Massachusetts autumn day. By happy accident, I met Christie White, the training interpreter for horticulture at the village, as she was dodging the mud puddles, clad in her brogans and bonnet. Someone pointed her out as the person who oversaw the vegetable gardens. I introduced myself, and immediately we were comparing notes on Indian flint corn and old ‘Case Knife’ beans. I soon discovered that Christie was well on her way to seeing that the village vegetable gardens were filled with the same varieties that were grown in the 1830s. Thus the gardens would be as true to the spirit of this New England village as the saltbox houses.
Christie’s vast experience with heirlooms made her my prime resource for information on heirloom gardening in a historical context. When I interviewed her at Old Sturbridge Village, I found her perspective on these vegetables and their growers to be quite different from that of most other heirloom gardeners. Others grow heirlooms for their taste or to preserve endangered seeds, but Christie was primarily concerned with the larger historical setting of heirlooms. Christie was also fascinated by the lives of the gardeners who tilled the soil in the 1830s. The extent of her absorption didn’t really become clear, though, until I began transcribing my notes and noticed her consistent, eerie use of the present tense to refer to things that happened 170 years ago.
Christie led me to a re-created garden that is portrayed as that of a middle-class 1830s farmer by the name of Pliny Freeman. As was typical of the times, Mr. Freeman had a kitchen garden adjacent to his house in addition to the farm that provided grain, meat, and cider for the family. The kitchen garden, which covers about a quarter of an acre, would have been tended by his wife and children.
Christie had the garden maintained as closely as possible to the way it would have been in the early nineteenth century—dressed with manure and wood ashes, with crops rotated annually. The varieties, except for the cucumbers, are relatively maintenance-free, thus making them a good choice for modern New England gardeners. Christie obtained most of the seeds for the Freeman garden from Shumway’s and Landreth seed companies.
As Christie explained to me about gardening as an exercise in history, “When we plan the gardens at the village, we allot certain portions of the garden based on what we think the people emphasized in their diet, so that much of the garden space is given over to vegetables that store well—carrots, beets, and turnips, for instance. There is a generous planting of beans and peas too. We have receipts [recipes] for them. In contrast, less space is given to lettuce, for example. A farmer like Mr. Freeman probably grew only a few types of lettuce—cos, a romaine type—and a mustard, but he supplemented these greens with easily gathered wild dandelions. As was customary, wild greens supplemented the few greens people grew in their gardens. Summer squash is grown at the Freeman house, and we don’t preserve that in any way; but we might have three hills of summer squash to seven or eight hills of winter squash of various types, and pumpkins are grown right in with the field corn for winter vegetable use.
“In the Freeman garden, some vegetables interest our visitors because they’re unfamiliar. In particular, we grow ‘Boston Marrow,’ a good winter-keeping squash. It’s very large, dramatic, and scarlet orange in color. It has sweet orange flesh that is very like pumpkin in flavor. What fall visitors also notice is that the ‘Early Blood-Red Turnip Beet’ and the ‘Long Orange’ carrot are generally much bigger and much more variable in size and shape than supermarket varieties. The large beet varieties grow to five inches across without becoming woody or unpleasant, because they were designed not only to be eaten fresh but also to be stored in the root cellar. The root vegetables really have to be large before they’ll store well. Small, very thin carrots and tiny beets tend to shrivel and wither in storage.
“We grow cabbages with storage in mind. ‘Late Flat Dutch’ and ‘Mammoth Red Rock’ cabbage both form very firm, tight heads. We store them by hanging them upside down in a root cellar or we bury them in an outside pit, or grave, as it was sometimes called.
“We also grow peas, in the Freeman garden. Peas are an example of a vegetable that has been modified so much in recent years that it’s very hard to obtain authentic varieties from 1830. We did obtain an old variety called ‘Early Alaska,’ as well as ‘Prince Albert,’ but for our tall-growing peas, until recently we had to grow a variety called ‘Tall Telephone.’ Obviously, with a name like ‘Telephone,’ this pea doesn’t go back to 1830, but it is a late-nineteenth-century variety resembling tall vining varieties cultivated earlier in the century. ‘Tall Telephone’ requires staking on pea brush—dead prunings of shrubs or trees—used to support peas.
The farms at Old Sturbridge Village are recreations of Colonial farmsteads. The gardens are filled with heirloom vegetables and fruits and visitors are treated to both gardening and cooking demonstrations using open hearth methods.
“We also grow parsnips. Many of the visitors have never heard of them, but parsnips were very common in the 1830s. They store so well that we can leave them in garden rows over the winter and dig them up in March for a very sweet, delicious vegetable.
“Our bean, which we grow primarily for use as a shell bean, is the ‘True Cranberry.’ The shelled bean is as red as a cranberry. People visiting us aren’t familiar with the traditional practice of leaving pole beans on the vine to mature in the pod for threshing, shelling out, and using as a dry bean. Accustomed only to eating beans fresh, they’re often critical of our pole beans when they see them overmature. It’s very common to hear a visitor comment, ‘You should have picked your beans two weeks ago.’ Then we have to explain that people in the 1830s, if they were growing a bean primarily for storage, would pick some of those beans in the very young, tender stage for immediate cooking but would leave most of the crop in the garden to mature for threshing so they could have beans over the winter.
“In addition to the vegetables, there are a few culinary herbs growing in the Freeman garden: horseradish, sage, basil, parsley, marjoram, chives, mint, dill, and summer savory. Some were eaten fresh, and others were dried. Unusual for today’s gardens are the hops that were grown to preserve a yeast culture.
“Many of our visitors remark on how their own gardens differ from those generally grown in the last century. The modern garden is designed for fresh eating in the summer; and if the time, space, and surplus vegetables are available, the gardener will put aside some things for winter. In the nineteenth century the family garden was grown primarily for a year-round supply of vegetables; the fresh vegetables and greens of the summer months were a bonus to enjoy.”
You can visit Old Sturbridge Village and see the Freeman garden and the other historical gardens as well as attend their many events throughout the year—from herb classes to pressing apples for cider. For visitors passionate about heirloom vegetables one of the high points of the year is the annual event called “An Early Nineteenth-Century Agricultural Fair” celebrated in late September.
The gardens at Old Sturbridge Village are planted and interpreted to the public every year. Christie is doing more behind-the-scenes work these days, but with a little luck, you might run into her if you go for a visit. In speaking with her, I felt as if an important piece of my heirloom vegetable puzzle had slipped smoothly into place.
The Blüm Heirloom Garden
No one could be blasé traveling to Jan Blum’s garden. To get there, I drove northward out of Boise, Idaho, gaining altitude as I went. The highway straddles the famous Snake River Canyon, and as I continued northward I could see dry grassland and scrub for miles. The region looks so untamed, I couldn’t help wondering how anyone could garden out there. But then I came into a lush garden filled with leafy vegetables and bright flowers. Butterflies and birds flitted about, completing the idyllic picture.
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