This Virginia farm had great fields of oats, corn, wheat, and other grains; beautiful pastures with strong, fine horses, good cows, and fleecy sheep; and large barnyards of hens, ducks, and geese. There were two gristmills for grinding McCormicks’ and their neighbors’ grain into flour and meal. Two sawmills quickly turned logs into broad planks and stout boards. A smelting furnace turned iron ore from the near-by mountain into lumps of pure iron all ready for the farm’s blacksmith to hammer and beat into horseshoes, pincers, tongs, crowbars, hammers, and other tools needed on the farm. They spun and wove their own cloth and made it into clothing；they made their own soap and candles, dyes, hogsheads, barrels, tubs, and vats. In fact, that old McCormick family, like all other farmers of the time, did everything for themselves.

Every year they plowed and planted great fields of corn, wheat, and oats. And every year when the grain was ripe, every man, woman, and child of the McCormick family went out into the grain fields to help bring in their winter’s food.