This farm is operated and managed by the Friends of Claude Moore Colonial Farm, through a cooperative agreement with the National Park Service.

This is a recreation of an 18th Century low-income farm in Virginia just prior to the Revolutionary War.

It depicts what life was like during the year 1771 in Virginia; when people tried to eke out a living off their land and work with nothing but ingenuity. They used everything they could produce on their farms, and nothing was wasted.
 

This is a working farm, a study in history on what kind of plants were grown for income and food.

Their main cash crop was tobacco. Farmers, who were tenants of the land, paid rent to  their landlord with tobacco; tithed to the church and paid taxes with the tobacco that they grew.


They practiced companion crop planting by sowing lettuce with tobacco with a border of mustard surround. This was meant to distract flies and worms as a means of protecting the tobacco so that the tobacco leaves were kept free from worm holes. They also raise turkeys to pick worms off the tobacco leaves.
 

Their secondary cash crop were winter wheat and rye. When ripe, a hand sickle or scythe was used to cut and stack.
 

In their vegetable garden, they also practiced companion plantings in the same plot with squash, melons with corn, then pole beans next to the corn stalk for support.
 

They also raised pigs and fished from the Potomac river nearby for sources of animal protein.
 

All the varieties grown in the Farm are the heirloom varieties popularly grown during that period. The methods used in seeding, planting, cultivation, handling and harvesting in the Farm  were exactly the way it was done at that time; all done by hand with old-fashioned implements.
 

A visit to this Farm is the only way of understanding what a low-income farm life in Virginia in 1771 was like. It makes us appreciate what we have today.
 

Those of you who are interested in heirloom crop varieties can purchase seeds at this Farm and also in their online store.

It is located at Turkey Run, 6310 Georgetown Pike, McLean, Virginia 22101.

http://www.1771.org/crops.htm