A long way from home

Since my apprenticeship ended last week, I am now officially on vacation, although some might call it unemployment. This break between farming seasons seemed a good opportunity to visit my brother and his family who recently moved to Virginia from Colorado, so I hopped on a plane to the East Coast. I visited the Washington, D.C. area when I was 6, but for all intents and purposes, this is my first real trip to Virginia. Flying on a prop plane from D.C. to the Shenandoah Valley, I survived a very bumpy, windy ride that had me worried I would throw up, pass out, or both, but I still managed to appreciate just how beautiful the area is: rolling hills, trees showing off their fall colors, and tons of green, open space.

My brother lives on a farm, but he is not a farmer. He and his family rent a 200-year-old house on a 300-acre plantation. The farm, managed by someone else, is home to twenty-something beef cattle who graze the rolling pastures, and a lot of soybeans, grown by another someone else. Having just spent 8 months on a small, diversified organic farm, seeing a vast expanse of a single crop is quite foreign. The soybeans must be tractor-planted, as they are lined up perfectly about 6 inches apart in rows about a foot-and-a-half apart and about a quarter-mile long, with no paths for walking. The beans are dried now and ready for harvest. I didn't even know dried soybeans were a crop, picturing plump green pods of edamame at my favorite sushi restaurant instead, but it turns out most soybeans are not grown for fresh eating. In fact, most soybeans aren't even grown for human consumption; rather, they are grown for animal feed, with soybean meal (what's left after you extract soybean oil with hexane) being the foundation of confined animal feeding operations.


A river of dried soybeans awaits harvest on the farm where my brother lives.

Okay, enough about soybeans. What I really want to talk about is Monticello. Yesterday, I visited Thomas Jefferson's mountaintop home outside Charlottesville. At 5,000 acres, Jefferson certainly had a large plantation. But then again, he also had about 200 slaves to help him get everything done. I'm not a history buff at all, but I was drawn to Monticello by its gardens, having seen a beautiful picture of the gardens in a recent magazine. While at Monticello, however, I gained new respect for Thomas Jefferson.  Did you know he was only 33 when he drafted the Declaration of Independence?  That happens to be my current age, so I find the feat particularly impressive as I try to imagine myself sitting down to write such a monumental, world-changing document instead of this simple blog.  In addition to being a founding father of the United States of America, Jefferson was a gardener.  And not a casual gardener who would just toss a few seeds in the ground and see what happened; he was quite methodical and kept detailed records of his plantings and harvests.  He grew 330 varieties of 99 vegetables on his 80-foot wide, 1000-foot-long terrace, growing both for food and fun, experimenting with seeds from other parts of the world.  Jefferson organized his crops based on which part of the plant was harvested: fruits, roots, or leaves, as shown in this page from his garden notebook, and I system I like, as it groups plants roughly by how long it takes them to mature:

 



Flipping through a facsimile of Jefferson's notebook in the Monticello visitor center, I was amazed that his planting records from 1812 looked nearly identical to a table in a recently published book on crop planning I had been reading just days before.  Jefferson had columns for recording where he planted a crop, the seeding and transplant dates, maturity dates, and date of final harvest.  I imagine he would have found each year's notes very helpful in planning the next year's garden.  

The garden is tended today by one full-time gardener year-round and a few seasonal assistants. They grow many of the same varieties grown by Jefferson and using 19th-century techniques, such as these wooden trellises:

Having been on the Monticello garden terrace yesterday, I think it may quite possibly be the most beautiful spot in the world to have a garden.  See for yourself:

 

 

I left Monticello yesterday inspired to garden/farm next year. Although the farm on Hurley Way is not as scenic as Monticello, it is beautiful, as anyone who attended this year's Equinox celebration can attest. And perhaps Mr. Jefferson's diligent record-keeping will inspire me to do likewise. We'll see...