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Show American Agriculture Owes Debt to Jefferson For Pioneer Work in Conserving Soil, Restoring Its Fertility and Other Modern Farm Methods By ELMO SCOTT WATSON Released by Western Newspaper Union. A LANKY horseman rode steadily through the Virginia Vir-ginia hills under a bleak March sky, his lean face brightening as he recognized familiar landmarks. He was muscular and vigorous despite de-spite his 66 years, with tanned skin, clear hazel eyes, a kindly kind-ly expression and abundant gray hair that still showed traces of its original brick-red. The rider urged his sorrel laster up the slopes of a tree-crowned tree-crowned hill that towered over the rolling countryside. Spurring to the top, he threw the reins to a colored groom, dismounted lightly and greeted greet-ed a family group waiting for him near a stately house. Thomas Jefferson had come home to Monticello. The year as 1809. But a few days before be-fore he had bid farewell to the White House, wished his friend James Madison Godspeed God-speed in the Presidency and rode dut of Washington as a private citizen. Since his birth, April 13, 1743, Jefferson Jef-ferson had traveled an eventful route. He had experienced some defeats de-feats and many triumphs. Virtually every high office within the gift of his fellow citizens had been his. He had been state legislator and congressman; con-gressman; governor and minister; secretary of state, vice president and President for two terms. He had doubled the territory of the United States and built a powerful political party. His ideals of liberty lib-erty were engraved in the law of the land. And now in the fullness of his honors he was to spend the next 17 years in serene retirement as the "Sage of Monticello," busy amidst his farms. A Famous Epitaph. Visitors to Monticello always pause to study the epitaph chiseled on the gray granite shaft over Jefferson's Jef-ferson's grave. Written by the great statesman himself before his death on July 4, 1826, it reads: "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author Au-thor of the Declaration of Independence; Independ-ence; of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom; and Father of the University of Virginia." Most Americans are familiar with these achievements of the many-sided many-sided Jefferson. Few citizens, perhaps, per-haps, are aware of another of his contributions his work for the development de-velopment of modern, scientific farming. So, on the birthday of this great farmer-statesman, it is appropriate appropri-ate to tell the story of his encouragement encourage-ment of agriculture. For farming was one of the consuming interests of Jefferson's life. His roots were bedded in the earth. In many ways he was generations ahead of his time. He clearly saw the future possibilities of American agriculture and strove to make them a reality. , Jefferson inherited an estate of 1,900 acres. He added constantly to that farm and by the time he married mar-ried 21-year-old Martha Wayles Skelton on New Year's Day, 1772, his holdings exceeded 10,000 acres. A year later, the death of his father-in-law brought the family an additional addi-tional 40,000 acres situated in western west-ern Virginia. As a practical farmer, Jefferson was constantly on the alert for new ideas. He made Monticello into a progressive experimental farm where new machinery, new methods, meth-ods, improved stock breeding, new crops and tests in restoring soil fertility fer-tility were tried out. Over a period of years he grew as many as 32 different vegetables on his farm. And he attempted to adapt and domesticate do-mesticate acres of plants, shrubs and trees from distant countries. His Land Impoverished. The "Sage of Monticello" had much to contend with. During his absence on public business, overseers over-seers who farmed the land ravaged lt, he said, "to a degree of degradation degra-dation far beyond what I had expected." ex-pected." No attempts at diversification diversifica-tion had been made. Unlike the farmer of today who can get advice from his county agents, agricultural college agronomists or experiment stations on whether his soil is deficient de-ficient in nitrogen, phosphorus and potash and then obtain the correct analysis of mixed fertilizer, Jefferson Jeffer-son had to depend on talks with his neighbors and his reading of farm papers and books published in England. Eng-land. So he corresponded frequently . with George Washington, James Svv..w.v.-.v.v..v..v.v.-.v.v-v - -.a-....v '..N.w.X-. Monticello, Virginia Home of Thomas Jefferson. Madison, John Adams, the Marquis de LaFayette and Arthur Young, the famous British agricultural scientist. scien-tist. When he learned something new about agriculture, he recorded it in a "Farm Book" he kept in his own handwriting. One account tells how to lay out experimental plots to test the effects of fertilizer. In these tests, his plant foods were manure and gypsum. Unfortunately for him, fertilizers as we know them today were not in existence. Like a modern scientific farmer, Jefferson learned that clover and other legumes would help heal the wounds of his soil and give his land a breathing spell. He discovered that legumes had a valuable soil-enriching soil-enriching power, but did not under-- under-- stand that this lay in their ability to impart nitrogen to the land. Crop rotation was another practical practi-cal measure he championed. Thus he divided some of his lands under cultivation into four large farms. These were in turn subdivided into six fields of 40 acres each. This permitted per-mitted a six-year period of rotation. For example, the first field would be planted to wheat, the second to corn, the third to rye or wheat, the fourth and fifth to clover and the sixth to buckwheat. Rotation and legumes helped save his land from exhaustion exhaus-tion and wastage. Pioneered in Contour Plowing. In still another modern method of tillage, Jefferson pioneered. That was contour plowing which is so effective ef-fective today in saving soil and wa- Thomas Jefferson, the farmer ter from costly run-offs. Jefferson, aided by his son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph, the brilliant and high-tempered husband of Martha Jefferson, introduced the system of plowing horizontally around hills. A further phase of Jefferson's farm improvement program concerned con-cerned experiments in livestock breeding which he carried out in cooperation co-operation with his friend and neighbor, neigh-bor, James Madison. The "Sage of Monticello" brought system into management and invention inven-tion into work. Each farm was an independent unit, directed by a steward stew-ard and worked by four male slaves, four female slaves, four oxen and four horses. Jefferson hated the institution of slavery and did everything every-thing he could to raise the physical and moral level of his slaves. The considerate treatment of the colored folk on the plantation surprised many a visitor. To stimulate the slaves' initiative, Jefferson praised them when they did something well and rewarded them when they achieved something out of the ordinal';-. The slaves responded to their kind master with great devotion. An All-Mclal Plow. But slaves and oxen were not the only means used to cultivate Jefferson's Jef-ferson's lands. With a lively sense of inventiveness, he was one of the first Americans to use farm machinery. ma-chinery. Half a century before the steel plow was invented, Jefferson designed an all-metal plow with a moldboard that turned the soil ef- fectively. Shaped according to mathematical computations, the moldboard met the least possible resistance from the earth. Jefferson Jeffer-son also devised a seed drill and a hemp brake. On the Jefferson plantation there, was a threshing machine which was carried on a wagon and weighed about a ton. It was capable of threshing as much as 150 bushels of grain a day. There was also a drilling drill-ing machine, invented by one of Jefferson's Jef-ferson's neighbors. The instrument had a sharp iron that opened the furrows and a small trough containing contain-ing the sowing grain behind it. "Jefferson's enlightened efforts at soil conservation and the bettering of farming methods entitle him to foremost rank among great American Amer-ican agriculturists," said an official of the Middle West Soil Improvement Improve-ment committee. "He had an instinctive in-stinctive feeling that man should be a careful custodian of the soil entrusted en-trusted to his care. His work in soil improvement, however primitive it was, helped pave the way for modern mod-ern soil science. Were he alive today, to-day, he would be a crusader for soil conservation, for sounder farming methods, for playing fair with the land by returning to it fertilizer elements ele-ments removed by growing crops and the effects of the elements." Artist and Architect. In his own words, the business of farming kept Jefferson "busy as a bee in a molasses barrel." He was often either drawing or designing or sketching. Now it was a plow, now a carriage, now a building, now a fence and now a garden. A lover of flowers, he laid out a garden and planted rare specimens. An architect archi-tect who learned the art by independent inde-pendent study, he drew blueprints for many buildings, many of which still 'stand as a monument to the many-sided genius of their creator. In addition to Monticello, the best examples of his architecture are the capitol at Richmond and the University Univer-sity of Virginia. Aside from his agricultural inventiveness, inven-tiveness, Jefferson designed a unique multi-writing machine to produce stereotyped letters somewhat some-what after the fashion of the modern mod-ern mimeograph. He designed an ingenious dumbwaiter and built himself him-self a handy weather-vane. Because of the fact that his farm and those of his neighbors were located far from big cities, Jefferson built a number of industrial establishments estab-lishments to make himself and his friends reasonably self - sufficient. His most ambitious projects were a flour mill and a nail factory. His Own Flour Mill. The flour mill was a stone building build-ing four stories high. A canal three-fourths three-fourths of a mile long led to the dam above the mill and cost several thousand dollars. The nail factory employed ten workers, who drew $2 a day. It supplied nearby stores as well as neighbors, including James Monroe, with nails. It closed in 1812 when it was unable to obtain rods. There was also a small cotton mill which manufactured homespun from cotton obtained in Richmond. Three spinning .machines wove cloth for all Jefferson's slaves. Wagonloads of homespun were also sold to merchants. mer-chants. Like other plantations of the time, Monticello had a smithy where wrought iron work for the plantation was made. Although debt acquired during his public life and a depression In farm prices following the Napoleonic wars brought financial crisis to his later years, Jefferson was eminently satisfied sat-isfied with farming as a career and a way of life. "Cultivators of the earth," he once wrote to John Jay, "are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous and they are tied to their country and wedded to its ln terests and liberty by the most lasting last-ing ties." |