Early and late Washington preached to his overseers the value of fertilization; in one case, when looking for a new overseer, he said the man must be, “above all, Midas like, one who can convert everything he touches into manure, as the first transmutation towards gold;—­in a word one who can bring worn out and gullied Lands into good tilth in the shortest time.”  Equally emphatic was his urging of constant ploughing and grubbing, and he even invented a deep soil plough, which he used till he found a better one in the English Rotheran plough, which he promptly imported, as he did all other improved farming tools and machinery of which he could learn.  To save his woodlands, and for appearance’s sake, he insisted on live fences, though he had to acknowledge that “no hedge, alone, will, I am persuaded, do for an outer inclosure, where two or four footed hogs find it convenient to open passage.”  In all things he was an experimentalist, carefully trying different kinds of tobacco and wheat, various kinds of plants for hedges, and various kinds of manure for fertilizers; he had tests made to see whether he could sell his wheat to best advantage in the grain or when made into flour, and he bred from selected horses, cattle, and sheep.  “In short I shall begrudge no reasonable expence that will contribute to the improvement and neatness of my Farms;—­for nothing pleases me better than to see them in good order, and everything trim, handsome, and thriving about them.”

The magnitude of the charge of such an estate can be better understood when the condition of a Virginia plantation is realized.  Before the Revolution practically everything the plantation could not produce was ordered yearly from Great Britain, and after the annual delivery of the invoices the estate could look for little outside help.  Nor did this change rapidly after the Revolution, and during the period of Washington’s management almost everything was bought in yearly supplies.  This system compelled each plantation to be a little world unto itself; indeed, the three hundred souls on the Mount Vernon estate went far to make it a distinct and self-supporting community, and one of Washington’s standing orders to his overseers was to “buy nothing you can make within yourselves.”  Thus the planting and gathering of the crops were but a small part of the work to be done.

A corps of workmen—­some negroes, some indentured servants, and some hired laborers—­were kept on the estate.  A blacksmith-shop occupied some, doing not merely the work of the plantation, but whatever business was brought to them from outside; and a wood-burner kept them and the mansion-house supplied with charcoal.  A gang of carpenters were kept busy, and their spare time was utilized in framing houses to be put up in Alexandria, or in the “Federal city,” as Washington was called before the death of its namesake.  A brick-maker, too, was kept constantly employed, and masons utilized the product of his labor.  The gardener’s gang had charge of the kitchen-garden, and set out thousands of grape-vines, fruit-trees, and hedge-plants.