Spring & Summer Vegetables

MORE REFLECTIONS FROM A T.P. CHILDHOOD By Ted Tyler

Claudia’s new raised beds garden (west side of the clay tennis courts) brings back memories of the late 1930’s and early ‘40’s when the T.P. was still Missisquoi Farm. (It’s been that long since we’ve had a real vegetable garden contributing seasonal herbs and produce to the table.) In those days a large garden occupied the area between the barn with its out-buildings and Old Dock and Shipyard Bay roads, subsequently displaced by a horse/pony riding ring and now by the soccer field southeast of the Pool Complex.


No one born since World War II can fully appreciate the mouth-watering succulence of each crop of vegetables as it matured in a rural area. In those days Boston, New York and other cities received some produce as vegetables ripened in more southerly states, but these didn’t percolate to the “sticks”. Vermonters’ tomatoes, properly tended, provided the real thing into October, but for all intents and purposes the only fresh vegetables after that month until the following June were root vegetables kept in sand or otherwise in the cellar. Of course everyone “canned” in mason jars, but preserved green beans (or pretty much anything else) versus the real thing, freshly picked, offered no comparison at all.


The earliest spring “vegetable” was horseradish. As far as kids were concerned, this was not considered a plus. An earlier entry for those who knew to dig when the ground had just begun to thaw, but not too late, was parsnips, amazingly sweeter than if they had been harvested and consumed in the fall. However, the first real green vegetable was asparagus – hugely delicious and available in early May, a good month before anything but the salad vegetables (chives, lettuce, radishes and the like). And then that marvelous feast: the peas had come in! Plate after lip-smacking plate, unadorned except with salt, pepper and plenty of butter.


By late June and for the rest of the summer, life was good. Green and yellow beans (limas took the whole summer to mature) picked young and seedless. Summer squash. Beet greens with young beets attached. I smack my lips in recollection. The two best came midsummer and were the subject of substantial competition: who could bring in the first sweet corn or ripe tomato before August 1st? To this day at any price I’ve never found a tomato in the off-season that tastes like a tomato. And in those days (unlike today) corn-on-the-cob was overripe (or absent) with the exception of two months – August and September. August had meals with just one entrée – corn (plus butter and salt) - and finishing off eight to ten ears at a meal was no major feat.


I’ve excluded from this exposition the produce of the land – which was a major supplement in the decades referred to. Fiddleheads (yum!), cattails, young dandelions all were part of the spring larder, as were strawberries, cherries, red raspberries, black raspberries and blackberries in the summer, and puffballs and butternuts in the fall.


So getting back to 2010 I hate to give away Claudia’s secrets, but here are some of what you may find in her new garden: asparagus, beans, beets, cherry tomatoes, carrots, celery, cucumbers, eggplant, garlic, herbs (many varieties) flowers (for dining room), lettuce, onions, peas, peppers (a variety), potatoes, radishes, summer squash, tomatoes, zucchini. How sweet it is!