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Happy Birthday,
Farmer Washington
By Susan Olling
There’s one “holiday” with which I have a real problem.
That would be Presidents’ Day, which fell on 15 Feb. The Uniform
Holiday Bill of 1968 moved George Washington’s birthday, among other
holidays, to a designated Monday in order to give federal employees
additional three-day weekends. The bill did not officially
establish Presidents’ Day or combine the observances of Lincoln’s and
Washington’s birthdays. However, several states officially refer
to the Monday between Lincoln’s birthday and Washington’s birthday as
“Presidents’ Day”. A member of the House of Representatives said
at the time the bill was signed into law that in ten years
schoolchildren wouldn’t know or care when George Washington was
born. That’s happened. However, they would know that there
would be a three-day weekend in mid-February. Ditto. The
reason for the long weekend would be unknown. Can’t disagree
there.
The holiday occurs on 22 Feb. That’s right, the birthday of our
first president, George Washington.
We all know Mr. Washington as one of the Founding Fathers and the
Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, but it’s his role as a
businessman and a founding farmer and gardener that I find to be
fascinating and worth a look. I’m going to refer to him as Farmer
Washington. He felt honored by this title, so I’ll use it.
Farmer Washington’s estate was a large one: five farms on 8.000
acres. The estate had to support quite a number of people with
food and clothing. He had no education in agriculture or
gardening. To educate himself, he purchased books on those
subjects. His self-education and work ethic made him a very
successful farmer and entrepreneur.
Tobacco, the cash crop in early Virginia, exhausted the soil and was
very labor intensive. The price of the “devil’s weed” could
fluctuate from season to season. In 1766, no more tobacco was
grown at Mount Vernon, and wheat became the major crop. Sixty
crops, including corn, barley, oats, and flax, as well as garden crops
were grown. Farmer Washington was America’s first composter and
experimented with crop rotation as well as with more efficient designs
for farming tools. He built a sixteen-sided barn designed for
treading wheat. The barn was rebuilt using Farmer Washington’s
plans and a photograph of the original barn.
Farmer Washington had a botanical garden where he tried to grow
cuttings of plants and had a greenhouse, or orangerie, where he kept
fruit trees and tropical plants. His greenhouse design was based
on a greenhouse on the Mount Clare estate in Baltimore. Benjamin
Latrobe, a professional architect, apparently wasn’t terribly impressed
with the Mount Vernon greenhouse. The building we can visit was
built on the original foundation and was based on drawings of the
original. Sorry, Mr. Latrobe. the Mount Vernon greenhouse is
quite impressive.
He had planned his gardens prior to leaving Mount Vernon to assume
command of the army. By the time he returned, he had completely
changed his garden plan using native flora. He walked the estate and
identified trees to be removed and replanted on the bowling
green. There are two tulip poplars that he planted still standing
on the green.
The best examples of his business savvy were up the road from the
Mansion. The gristmill that stood on his Dogue Run Farm was
replaced with a new mill in 1771. Wheat and other grains grown on
the estate were milled for flour. He bought grain from neighbors
for milling and leased the mill for a fee: one-eighth of the
grain milled. Before the Revolution, exporting flour could be
shipped wherever there was a buyer.
He hired James Anderson, an experienced distiller, as farm manager in
1796. Mr. Anderson suggested building a whiskey distillery
near the gristmill. Farmer Washington knew nothing about
distilling but wanted to have an additional source of income.
People were tiring of rum with its British connection with
molasses. Instead, whiskey could be distilled from grains grown
in the United States. By 1799, 11,000 gallons of rye whiskey were
distilled. The distillery was one of the largest in the country
and one of the few year-round distilleries in the country at that time.
Both of these structures have been rebuilt and are open from April
through October each year. The distillery is the only historic
site that can show the distilling process from crop to final product.
Happy 284th birthday, Farmer Washington. This writer refuses to
lump your birthday into a “holiday” that includes less notable
presidents.
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