THOMAS JEFFERSON: A FARMER AT HEART...BUT A TRULY RENAISSANCE MAN

When you think you are really getting a lot done…..when you think you are living a very full life…or that you are impressed with how much someone else is doing…their profound accomplishments…

You might want to think of one Thomas Jefferson. He was able to do a few things without a computer or a cell phone…not even Google. He didn’t have air conditioning and if he wanted to read at night he had to light a candle.

He was incredibly prolific…it is hard to imagine a more erudite and eclectic man….it is hard to imagine that someone could have learned so much, written so much, read so much, and mastered so many disciplines of his time…and all without a search engine…

He was a man for his time..who was ahead of his time.

Jefferson was born in 1743 on a plantation in Virginia.

He attended William and Mary College and studied math, science, literature, philosophy, and law. He spoke 5 languages. He became a champion of independence from England…and so was appointed to the Continental Congress, and later selected to write the Declaration of Independence.

After the war he went to Paris to serve as minister to France

After returning from France..he served as President Washington’s Secretary of State until 1793. He then became Vice President to John Adams and then served two terms as President from 1801-1809.

Jefferson designed and established the University of Virginia…he worked as a scientist, inventor, linguist, and architect. He designed his historic estate, Monticello. It took 40 years to complete. Imagine a President today with the knowledge and talent to design a University, and then to act as President.  It taxes the mind.

But perhaps Jefferson was most comfortable as a farmer…Jefferson was arguably the most accomplished and inventive agronomist of his time.

“What made Jefferson unique in his time was his understanding of the interrelationship between humanity and the environment and how they shaped each other. This wisdom and his subsequent practices, such as crop rotation, use of fertilizer, and contour plowing, characterize him as one of America’s early agronomists.

Jefferson was one of the first Americans to realize that the bounty of this continent was finite. If the nation and its citizens were to continue to enjoy the fruits of the New World, then its resources must be husbanded with proper stewardship.

In Jefferson’s era comparatively few farmers were concerned with returning any vital elements back to the earth by methods such as cropping, crop rotation, and fertilizers. In fact, the Virginia Piedmont of his time was already played out by adverse agricultural practices. In the short span of years that the area was opened for European use, tobacco had become the chief crop; this, combined with corn, the staple food crop, had taken a heavy toll on the productive land. Erosion and soil exhaustion followed the pioneers as slop

Jefferson was one of the first Americans to propound crop rotation as a way of renewing the soil. He devised an extensive seven-year plan for his land, as follows:

1. Wheat, followed the same year by turnips, to be fed to the sheep.
2. Corn and potatoes mixed, and in autumn the vetch to be used as fodder in the spring if wanted, or to be turned in as a dressing.
3. Peas or potatoes, or both according to the quality of the fields.
4. Rye and clover sown on it in the spring. Wheat may substituted here for rye.
5. Clover.
6. Clover, and in autumn turn it in and sow the vetch.
7. Turn in the vetch in the spring, then sow buckwheat and turn that in, having hurled off the poorest spots for cowpenning, (so these spots could be improved by the manure).

He used this rotation system with legumes and grasses in an attempt to bind the soil against washing out, to improve his hard-used land, and to arrive at the best fit between the environment and plant.

Jefferson was in the forefront in developing scientific plowing in the infant United States. The plows of his time were crude tools made of wood that would barely scratch the soil. This shallow plowing merely loosened the topsoil making it susceptible to washing away at the first hard rain. To counteract this problem Jefferson developed his moldboard plow of “least resistance,” which lifted and turned the sod. With this tool he could plow to a depth of about six inches. This enabled farmers to contour-ridge erodible fields, plow out shallow ditches, and ridge poorly drained flat lands.

Jefferson had a penchant for “the finer things in life.” There’s no denying that.

Serving in 1784 as Minister to the Court of Louis XVI, Jefferson was introduced to the wonders of French cuisine. When he returned to America, he was not only a distinguished statesman but the epicure of fine dining. The finest food and choicest delicacies of two continents appeared on his table, all prepared by his personal French chef.

And let’s not forget the wines from France, Spain and Italy. His wines for one year were estimated to run $10,000. In present-day dollars: that’s anywhere from $1 million to $2 million in US Dollars.

While Jefferson was losing money in his public service positions, he continued his lifelong “there’s no tomorrow” lifestyle buying spree of artworks, paintings, musical instruments and, of course, books. As he once said, “I cannot live without my books.”

I should point out that much of Jefferson’s debt was inherited. When his wife’s father died, the estate passed on to Jefferson, the properties and all that went with it. Including an enormous debt. Jefferson was thirty at the time. It took him years to pay off the debt.

For a good part of his life Jefferson was building (and rebuilding) his Magnum Opus—Monticello by name—on a 5000 acre hilltop in Virginia in 1769. The mansion by no small measure was a constant drain on his budget, adding to his indebtedness. He finally completed the house in 1804, some 40 years under construction.

Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years after the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Ironically, Jefferson died deeply in debt….He was flat broke…