nd 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
expence will be considerably diminished by this change, the nett profit as
great and my attention less divided, whilst the fields will be improving."
That this was only an abandonment of a "one crop" system is shown by the
fact that in 1792 he grew over five thousand bushels of wheat, valued at
four shillings the bushel, and in 1799 he said, "as a farmer, wheat and
flour are my principal concerns." And though, in abandoning the growth of
tobacco, Washington also tried "to grow as little Indian corn as may be,"
yet in 1795 his crop was over sixteen hundred barrels, and the quantity
needed for his own negroes and stock is shown in a year when his crop
failed, which "obliged me to purchase upwards of eight hundred barrels of
corn."

In connection with this change of system, Washington became an early
convert to the rotation of crops, and drew up elaborate tables sometimes
covering periods of five years, so that the quantity of each crop should
not vary, yet by which his fi