Monticello Soup

Once I finished writing the Monticello post, I had some "leftovers." So, Monticello soup.

Not only did Thomas Jefferson design (and, after seeing European and classical architecture,) redesign Monticello himself, he built in a few ingenious things to make life easier. A hideaway bed. A revolving clothes horse with 48 arms, sort of like a spiral dry cleaner's rack hung vertically. A revolving book stand for five open books at a time, which folds up into a cube for storage.

And the first dome in America. Although beautiful and stately, the room under the dome proved to be impractical as a ladies' drawing room, its original purpose, and was rarely used. It is about 26 feet in diameter, with eight circular windows and a skylight, and it is difficult to heat in winter or cool in summer.

With his son-in-law the plantation manager, Jefferson invented the mouldboard plow for the hilly ground of Albemarle County. As you plow a furrow, the topsoil lifts up and over the mouldboard, falling in a strip to one side only. The mouldboard plow made faster work of plowing a field on a hill and left ridges deep enough to help drain off snowmelt and heavy winter rain.

Jefferson maintained experimental gardens in an effort to determine which fruit and vegetables were best grown in the Virginia climate. During his time in Paris, he shipped European plants to Monticello and American plants to Paris. And he both collected and distributed seeds from friends and neighbors in America, the Lewis and Clark expedition, and European gardeners as well.

Most of Monticello was in cultivation. Jefferson grew fruit, vegetables, and flowers for the main house and cash crops, tobacco and later wheat, to enable the purchase of other goods. However, the plantation was not successful, in part because of debt inherited from his wife's family, in part due to crop failure, and Jefferson died in debt.