were tributary.

This is to be expected since a love of the country

and a passion for rural pursuits and pastimes had

been socially inherited along with other traits of

the English blood and the difficulties and climate

of America had strengthened rather than weakened

these. The farming was everywhere of the

pioneering type and marked by crudeness and

simplicity. The intelligent European settlers of

the "Old Dominion" were quick to reduce the soil

to cultivation, to determine which crops they could

raise to best advantage, and to create farms out of

the light virgin soil. Such soils required only the

slightest stirring of the surface to produce a harvest.

Rich harvests of tobacco, grain, and other

products sent to Europe were sold at high prices.

These, in turn, stimulated production, and the

fertile soil was subjected to a scourging course

of cultivation which soon exhausted it. By the

middle of the century many thousands of acres

had been laid waste and worn out by successive

years of cultivation.

The conspicuous and basic feature of Virginia

agriculture was the plantation system which

rested upon large acreage, non-free labor, and staple

export products. These three elements-large

acreage, slavery, and crops produced for export tended

each to extend the other and to fix the

plantation system with its extensive methods of

cultivation as the dominant force in Virginia's

agriculture, regardless of the greater number of

small farms which existed in some regions of the

colony. Hence, the typical picture of Virginia

agriculture can be summed up in three phrases overworked

lands everywhere, diversified social

life preeminent, and one-crop system predominant.

The agricultural practices of Jefferson at Monticello

were a far cry from the established methods

of his day. To discuss Monticello is to talk about

Jefferson, for they are in separately associated.

The mention of the one at once suggests the other.

When it is realized that Monticello was not merely

Jefferson's home, but his creation as well, it is

readily understood why the history of such a house

and of the life of the man who lived there are so

inseparately bound. Someone has said that

"Monticello is more peculiarly the achievement of

the brain and hand of one man than any other

home ever built." It was Jefferson who selected

the wonderful site and who was the architect and

practical builder. Since by instinct the architect

is an artist who paints pictures, when the subject

of the picture is completed, other features are then

sketched in the background. Unless the environment

is ill harmony, the picture is daub.

Thus Jefferson impressed his thought and his

preference upon everything about him. On his

mountaintop, he built roundabout walks and

terraced gardens, planted domestic and imported

trees and seeds, and kept minute records to see

whether foreign specimens could be adapted to

the soil and climate of his country.

It was Jefferson who decided where to plant the

orchard and how, what trees to set out,

what spot to level for flowers and which for vegetables.

No detail of his plantation seemed too

trifling to escape his attention and his overseers

repeatedly stated that he held them strictly accountable

in following every detail of his instructions.

Soon after Monticello was built, it became a

sin all principality of two hundred inhabitants

almost independent of the world without. Here

were manufactured and produced nearly all the

food and other products for which there was need

with the exception as Jefferson stated it "a little

finery for the women."

Jefferson's ideas with reference to agriculture

were far in advance of his day. He was among the

first to practice crop rotation. He was a scientific

farmer and in arranging for his system of rotation

he divided his cultivated lands into four farms of

280 acres each, and each farm into seven fields of

10 acres. The boundaries were marked by rows

of peach trees. The seven fields indicated that

his system of rotation of crops embraced seven

years. He reduced corn to one year in seven, and

tobacco seems to have been eliminated entirely.

He always stressed the maxim that where the

spil is left bare the sun "absorbs the nutritious

juices of the earth." Consequently, in his rotation

system, he did not designate any land to be

fallow, but rather cultivated certain plants, especially

legumes, because he accepted the idea

that such plants would absorb fertility from the

atmosphere and store it in the soil. Another observation

can be verified by a study of this rotation

system. The crops planted on the various fields

provided a continuity of employment for both the

labor force and the work stock and thereby avoided

excessive peak demands.

Jefferson was not the type of farmer, of whom

there were then and are today far too many, to

content himself with the things as they were. He

was one of the first American agricultural experimentalists,

and he was ever alert for better methods,

willing to take any amount of time and pains

to remedy existing conditions and practices which

had proven bad.

Jefferson was a pioneer in the use of competent

farm machinery. At a time when his fellow countrymen

were dropping corn by hand and planting

seed whose fertility they did not question, he was

testing the germination of what he planted and

making some improvements in the moldboard of

the plow and introduced the practice of having it

cast entirely of iron. This all-metal plow was

shaped according to mathematical computations

and the moldboard had the least possible resistance.

He also used a corncob crusher, a sheller,

a drilling machine, and a threshing machine, the

last of which he introduced into this country.

One sound agricultural principle that Jefferson

advocated firmly was deep plowing. However, his

records indicate that to the last of his life he was

still trying to impress his laborers with the necessity

for it. His perseverance went for naught

since they continued merely to scratch the surface.

Jefferson observed that in the prevailing system

of plowing on the hillsides in Albemarle the farmers'

efforts were often wasted by the rainstorms

which washed both the crops and the soil down the

hillside. He and his son-in-law, Thomas Mann

Randolph, attacked this problem and the result

was the introduction of horizontal and terraced

plowing brought about by the development of a

hillside plow.

As a result of experimentation, Jefferson

domesticated many trees and shrubs, native and

foreign, that were able to stand the Virginia

winters. He collected these trees and shrubs from

all parts of the world in order to plant them at

Monticello. Among the trees were three very

rare trees for this area-the silk tree, the paper

mulberry tree, and the bread tree. He tried almost

every species of valuable nut, vegetable, grain,

bulb, shrub, tree, and grass the world knew at

that time. In 1812according to his Garden Book,

32 vegetables were cultivated at Monticello. In

addition to these vegetables, 22 crops were raised,

including turnips, vetch, buckwheat, potatoes,

wheat, rye, oats, barley, Indian corn, peas, clover,

fodder, cotton, artichokes, straw, lucerne, succory,

pumpkins, hay, carrots, hemp, and flax.

Even back in that time the farmers' crops were

often ruined or blighted by pests. Most of the

agriculturalists, being deeply religious, accepted

their fate as an act of God. Jefferson did not do

so however. He immediately began to experiment

both to produce a crop hardy enough to withstand

the attack of the pests as well as to find a means of

ridding the attacked crop of them. The Hessian

fly was a particular menace to the growing of

wheat. He tried many experiments and finally

found that the burning of the stubble was an effective

way of destroying this pest. This method

is still in common practice. He also advocated

the sowing of the wheat late enough to escape

the fly.

In the raising of livestock as well as in crop production

the Virginians were backward. They

showed up to best advantage in the matter of

horses. Horses, oxen, and mules were worked at

Monticello as draft animals although the mule was

much preferred. The oxen were used for the

heavy burdens and were worked with a common

yoke and bow.

The livestock in Virginia, and in all America as

well, was more or less nondescript with the possible

exception of the few fine specimens of horses found

here and there. Jefferson turned his attention

toward the improvement of the existing breeds of

livestock after his retirement from the Secretaryship

of State. Until the day of his death, he

west led with this problem and his experiments and

troubles brought superior results.

Of prime importance to him was the condition of

the sheep on his estate and in Virginia generally.

There were at least two quite distinct reasons for

his interest in sheep. First of all, he used the sheep

meat to feed his slaves, and secondly, he realized

the importance of wool as a textile material. Even

before he became the Secretary of State in President

Washington's cabinet, he had improved his

flock by selection and care until he was getting

5 t pounds as an average clip. That of the other

farmers rarely averaged 2 pounds. While President,

Jefferson imported Merino sheep. He also

imported some "Calcutta" hogs to improve his

own stock and that of his friends.

Is it any wonder that Jefferson and Monticello

are bound together? If Jefferson loved his home

more than most men, it must be admitted that few

men are so much a part of their home. He was not

a theorist, but an experimenter, and all his experiments

were conducted in a practical direction. In

recent years the custom has been inaugurated of

designating outstanding farmers as "Master Farmers."

This award is not based alone on financial

success, since true greatness in a man is gauged by

what he accomplished in life and the impress he

leaves upon his fellow man. Had that practice

existed in Jefferson's day he would have been one

of the few in all America entitled to that distinction.

His greatness did not consist of one act

alone or even of many, but rather in the effect of

his experiments on the times in which he lived and

their influence on posterity.