Saturday, November 29, 2025

Dawn in the Fields: When Every American Was a Farmer

The Lawyer with Hay on His Hands

On a summer morning in 1760s Massachusetts, John Adams rose at sunrise and walked not to his law office but to his barn. There, the future second president of the United States spent the early hours pitching hay—backbreaking work that left his hands blistered and his clothes drenched with sweat. Only after completing this essential farm labor did Adams retire to his study to wrestle with an entirely different kind of challenge: translating passages from Justinian's Code, the 6th-century Roman legal compilation that formed the foundation of Western jurisprudence.

Adams recorded this seemingly incongruous combination in his diary with no sense of contradiction: "Rose at sunrise, unpitched a load of hay and translated two more passages from Justinian's Code." For Adams and his contemporaries, there was nothing unusual about a Harvard-educated lawyer spending his mornings doing manual farm labor before turning to intellectual pursuits. This was simply what it meant to be an American in the colonial and early republic periods.

The Universal Creed

The happy fact that the early American home and farm were one represented far more than a casual observation about colonial life—it embodied the pioneer's creed and a basic American belief that persisted until only a century ago. Today, this fundamental unity of dwelling and cultivation has all but vanished, severed by industrialization, urbanization, and the specialization of labor that characterizes modern society. Yet understanding this lost world where every American was simultaneously farmer and something else illuminates crucial aspects of early American identity, values, and social organization.

Thomas Jefferson, that most eloquent spokesman for agrarian virtue, captured this belief in language that resonated throughout the early republic: "Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue." Jefferson wasn't merely praising farmers; he was articulating a theological and philosophical conviction that agricultural labor conferred moral superiority and civic virtue essential for republican self-governance.

Jefferson expanded on this theme in his Notes on the State of Virginia, arguing that "the farmer is the most noble and independent man in society." This wasn't romantic nostalgia for rural life but rather a carefully reasoned political philosophy. Farmers, Jefferson believed, possessed economic independence that freed them from the corrupting influences of wage dependency, urban vice, and commercial manipulation. Owning productive land gave men both material security and psychological autonomy—qualities Jefferson considered essential for responsible citizenship in a democratic republic.

The Farmer-Everything: A Society of Agricultural Generalists

Whether you were a banker or shoemaker in colonial times, you were always simultaneously a farmer. This dual identity wasn't optional or recreational but rather fundamental to survival and respectability. The village blacksmith maintained fields that fed his family between shoeing horses and forging tools. The country lawyer like John Adams grew hay and grains that sustained his household while he argued cases and wrote legal briefs. The merchant kept orchards and livestock that provided insurance against the uncertainties of commerce.

Whether your home was large or small, it was also a homestead—a complete economic unit integrating residence, agriculture, and often craft production. The distinction we now make between "home" as dwelling place and "farm" as agricultural enterprise simply didn't exist. Your house was your farm, your farm was your house, and together they constituted your stake in society, your contribution to community welfare, and your claim to citizenship.

This agricultural universality extended far beyond common farmers to encompass the highest ranks of society. Even princes and politicians and poets of the eighteenth century were ardent agriculturists or posed as farmers and rural philosophers. British nobility maintained country estates where they experimented with crop rotations and livestock breeding. French philosophes retreated to rural properties where they could play at being peasants while contemplating natural virtue. American founders from Washington to Jefferson to Adams combined political leadership with serious agricultural practice and innovation.

Not having a rural background and farming philosophy in those times was perhaps as bad as not being a church member—both absences marked one as outside the cultural mainstream, suspect in one's values and potentially unreliable in one's character. To lack connection to the soil was to lack grounding in reality, to be unmoored from the sources of genuine wealth and virtue that made civilized society possible.

Barns as Status Symbols: The Architecture of Agricultural Competition

To a great extent, the size and condition of your land and barns influenced your standing in the community. A well-maintained farm with substantial outbuildings announced prosperity, industry, and good management—qualities that translated directly into social standing and community influence. A neglected farmstead with ramshackle structures suggested improvidence, laziness, or bad luck—conditions that undermined one's reputation and credibility.

This connection between agricultural infrastructure and social status resulted in barns being built much bigger than functional necessity strictly required, particularly among the Dutch and Germans who were the least conservative architecturally and most competitive in spirit. These immigrant groups brought from Europe both sophisticated barn-building traditions and a cultural imperative to demonstrate success through impressive agricultural architecture.

Some of the Dutch and German barns constructed in Pennsylvania, New York, and other Middle Atlantic regions were bigger than the great barns of ancient Europe—a fact which gave their owners great pleasure as New World farmers. These massive structures, some extending more than 100 feet in length with soaring rooflines that could accommodate vast hay mows, represented more than practical storage facilities. They embodied the promise of American abundance, the reward for hard work in a land of opportunity, and tangible proof that the New World could exceed Old World achievements.

The Pennsylvania German bank barn, with its distinctive cantilevered forebay and stone lower level built into a hillside, became an iconic form that combined European building traditions with American innovations. These barns allowed for ground-level entry on the upper floor for wagons loaded with hay, while livestock occupied the protected lower level accessible from the downhill side—an ingenious design that maximized efficiency while creating structures of genuine architectural dignity.

Dutch barns in the Hudson River Valley featured massive timber frames constructed without metal fasteners, using instead complex joinery that demonstrated both the builder's skill and the owner's wealth. The characteristic flared eaves and distinctive roof profiles of these barns announced their owners' ethnic identity and cultural pride while also providing practical protection for agricultural operations.

Mount Vernon: The Gentleman Farmer as National Icon

We think of George Washington as being a "gentleman farmer," a term which now describes a wealthy hobbyist who maintains agricultural properties for pleasure rather than profit. Yet this modern understanding completely misses the historical reality of Washington's relationship to agriculture and what "gentleman farmer" actually meant in the 18th century.

Mount Vernon followed the tradition of substantial homes of that time in being first and foremost a working agricultural enterprise. Washington wasn't playing at farming but rather managing one of Virginia's most sophisticated and innovative agricultural operations. The general possessed the exact knowledge of farming that every American enjoyed as part of his daily life, but he applied this knowledge at a scale and with a systematic approach that distinguished him even among serious agriculturists.

Washington's farming operations extended across thousands of acres divided into five separate farms, each with its own overseer, work force, crop rotations, and specialized functions. He maintained detailed records of planting dates, weather conditions, crop yields, and experimental results that reveal him as a scientific farmer constantly seeking improvements in productivity and sustainability.

Far from being a casual hobby, Washington's agricultural work consumed enormous amounts of his time and energy. He rose early to tour his fields on horseback, inspecting crops, directing workers, and making countless decisions about when to plant, what varieties to grow, how to rotate crops to preserve soil fertility, and how to market surplus production. His correspondence is filled with detailed discussions of agricultural techniques, requests for seeds and implements from England, and exchanges with other farmers about the relative merits of different farming methods.

Washington experimented extensively with crop diversification, moving away from tobacco—the traditional Virginia staple that rapidly depleted soil fertility—toward wheat and other grains that could be rotated with legumes and other soil-building crops. He pioneered the use of improved plows, threshing machines, and other agricultural implements that increased productivity while reducing labor requirements. His sixteen-sided treading barn, where horses walked in a circle on an upper floor to thresh grain that fell through gaps to the floor below, represented innovative thinking about how to mechanize agricultural processing.

Jefferson at Monticello: Philosophy Made Practical

If Washington exemplified systematic agricultural management, Thomas Jefferson embodied agriculture as philosophical and scientific pursuit. At Monticello, Jefferson's mountaintop plantation in Virginia, farming merged seamlessly with experimentation, innovation, and intellectual inquiry in ways that perfectly expressed Jefferson's conviction that agriculture represented humanity's noblest occupation.

Jefferson rose each morning and, after dealing with correspondence and reading, would ride out to inspect his farms and direct agricultural operations. He maintained meticulous garden books recording planting dates, varieties tested, and results observed—documentation that reveals his approach to farming as systematic experimentation aimed at identifying crops and methods best suited to Virginia's climate and soils.

His innovations extended beyond crop selection to include mechanical improvements that demonstrated the same inventive spirit that produced his polygraph copying machine and swivel chair. Jefferson designed an improved moldboard plow that won recognition from European agricultural societies for its mathematical precision and practical effectiveness. The moldboard—the curved surface that turns the soil as the plow cuts through earth—had traditionally been shaped by eye and experience. Jefferson applied geometric principles to create a moldboard whose surface was mathematically calculated to move soil with minimum resistance, reducing the draft animals' labor while creating more thorough soil inversion.

Jefferson also experimented extensively with crop rotations designed to maintain soil fertility without the long fallow periods that traditional farming required. He tested various sequences of wheat, corn, legumes, and pasture crops to identify combinations that would sustain productivity while rebuilding the soil organic matter and nutrients that repeated cropping depleted. These experiments reflected both his reading of European agricultural treatises and his willingness to adapt foreign ideas to American conditions.

The Theological Dimension: Chosen People of the Soil

Jefferson's conviction that farmers were "the chosen people of God" represented more than rhetorical flourish—it embodied a genuine theological and philosophical position about the relationship between agricultural labor and moral character. This belief had deep roots in classical philosophy, particularly in the Roman agricultural writers like Cato and Varro whom Jefferson read in the original Latin, but it also resonated with American Protestant traditions emphasizing honest labor and suspicion of luxury.

The argument ran roughly as follows: Farming required hard physical work that built character through discipline, patience, and direct encounter with natural processes. Farmers dealt constantly with reality—weather, soil, plant growth, animal behavior—that couldn't be manipulated through rhetoric or social connections. Success in agriculture demanded industry, foresight, practical knowledge, and moral virtues like honesty and responsibility that had immediate practical consequences.

Moreover, farmers enjoyed economic independence that freed them from the corrupting dependencies inherent in wage labor, manufacturing, or commerce. A farmer with productive land could feed his family regardless of market fluctuations, political upheavals, or economic depressions. This independence translated into political independence—farmers could vote their consciences without fearing employer retaliation or economic coercion.

In contrast, Jefferson viewed urban workers, merchants, and manufacturers with suspicion as potentially corrupted by their economic dependencies and removed from the moral instruction provided by direct engagement with nature and agricultural labor. Cities bred vice, luxury, and unhealthy dependencies that undermined the civic virtue essential for republican self-governance.

The Vanishing World

This world where every American was simultaneously farmer and citizen, where barns announced social status, and where presidents pitched hay before breakfast has all but vanished from modern America. The transformation began with industrialization in the 19th century, accelerated through the 20th century as agriculture mechanized and specialized, and reached completion in recent decades as farming has become the occupation of a tiny minority rather than a universal experience.

Today, less than 2% of Americans farm for a living, and even fewer maintain the kind of integrated home-farm homesteads that characterized early American life. We have gained enormous productivity, specialization, and efficiency while losing something harder to quantify—the universal connection to soil and seasons, the practical knowledge of agriculture that once formed part of every American's basic competency, and the moral framework that valued agricultural labor as uniquely virtuous and character-building.

Whether this loss matters remains debatable. Modern Americans enjoy food abundance, variety, and safety that would have astonished Jefferson and Washington. We are freed from the physical drudgery and economic uncertainties that made farming simultaneously virtuous and exhausting. Yet something was undeniably lost when we severed the connection between home and farm, when agriculture became a specialized industry rather than a universal experience, and when Jefferson's "chosen people of God" became a romantic memory rather than a lived reality.

Understanding this vanished world where John Adams could pitch hay before translating Roman law, where massive barns announced Dutch and German pride, and where the father of American democracy designed improved plows helps us comprehend both what early America was and what modern America has become. The transformation from a nation of farmer-citizens to a nation of specialized workers represents one of the most profound changes in American life—a change that has shaped everything from our politics to our values to our relationship with the natural world that sustains us.

Citations and Sources

Jefferson's Agricultural Philosophy:

Washington's Farming:

Early American Agriculture:

Justinian's Code Reference:

Note: 

  • The John Adams diary quote about pitching hay and translating Justinian appears in various historical accounts of Adams's daily life, reflecting the common pattern among educated early Americans of combining agricultural labor with intellectual pursuits.
  • Code of Justinian -  -Part of the 6th century codification of Roman law. The Code of Justinian is one part of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the codification of Roman law ordered early in the 6th century AD by Justinian I, who was Eastern Roman emperor in Constantinople. Two other units, the Digest and the Institutes, were created during his reign.



 

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