wheat, barley,
pease, or any other tolerably round grain, that you may wish to sow or
plant in this manner. I have sown oats very well with it, which is among
the most inconvenient and unfit grains for this machine.... A small bag,
containing about a peck of the seed you are sowing, is hung to the nails
on the right handle, and with a small tin cup the barrel is replenished
with convenience, whenever it is necessary, without loss of time, or
waiting to come up with the seed-bag at the end of the row."

As Washington says, the drill would probably work well under ideal
conditions, but there were features of it that would incline, I have no
doubt, to make its operator swear at times. There was a leather band
that ran about the barrel with holes corresponding to those in the
barrel, the purpose of the band being to prevent the seeds issuing out
of more than one hole at the same time. This band had to be "slackened
or braced" according to the influence of the atmosphere upon the
leather, and sometimes the holes in the band tended to gape and admit
seed between the band and the barrel, in which case Washington found it
expedient to rivet "a piece of sheet tin, copper, or brass, the width of
the band, and about four inches long, with a hole through it, the size
of the one in the leather."

Washington was, however, very proud of the drill, and it must have
worked fairly well, for he was not the man to continue to use a
worthless implement simply because he had made it. He even used it to
sow very small seed. In the summer of 1786 he records: "Having fixed a
Roller to the tale of my drill plow, & a brush between it and the
barrel, I sent it to Muddy Hole & sowed turnips in the intervals
of corn[5]."

[5] Another passage from his papers in which he mentions using his drill
plow is also illustrative of the emphasis he placed upon having the seed
bed for a crop properly prepared. The passage describes his sowing some
spring wheat and is as follows: "12th [of April, 1785].--Sowed sixteen
acres of Siberian wheat, with eighteen quarts, in rows between corn,
eight feet apart. This ground had been prepared in the following manner:
1. A single furrow; 2. another in the same to deepen it; 3. four furrows
to throw the earth back into the two first, which made ridges of five
furrows. These, being done some time ago, and the sowing retarded by
frequent rains, had got hard; therefore, 4. before the seed was sown,
these ridges were split