From a very early time Washington had been a careful student of such books
on agriculture as he could obtain, even preparing lengthy abstracts of
them, and the knowledge he thus obtained, combined with his own practical
experience, soon convinced him that the Virginian system was wrong. "I
never ride on my plantations," he wrote, "without seeing something which
makes me regret having continued so long in the ruinous mode of farming,
which we are in," and he soon "discontinued the growth of tobacco myself;
[and] except at a plantation or two upon York River, I make no more of
that article than barely serves to furnish me with goods."

From this time (1765) "the whole of my force [was] in a manner confined to
the growth of wheat and manufacturing of it into flour," and before long
he boasted that "the wheat from some of my plantations, by one pair of
steelyards, will weigh upwards of sixty pounds,... and better wheat than
I now have I do not expect to make." After the Revolution he claimed that
"no wheat that has ever yet fallen under my observation exceeds the wheat
which some years ago I cultivated extensively but which, from inattention
during my absence of almost nine years from home, has got so mixed or
degenerated as scarcely to retain any of its original characteristics
properly." In 1768 he was able to sell over nineteen hundred bushels, and
how greatly his product was increased after this is shown by the fact that
in this same year he sowed four hundred and ninety bushels.

Still further study and experimentation led him to conclude that "my
countrymen are too much used to corn blades and corn shucks; and have too
little knowledge of the profit of grass lands," and after his final
home-coming to Mount Vernon, he said, "I have had it in contemplation ever
since I returned home to turn my farms to grazing principally, as fast as
I can cover the fields sufficiently with grass. Labor and of course