Farm Equipment

Farm Equipment. Built 1910-1940s. , These antique farm pieces demonstrate how a large estate such as Nemours was largely self-sustaining. In 1908, Alfred I. duPont acquired the large farmstead north of Wilmington known as "Blue Ball," for an 18th-century tavern that once stood there. The following year, he set off a 300-acre tract on the Northwest part of the farm to become the site of his Nemours Estate, and kept the rest as a working farm. Blue Ball Farm's cattle, chickens and hosts furnished meat and dairy products for the estate, while its fields yielded hay, oats and corn., In addition to the farm, other areas on Nemours Estate took part in food production. Potatoes, asparagus and strawberries used to grow in the large field adjacent to this display of farm equipment. Vegetables and some fruits were also grown in a large kitchen garden behind the Laundry, half of which is now covered by the staff parking lot. It yielded strawberries and other berries, along with beans, beets, carrots, cabbages, corn, eggplants, salad greens, peas, tomatoes and herbs. Grapes from the arbor which ran through the center of that garden were used to make jams and wine. Melon, figs and cucumbers were raised in the estate's greenhouses; mushrooms were grown in their cellars. Nearby, fruit orchards furnished apples, pears, peaches, plums and cherries. Even the formal gardens played a role: their flowers furnished nectar for bees whose hives yielded gallons of honey., From the 1920s through the 1950s, tenants performed much of the farming work which went on around Nemours Estate. They and their families lived in rental houses along Murphy Road. "The best [of the produce] went to the Big House" [mansion], while "the tenants received the surplus foods," Roberta Whitcomb, a former resident, recalled in 2012. "So, for example, when asparagus was in season, tenants got asparagus, asparagus, and more asparagus. You at it until it was gone.