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