While residing at Greenway Court, Martin would have preferred more comfortable quarters than the rustic estate, as their living situation there was originally supposed to have been only temporary until the construction of a grander estate. In 1767, Martin wrote that plans for further construction and improvements at Greenway Court "remain in status quo and in quo state they are likely to remain, ...we are building castles, tho' not on earth where one is greatly wanted, but castles in the air." Martin's uncle Robert Fairfax remarked on the primitive life at Greenway Court among "strange, brutish people... past all conception". For the next thirty years, until Lord Fairfax's death in 1781, Martin remained at Greenway Court and shared in the loneliness and solitude of his "self-exiled" uncle. While established at Greenway Court, Martin engaged in agricultural pursuits. In 1768, Martin described tobacco as the crop "which is our all". Like many other planters and farmers in the Shenandoah Valley, Martin had transitioned to the farming of wheat by 1792, at which time he wrote to his brother in England, "Are you all starving that you give such prices for our flour; farming is now my object."