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  puts down

roots in the hilltown of Middletown Springs

 

BY EUAN BEAR

annilu Harrison is the
best gardener I know,
and she’s had a lot of
practice. The only time she did-
n’t have a garden was in her
first 5 years of teaching school,
when she was boarding or rent-
ing an apartment and there was '
no land available for digging
into. She now grows “oh, 60 to
65 different things, including all
the varieties,” she says.
Take a deep breath:

Twelve varieties of shell beans,
peas, carrots, beets, onions, let-
tuce, kohlrabi, cauliflower,
broccoli, Brussels sprouts, egg
plants, cabbage, collard greens,
spinach, Swiss chard, kale, pep-
pers both sweet and hot, turnips,
potatoes (white, yellow, red,
and blue), corn, parsnips,
cucumbers, horse radish, sum-
mer squash and zucchini, winter

squash, lima beans, tomatoes
(plum, cherry, and slicing),
leeks, radishes, soybeans (“Oh,
yeah,” chimes in her partner
Sherry Underwood, “We’ve just
discovered how good they are
green, just cook ’em up like
lima beans, mmm-mmm.” ,
pumpkins, and okra, just to
name a few. That’s not counting
the fruits (blueberries and rasp-
berries, among others) and the
flowers.

And she does it in
Middletown Springs, a small
town huddled on the hills (ele—'
vation 1500-2200 feet) south-
west of Rutland. We’re not talk-
ing banana belt here. It’s
nowhere near the lake’s warm-
ing effect.

‘She started gardening
with her family in south-central
Georgia during the Depression.
“I was born in 1929, I’m a
Depression baby. We grew all

our own crops, plus pigs and
chickens, and we fished a lot.
Peaches, two kinds of pears,
apples. We used to dry our
fruits on the tin roof of the
chicken coop. We had a pecan

tree and walnuts ...” she gazes
off into the warm dusty past,
remembering.

Her short white hair
frames a face that looks like it
loves the sun, even in April. She
peers across the table through
oval glasses, smiling often in a
way that makes you understand
how the lines got there. She
exudes a warmth that would
bring out crocuses and daffodils
well before their time.

“When I was 5, I
picked cotton. Where the cotton
bolls, the pods open up, there
are sharp points, just like
thorns, and when you pick out
the fluffy boll, your hands
would get all scratched and

bloody. We had butter beans
and peas planted on the little
hills, called ‘terraces,’ between
the cotton rows.

“We grew cane — sugar
cane — and made cane syrup.
We saved our own seeds.” After ‘
the harvest, Vannie continues,
“the boys would go down near
the crick [that’s creek to us] and
dig a hole, and lay down pine
straw,” (Sherry interrupts,
“That’s needles.”) “lay in the
sweet potatoes, and cover ’em
up again with dirt. An’ that way,
see, we could go down and just
dig up a corner, take out a few,
and cover ’em up again, keep
’em nearly all winter and they
wouldn’t freeze.”

She got her first north-
ern garden when she was teach-
ing in upstate New York. She
was talking to friends, a straight
couple, about how much she
missed having a garden. “‘Oh,