From the wheat they made flour and bread for themselves, and with the corn they fed their hogs and horses and from it also made meal for the use of their slaves.

In the culture of neither crop were they much advanced beyond the Egyptians of the times of the Pyramids.

The wheat was reaped with sickles or cradles and either flailed out or else trampled out by cattle and horses, usually on a dirt floor in the open air.

Washington estimated in 1791 that the average crop of wheat amounted to only eight or ten bushels per acre, and the yield of corn was also poor.
So much emphasis was laid upon tobacco that many planters failed to produce food enough.

Some raised none at all, with the result that often both men and animals were poorly fed, and at best the cost of food and forage exhausted most of the profits.