The crops raised on the Farm represent the type of plants 18th century farmers would have grown in Virginia. Many of the crops are heirloom varieties and are rarely found grown by farmers today.

Tobacco

Tobacco is raised as the farm family's cash crop. As tenants on the land where they live, they must pay rent to their landlord in tobacco every year. They also use the tobacco to pay their taxes and tithes to the church as required by law. Whatever tobacco is left is used to buy things the family cannot produce themselves such as salt, spices, cloth, shoes, pottery dishes and metal tools.

Because tobacco is so important to the farm family, they tend to it very carefully throughout the growing season. The seed is sown in a small tobacco patch in March. Tobacco seed is as fine as dust, so it must be mixed with dirt to allow even sowing. Lettuce seed is sown with the tobacco seed and a border of mustard is sown around the outside of the patch. Eighteenth century farmers believed that sowing lettuce and mustard with the tobacco would distract flies and worms from eating the young tobacco plants.

While the tobacco is beginning to grow in the patch, the fields must be prepared for it. Hilling hoes are used to raise small mounds of dirt or hills in neat rows throughout the field. By raising hills, the fields do not have to be plowed, which allows farmers to raise tobacco on hillsides and in fields that are not completely cleared of stumps and fallen trees. This is useful because tobacco depletes soil of nutrients within four to seven years, and so a new field must be cleared for it every few years. Hills also hold in moisture and allow for good drainage.

Once the tobacco has grown to about six inches high, usually around mid-May, it is transplanted to the field. During or after a good rain, when the soil is wet, the young tobacco plants are carefully pulled from the patch and one plant is placed at the top of each hill in the field. Now the tobacco must be constantly tended until it is ready to harvest. As the plants grow bigger, they must be primed, suckered and topped. Priming is pulling off the lower leaves of the plant when they begin to turn yellow and wither. Suckering is pulling off new buds that form on the main stalk to prevent the plant from branching out. Topping is breaking off the top part of the plant to prevent it from flowering and going to seed (three or four plants are allowed to flower and go to seed so there will be seed for planting next year's crop). All of these things are done to make the plant have bigger, broader leaves. All the while, the plants must be kept free of tobacco worms that would eat and destroy the crop. Turkeys are herded through the field to help pick the worms off the plants.

The plants are ready to harvest when the leaves are long, broad, deep green and beginning to crinkle, usually in mid to late August. The plants are cut with a knife, slit up the middle of the stalk and laid in the sun for a couple of hours to wilt. Then they are gathered up, placed on tobacco sticks and hung in the tobacco house to cure for several weeks.

The leaves are cured when they have turned brown and leathery. The cured leaves are stripped from the stalk, the thick vein that runs down the middle of each leaf is stripped off, and the leaves are tied into bundles of eight to ten leaves. These bundles are called hands of tobacco. The hands are then packed or prized into hogshead barrels for shipment to the tobacco warehouse.

In 1771, everyone was required by law to take their tobacco to the nearest tobacco warehouse to be inspected by government appointed inspectors. The reason the government required tobacco to be inspected was to make sure that only high quality Virginia tobacco was shipped to Europe, so the price for it would stay high. In spite of this fact, the price of tobacco was falling in the early 1770s. It was only worth 2.5 to 3 pence per pound in the early 1770s, while it had been worth as much as 5 pence per pound in the 1760s. Because wheat was fetching a high price, as much as 4s6d (4 shillings, 6 pence), in the early 1770s and required much less labor to grow, many farmers were beginning to grow more wheat and less tobacco for their cash crop.

The heirloom variety of tobacco grown on the Farm is called Oronoko tobacco.

Winter Wheat and Rye

The farm family grows winter wheat and rye as secondary cash crops, tobacco being the main cash crop. The wheat and rye are sown in September, after most of the other crops are harvested. They usually sprout before the first frost and then lay dormant throughout the winter. As soon as spring arrives, the wheat and rye shoot up, forming heads of grain by May, and then they are ready to harvest in the early summer.

The wheat and rye are cut with a sickle, a hand-held tool with a curved blade. The cut grain is gathered and tied into thick bundles called sheaves, then stacked in shocks in the field. The shocks remain in the field until the grain has dried out.

The wheat and rye are threshed in the fall to separate the grain from the stalk and then traded, sold or taken to the mill to be ground into flour for the family's use. The nearest grist mill in 1771 is Tolston's on Difficult Run. While the family rely on corn as their main staple grain, the farm wife occasionally uses wheat flour to make pastes (crusts) for pies, dumplings and yeast bread using a bread starter made from hops grown in the kitchen garden.

The heirloom variety of wheat grown on the Farm is called Red May wheat.

Corn

While the farm family's diet is supplemented with cured pork, fish from the nearby Potomac river and vegetables from the kitchen garden, corn is their primary food staple. In the spring, the corn is planted in hills much like the tobacco. Squash and melons are planted at the same time around the base of each hill. The broad-leaved squash and melon vines will grow along the ground, shading out and preventing unwanted weeds from growing while providing additional food for the family. Once the corn has grown a couple of feet tall, pole beans are planted at the top of each hill. The corn stalks provide a perfect pole for the bean stalks to climb.

In the fall, the family lets the corn dry out on the ear and then shells the dry kernels into a barrel. The dried kernels will keep for a long time. When the family needs corn flour for making Johnny cakes, corn mush and corn puddings, they take some of the dried corn to the mill to be ground. The miller takes a portion of the corn as payment. The family can also pound their dried corn in their hominy block, a large mortar and pestle made of a hollowed out log. Hominy is the inside of a corn kernel and it puffs up when boiled. The family can eat plain boiled hominy with butter and salt, or they can add hominy to stews.

Because the corn is the family's staple food, they do not use very much of it to feed their animals. Most of the livestock forage for their own food. Corn is given to the hogs for a few months before they are butchered to fatten them and give their meat a better taste. Corn fodder, the leaves stripped off the corn stalks and dried, is given to the horse and cattle in the winter.

The variety of corn grown on the Farm is called White Dent corn.

Kitchen Garden

The kitchen garden is where the farm family grows most of their vegetables and their herbs. While the field crops are tended to by the menfolk, the kitchen garden is primarily the responsibility of the farm wife and her daughters. Cool weather crops such as broad beans, cabbages, kale, lettuce, mustard greens, onions, parsnips, peas, radishes, spinach and turnips are planted in the spring and again in the fall. Summer crops such as pole beans, beets, carrots, cucumbers, okra, potatoes, muskmelons and watermelons are grown in the hotter months, and squash and pumpkins are planted in the summer for fall harvesting. Perennial herbs are well established in the corners of the garden. Winter savory, thyme, chives, sage and rosemary are among the herbs used to add flavor to the family's foods while herbs like comfrey, elecampane, garlic, pennyroyal and valerian make up the family's "medicine cabinet."

Early spring greens, both cultivated and wild satisfy the family's craving for something fresh after months of pickled and salted foods. In the summer, wild berries join crisp fresh vegetables on the table. Throughout the summer and into the fall, the farm wife works hard to preserve vegetables for the winter. Almost any vegetable can be pickled in a vinegar or salt brine with spices. Some vegetables, like peas and beans are easily preserved by drying them, while root crops like carrots, beets and parsnips will last for months buried in damp sand in the cellar. Pumpkins, squash and onions will wait patiently until they are needed if kept in a clean, dry place such as the loft in the farm house.

The farm family saves most of their own seed from year to year for planting the field crops and the vegetable in the garden. However, the stores in Alexandria do carry seed and one can always trade with neighbors.

Apples

An apple orchard near the farm house provides the family with cider to drink year round and with apple cider vinegar for pickling. The apples are harvested in late August and early September and for a while, the family enjoys fresh apples, fried apples, apple pies, dumplings and fritters. Some apples are sliced and dried for winter. Then the majority of the harvest is taken to a cider mill to be pressed because apples are best preserved in the form of cider.

The heirloom varieties of apples grown on the Farm are Redstreak, Hewes Crab and Newton Pippin.

Further Reading:

Greene, Wesley. Research done by Colonial Williamsburg's Garden Historian. Articles can be found at http://www.cwf.org/history/CWLand/resrch1.cfm.

Herndon, G. Melvin. William Tatham and the Culture of Tobacco.
Originally published in London, 1800. Reprinted Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1969.

Randolph, John. A Treatise on Gardening.
Originally printed in Williamsburg in 1793. Reprinted Richmond, VA: Appeals Press, Inc., 1924.

Randolph, Mary. The Virginia Housewife.
Originally published in 1824. Reprinted Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1984.

Simmons, Amelia. American Cookery.
Originally published in Hartford, Conn. in 1796. Reprinted New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1984.

Weaver, William Woys. Heirloom Vegetable Gardening; A Master Gardener's Guide to Planting, Seed Saving, and Cultural History.
New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1997.