wheat field (Richmond County)
The English colonists introduced wheat into Virginia in the 1600's. The grain helped the colonists become self-sufficient in food production by the 1630's. By 1739, Virginia was exporting large amounts of wheat to the West Indies.,1
In the later half of the 1700's, Virginia farmers (particularly George Washington) diversified away from tobacco and started growing more wheat. Unlike tobacco, wheat exports did not require the same financial entanglements with English merchants, who might sell the tobacco at a price considered to be too low by the planters in Virginia.
Most of Virginia's "internal improvements" (turnpikes, canals, and railroads) were designed to connect the wheat- and tobacco-growing regions in the Piedmont/Shenandoah Valley with ports on the Atlantic seaboard. By the 1850's, the Shenandoah Valley was a major wheat-growing area; Alexandria, Richmond and Norfolk were major wheat exporting ports. Today, wheat production in Virginia is concentrated in the Northern Neck. The Eastern Virginia Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Warsaw (Richmond County) provides technical assistance on small grain field research, including how to maximize production from no-till fields (where soil is not ploughed, minimizing labor/energy costs and retaining soil moisture).
For 400 years, wheat seeds (mostly starch, but with gluten-rich proteins) have been ground into flour at mills all across Virginia for making bread and other baked goods. Mills were centers of community as well as industrial operations. Small mills ground wheat and other grains for local farmers, who often took home the flour from their own crop (minus the portion of "toll" paid to the miller). Merchant mills paid cash for wheat, then sold the flour separately. The Chapmans Mill in Thoroughfare Gap (on the border of Prince William and Fauquier counties) was expanded to 7 stories in 1758 to become one of the tallest stone structures in the United States, after the Manassas Gap Railroad connected the mill directly to the port of Alexandria in 1752.
Today, stone millwheels are primarily decorative items, but a few still-operating mills require millers to "keep their nose to the grindstone" to check the quality of the flour.
Wheat is a domesticated grass. In Virginia, most wheat fields today are soft red winter wheat. Seeds are planted in the Fall, in September-December, and harvested in June-July.
1. Harold B. Gill, Jr., "Wheat Culture in Colonial Virginia," Agricultural History, Vol.52, No.3 (Jul., 1978), p.381
