76 The Agricultural Papers of George Washington 



Mr. Lambert, the name of the farmer from whom I had 

 these things, says that the land, on which he and his father 

 before him have lived for fifty or sixty years, is a stiff white 

 clay; and, being at a distance from any source of manure, 

 besides that which is made on the farm, they have pursued 

 a different mode of cropping from that which is usually 

 followed in England; and by so doing, with the aid of the 

 internal manure of the farm, they have brought their poor, 

 stiff land, which originally did not yield them more than five 

 or six bushels of wheat to the acre, and other grain in pro 

 portion, to produce very generally from twenty-five to thirty 

 of wheat, and from forty to fifty of barley. Their method 

 has been to keep the arable land always perfectly clean, and 

 alternately in crop or fallow; that is, to take a corn crop 

 from it one year, and have it under the plough in a naked 

 fallow, by way of preparation for the next crop, the next 

 year; beginning this fallow in the autumn, when the ground 

 is dry, again in the spring, as soon as it becomes dry, and 

 three or four times after, before seeding for wheat (if wheat 

 is the crop) ; never ploughing it wet, which is the cause, he 

 says, of its running. He seems to understand the principles 

 as well as the practice of husbandry, being a sensible man, 

 and inured for a number of years (I suppose he is sixty) 

 to the labor and practice of it. He has . travelled a good 

 deal about this country, and is of opinion that our great 

 error lies in not keeping our arable land clean, and free from 

 weeds. I observed to him, that the people of this country 

 are of opinion, that naked fallows under our hot sun are 

 injurious. He will not by any means admit the principle or 

 the fact ; but ascribes the impoverished state of our lands 

 and bad crops to the weeds which he everywhere sees, and 

 which both exhaust and foul it. By constant ploughing, 

 these, he says, are eradicated ; and when the fields come to be 



