University of Virginia Library

Jefferson was always an enthusiast in agriculture.
He was never too busy to find time to note the dates
of the planting and the ripening of his vegetables
and fruits. He left behind him a table enumerating
thirty-seven esculents, and showing the earliest date
of the appearance of each one of them in the Washington
market in each of eight successive years. He
had ever a quick observation and a keen intelligence
ready for every fragment of new knowledge or hint
of a useful invention in the way of field work. All
through his busy official life, abroad and at home, he
appears ceaselessly to have an eye on the soil and
one ear open to its cultivators; he is always comparing
varying methods and results, sending new seeds
hither and thither, making suggestions, trying experiments,
till, in the presence of his enterprise and
activity, one begins to think that the stagnating
character so commonly attributed to the Virginia
planters must be fabulous.—John T. Morse, Jr., Life
of Jefferson.