Tour the grounds at Farmington and imagine plantation life in the 1830s.  According to an early visitor, one entered a "gateway" and beheld "the broad greensward of the great avenue" that led up to the main house from the Bardstown turnpike.  A limestone bridge spanned the runoff from the spring, ushering visitors toward a gated split-rail fence that separated the house and yards from the agricultural fields.  In gardens behind the house, a variety of vegetables and fruits ranging from artichokes and asparagus to watermelons grew along with an assortment of herbs. Flowers, such as larkspur, hollyhocks and sweet William probably bordered the area.  In an 1835 letter Mary Speed writes, "... a little while ago I looked out in the garden and saw [sister] Eliza stooping down scratching in the borders, she had on her Calico wrapper with great big flowers, and her green Calash with her neck all muffled up; she cut such a splash that at first I thought it was a great peacock that had strayed here." This is the only known reference to the garden where the enslaved cultivated vegetables and flowers under the direction of Lucy Speed.

When Kentucky landscape architect Anne Bruce Haldeman recreated the Farmington garden in the early 1960s, she intended to make the design historically accurate, "a record in color, form and fragrance," of the period.  Although it is not an exact replica of the original garden, the Haldeman garden has significance in its own right. Today, dedicated volunteers maintain this important contribution by one of Kentucky's preeminent landscape architects. 

Near the gardens, outbuildings and yards closest to the main house supported domestic activities that included cooking, soap making, washing and butchering.  The buildings and fields for crops and animals stretched beyond.

Farmington was a 550-acre working plantation--a center of agriculture and industry that required an extensive labor force. A world designed to support a successful hemp plantation existed outside the Speed's house.  It was a world where approximately 60 enslaved African Americans lived, worked and died.

By the mid 1830s, hemp was the primary cash crop at Farmington and throughout the Kentucky Bluegrass region.  Hemp, used to make rope and bagging, was the most labor-intensive crop grown in nineteenth century Kentucky.  By requiring a tremendous work force, it perpetuated slavery in the Commonwealth.  Farmington fields also produced wheat, corn, clover, cabbages, and potatoes in large quantities. 

Speed family letters indicate an abundance of fruit trees, including peach, cherry, plum and apple. Enslaved African Americans Morocco and Rose sold currants, June apples and raspberries at Louisville markets. Cider and vinegar, made from apples, were important commodities.  In August 1835, John Speed wrote to his son, Joshua, saying "I ought to have stated that my orchard is very full - and it may not be amiss to enquire how boiled cider would pay at Springfield..."

Animals were also an important component of the Farmington enterprise and the enslaved tended horses, hogs, sheep, cattle, chickens and ducks.  In addition to meat, animal by-products included butter, tallow for candles and soap and feathers for pillows and mattresses.