OLD-FASHIONED COMPANION PLANTING

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GEARING UP FOR THE SPRING GARDEN

By John Vivian

It wasn't till one evening in June—a little more than three years after quitting the city rat race and moving onto a little New England hill farm-that I began to feel deep down that I'd really arrived on the land.

I'd collected the eggs, fed and watered stock that morning, put supers on the beehives, worked the gardens, and fed the weeds and thinnings to the rabbits and goats over the afternoon. Then my wife and I and some special guests (the kind who help cook and clean up) sat down to a feast that no restaurant offered and that no grocery could provision—our first 100% fresh, 100% chemical-free (and nearly cost free to boot), 100% home-raised meal. The entree was crisp on the outside, succulent inside haunch of spring chevon (that's kid—young goat) I'd spit-roasted on the hearth. We had roasted White Mountain potatoes from the cold cellar, wheat bread still steaming from the woodstove oven, sugar snap peas and young beets with greens from the gardens, and a half-cultivated/half-wild green salad dressed with home-pressed apple-cider vinegar—all of it washed down with homemade dandelion/citrus wine and pioneer coffee of ground roast white oak acorns and chicory root. Highlights were a sauce for the chevon made with our own honey, cracked turnip (mustard) seed, vinegar, and fresh grated horseradish, crisp but tender asparagus almost two inches thick at the base, and strawberry-rhubarb pie from the asparagus/strawberry-rhubarb/horseradish bed I'd put in during our first spring on the place.

Over the years, goats and other livestock came and went, vegetables were planted every spring, and the home cider pressing and wine making was so labor intensive that it proved to be but a brief experiment. But the asparagus/strawberry etc. bed fed us with little attention till real-estate development pushed us farther into the wilderness. Last I heard it was producing still for new owners more than a generation later.

It is mighty fine to sink your roots and psyche into a piece of land, even if it's no more than an acre or two and you still commute to a paying job in town. A good way to confirm those roots to yourself is to set in plants that may take awhile to bear, but that will continue producing for years, decades, or a lifetime. It affirms that you anticipate a degree of calm and settled, rural, low-tech permanency in this unsettled, urbanized, high-tech age. If you'll be able to stay put for a while (or perhaps, even if you won't) here's how to build an old-time asparagus/strawberry bed, with plantings of horseradish and rhubarb that will feed you and yours for 20 years and more.

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