Politicians, Naturalists, and Artists in the New Nation, 1776–1839 29
of red clover instead of 3 years of fallow
or rest, whether successive or interspersed
leaves the land much heartier at the close of the
rotation; that there is no doubt of this fact, the
difference being palpable.
C. George Washington to Thomas Jefferson, n.d.
I permit no separate inclosures of my fields.
their limits are preserved by 2. Rows of peach
trees, leaving a road between them. my fields are
by this means protected from pasturage as follows
Wheat after 2. years of clover, the clover
turned in in autumn by [illegible] ploughing,
the wheat sowed on that & buried by a harrow
drawn the direction of the furrows.... as soon
as the wheat is cut I propose (as soon as I can
get the winter vetch) to turn in the stubble, sow
vetch and cut it for green fodder in Feb. & March.
Then turn in the stubble of that as a green...
dressing, & the ground is ready for [illegible] in
alternate rows 41 feet apart. Put into the drills
the long dung which has been made from the
straw of this field in the preceding winter, in
autumn sow vetch again.
D. James Madison on Intelligent
Husbandry, 1818
The error first to be noticed [in our hus-
bandry] is that of cultivating land, either natu-
rally poor or impoverished by cultivation. This
error, like many others, is the effect of habit,
continued after the reason for it has failed.
Whilst there was an abundance of fresh and
fertile soil, it was the interest of the cultivator
to spread his labor over as great a surface as he
could. Land being cheap and labor dear, and the
land co-operating powerfully with the labor, it
was profitable to draw as much as possible from
the land. Labor is now comparatively cheaper
and land dearer.... It might be profitable, there-
fore, now to contract the surface over which
labor is spread, even if the soil retained its fresh-
ness and fertility. But this is not the case. Much
of the fertile soil is exhausted, and unfertile soils
are brought into cultivation.***
The evil of pressing too hard upon the land,
has also been much increased by the bad mode
of ploughing it. Shallow ploughing, and plough-
ing up and down hilly land, have, by exposing
the loosened soil to be carried off by rains, has-
tened more than any thing else, the waste of its
fertility.***
The neglect of manures is another error
which claims particular notice. It may be traced
to the same cause with our excessive cropping.
In the early stages of our agriculture, it was more
convenient, and more profitable, to bring new
land into cultivation, than to improve exhausted
land.Source: A-C. Edwin Morris Betts, ed., Thomas Jefferson’s
Farm Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1953), pp. 194, 188-89, 314. D. “Agricultural Society of
Albemarle; Address by Mr. Madison,” Niles’ Weekly
Register, Vol. II (New Series), No. 21 (July 18, 1818),
in Robert McHenry and Charles Van Doren, eds., A
Documentary History of Conservation in America (New
York: Praeger, 1972), pp. 273-75.