This has been a long, wonderful day. I got up at 5 am so that I could watch the sunrise over the Potomac from the piazza of the mansion. It wasn’t a spectacular sunrise, but it was enough.
This afternoon we took a tour of the farming part of the estate. Washington was an innovator and really ahead of his time regarding farming. Tobacco depletes the soil, plus prices were falling and selling tobacco was a political nightmare before the revolution, so GW changed over to wheat. He also divided each of his five farms into seven different fields each. He created a map with each field numbered, then he did something totally new and different, he rotated his crops. He planted wheat, corn and potatoes, cereal grains for feeding the livestock, and left fields fallow. The cool thing about the fallow fields is that he fenced them and put the livestock on those fields – to fertilize and to keep the weeds down. Very smart.
This evening we had dinner totally by candle light because the power went out due to a storm. During dinner Nelly Custus came to talk to us and tell us about her grandmamma and grandpapa. She was GW’s granddaughter (he and Martha raised Nelly and her brother),. The actress who did the reenactment was very good.
Good night, I’m tired!!
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