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16 U.S. Presidents Who Were Also Farmers

From George Washington to George W. Bush, 16 presidents have lived and worked on farms and ranches
Image may contain Animal Mammal Cattle Cow Human Person Bull and Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Johnson looks over his prize Hereford bull on his ranch in Texas in 1960.AP

With the approval of the Agricultural Act earlier this month, the tremendous amount of influence that the president wields over the nation's farms was made very clear. But that relationship doesn't begin and end with legislation. The people who find themselves at the helm our nation are also, quite often, the same people who tend to harvest hay, roam the ranch, milk the cows, and all that out-under-the-big-blue-sky whatnot. And it's not just the gentlemen farmers with vast tracts of land who founded the country in their spare time. America's about land and freedom and amber fields of grain, so it's no surprise that our list of presidents includes a peanut farmer, an experimental botanist, and more than a couple cattle ranchers. Here are all the presidents who farmed.

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    Junius Brutus Stearns, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
    1/16

    George Washington

    George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree—he was too hands-off for that kind of work. He did, however, oversee a vast plantation at Mount Vernon in Virginia, where he was fairly innovative for his time in implementing crop rotation and introducing grain farming to more tobacco-focused lands.

  • Harvard University, Arboretum
    2/16

    John Adams

    John Adams's farm in Quincy, Massachusetts, was called Peacefield, which sounds absolutely divine. He and his wife, Abigail, owned 40 acres of orchards and farmland, and passed the land down to sixth president and son, John Quincy Adams.

  • Thomas Jefferson Foundation
    3/16

    Thomas Jefferson

    Thomas Jefferson was a tinkering farmer. After he was done leading the country, he took to the farm: "From breakfast, or noon at the latest, to dinner, I am mostly on horseback, Attending to My Farm or other concerns, which I find healthful to my body, mind, and affairs." On his extensive Monticello gardens, plus his additional 5,000 acres of nearby farmland, he experimented with 330 varieties of fruits and veggies, including new and old world grapes, over 100 kinds of fruit trees, and then-exotic curiosities like sesame, chickpeas, and kale.

  • 4/16

    James Monroe

    The fifth president's farm at Oak Hill has been a working farm since 1724, and is still a privately owned residence and farm. Monroe returned to the farm in 1825 after two presidential terms to kick back for some memoir-writing and casual farming.

  • Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes, Metropolitan Museum of Art
    5/16

    William Henry Harrison

    Who? Oh yeah, the ninth president of the United States, who was essentially retired at his farm in Ohio until he took office in 1840—only to pass away from pneumonia just 32 days after being sworn in.

  • Library of Congress
    6/16

    James C. Tyler

    The tenth president's farm, Walnut Grove in Virgina, actually belonged to William Henry Harrison before him. Tyler renamed the property Sherwood Forest, allegedly because he considered himself to have been "outlawed," Robin Hood–style, from the Whigs.

  • 7/16

    James K. Polk

    The 11th president of the United States, James K. Polk was 10 years old when he and his family trundled across the Appalachian Mountains in a covered wagon from North Carolina to set up a farm on the Tennessee frontier. Despite his rural lifestyle, he was a pretty sickly child, and as an adult wisely chose law over the fields.

  • 8/16

    Abraham Lincoln

    Lincoln was a frontier farm boy through and through. From a one-room log cabin in Illinois, first on Sinking Springs Farm and then Knob Creek Farm, he ending up transforming the American agricultural system with the founding of the Department of Agriculture, establishment of the Land Grant system, and passing of the Homestead Act.

  • Library of Congress
    9/16

    Ulysses S. Grant

    U.S. Grant was reportedly a miserable farmer. In between military campaigns, farming was just one of the things he tried his hand at, along with real estate and leather goods. It's certainly not a good thing the country went back to war, but well, career-wise...

  • 10/16

    Theodore Roosevelt

    It was Teddy Roosevelt's commitment to cattle ranching that took him from scrawny East Coaster to the big, burly Rough Rider type we remember him as today. Over the course of his life, he poured much of his fortune into cattle ranching, even losing almost all of his herd during one harsh winter. His deep attachment to the land spurred his later commitment to work in conservation and national parks. "It is certainly a most healthy life," he wrote. "How a man does sleep, and how he enjoys the coarse fare!"

  • The Library of Congress,
    11/16

    Harry Truman

    In 1906, when he was 22, the future 34th president quit his bank job and moved back to the family farm in Grandview, Missouri, and worked there for 11 years. He milked cows, fed livestock, and allegedly could "stir up as good a batch of biscuits as any woman."

  • AP
    12/16

    Lyndon Johnson

    LBJ, Prez #36, grew up helping his uncle on his cattle ranch. When he became president and had his own "LBJ Ranch," he would make daily calls to check up on rain fall and general bullish well-being. The ranch, more than just a bucolic getaway, became a nice party trick for distinguished visitors like President Nixon and West Germany Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

  • Hulton Archive
    13/16

    Jimmy Carter

    Jimmy Carter, the 39th President, grew up on his parents' peanut farm outside of Plains, Georgia. By the time he took over the family biz, he wasn't growing peanuts anymore, but he bought from farms and worked in distribution and storage.

  • AP
    14/16

    Ronald Reagan

    Ronald Reagan wasn't farming, per se, but in the tradition of commanders-in-chief keeping a ranch as a White House getaway, he did really like his horses at Rancho del Cielo in California.

  • 15/16

    Bill Clinton

    Growing up in Arkansas, Bill Clinton spent a good amount of time on family farms, and even lived for a year on a 400-acre farm with his parents and their many cattle, sheep, and goats. As Bill spilled to Modern Farmer last year, he and his great-uncle Bill had a grand ol' time cooking fresh-harvested produce, cranking homemade ice cream, and seemingly getting into some trouble with rams.

  • 16/16

    George W. Bush

    Like LBJ, George W. had a penchant for ranching. His sanctuary of choice is Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas, an almost 1,600-acre property that was known as the "Western White House."

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