Thomas Jefferson: Smuggler

The Agronomist

Long before Monticello as we know it was built and rebuilt by “Thomas Jefferson, Architect,” his love of the land on his little mountain was deep and lifelong.

TJ was more than just a Virginia planter. Most of our early colonial plantation owners immersed themselves in agricultural knowledge. It was their means of livelihood, whether or not they personally dug, weeded, sowed or reaped.

Jefferson, however, was a cut above. He not only cultivated his property for monetary profit (which never quite happened), but his football field of a kitchen garden, specifically for his personal use and for feeding his large labor force, was his own laboratory. His garden book meticulously details the weather, the season, the first bud of whatever flower, fruit or vegetable, the size and weights of the aforementioned…