Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. [Query XIX, “Manufactures”]
cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. they are the most vigorous, the most independant, the most virtuous, & they are tied to their country & wedded to it’s liberty & interests by the most lasting bands.
Heliotrope.to be sowed in the spring.a delicious flower, but I suspect it must be planted in boxes & kept in the house in the winter. the smell rewards the care.
I am never satiated with rambling through the fields and farms, examining the culture and cultivators, with a degree of curiosity which makes some take me to be a fool, and others to be much wiser than I am.
by varying too the articles of culture, we multiply the chances for making something, & disarm the seasons in a proportionable degree of their calamitous effects.
I have always believed it better to be settled on a small farm, just sufficient to furnish the table, and to leave one’s principal plantations free to pursue the single object of cropping without interruption.
good husbandry with us consists in abandoning Indian corn, & tobacco, tending small grain, some red clover, fallowing, & endeavoring to have, while the lands are at rest, a spontaneous cover of white clover. I do not present this as a culture judicious in itself, but as good in comparison...
to satisfy myself by enquiry from the best farmers of all the circumstances which may decide on the best rotation of crops; for I take that to be the most important of all the questions a farmer has to decide.
it turns out that our fruit has not been as entirely killed as was at first apprehended. some latter blossoms have yeilded a small supply of this precious refreshment.
I am become more firmly fixt to the glebe. if you visit me as a farmer, it must be as a condisciple: for I am but a learner; an eager one indeed but yet desperate, being too old now to learn a new art. however I am as much delighted & occupied with it as if I was the greatest adept.
but I think I have observed that your countrymen who have been obliged to work out their own fortunes here, have succeeded best with a small farm. labour indeed is dear here, but rents are low, and on the whole a reasonable profit & comfortable subsistance results. it is at the same time the...
I am become the most industrious & ardent farmer of the canton and have so much to do to recover my farms from the desolated state in which I found them after a ten years absence, that I have no fear of ennui.
I remember you seeing in your greenhouse a plant of a couple of feet height in a pot the fragrance of which (from it’s gummy bud if I recollect rightly) was remarkable peculiarly agreeable to me, and you were so kind as to remark that it required only a green house, and that you would furnish me...
Dined at the President’s ... There was as usual a dissertation upon Wines; not very edifying ... Mr Jefferson said that he had always been extremely fond of Agriculture, and knew nothing about it; but the person who united with other Science the greatest agricultural knowledge of any man he knew...
I have to acknolege the reciept of your favor of Dec. 20. and am much pleased to find our progress in manufactures to be so great. that of cotton is peculiarly interesting, because we raise the raw material in such abundance, and because it may to a great degree supply our deficiencies both in...
we could, in the United States make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe: not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good. yet I have ever observed to my countrymen who think it’s introduction important, that a labourer cultivating wheat, rice, tobacco or cotton here, will be...