Part 1
by Gail Falk, Staff Writer
Editor's introduction: The building that is now the sprawling Plainfield Hardware & General Store started out, decades ago, as the little farmstand pictured on the cover. In this article Gail Falk traces its history from this humble beginning. In the next newsletter, she will trace the history of the Plainfield Hardware store from its beginning in Plainfield village through its ascent to Route 2.
We are grateful to Ed Hutchinson for sharing his memories and photographs of Hutchinson Gardens.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This piece is divided into three sections:
I Hutchinson Gardens
When Frank and Grace Hutchinson bought 13 acres of land just over the East Montpelier line to start a farm with their son Lyndol, the land was open field, bisected by Old Route 2. Lyndol was living on School Street with his wife Edna, a nurse, where he raised chickens and delivered eggs to Barre and Montpelier homes.
Gradually, the Hutchinsons tilled the fields and planted crops. They planted corn and squash on the south side of the highway. Carrots thrived in the sandy soil there. They dug a long trench, filled it with a load of manure from a nearby farm, and put in an asparagus bed that flourished for years.
By the 1940’s Hutchinson Gardens had a name and a small vegetable stand that catered to passing traffic as well as supplying fresh vegetables to residents of Plainfield and East Montpelier. In the photo you can see how narrow Route 2 was at the time.
Over time, the Hutchisons made improvements: they put in a deep well (paid for with Dept. of Agriculture funds), and a new farmstand on a concrete slab three times the width of the original shed. The new building had 5 garage-type doors to pull down when the store was closed.
When the government widened and relocated Route 2, broadening the highway and taking two or three acres of the farmland, it created such a disturbance that it was difficult to farm and sales slowed to a trickle for an entire season. The upside, however, was that the government compensated the Hutchisons for the disruption and loss of income and for the land taken. They used part of the money to make improvements, such as a cooler in the farmstand.
Hutchinson Gardens mostly carried vegetables and flowers raised on the farm as well as eggs, maple syrup and honey. Lyndol would sometimes go into Barre to buy fruit at the Vermont Fruit Company behind the Old Labor Hall, but this was mostly for passing tourists. They didn’t sell groceries because, at that time, Plainfield Village had 4 or 5 grocery stores.
Right: Lyndol and his daughter Cheryl planting a second crop in the mid-1960’s
Each spring the Hutchisons started vegetable and flower seedlings in a greenhouse or hotbeds on the family’s School Street property. The store opened each May when the first early crops, like radishes and lettuce, were ready, and it was time to prepare the fields. Summer, of course, was the height of the season, and in fall they sold pumpkins, winter squash, and apples brought back from the family’s annual trip to the orchards of Shoreham. They sold sweet corn later than anyone else in the area because Lyndol planted a special variety of midwestern corn with kernels that continued to ripen after a frost from juices in the dead stalks. They closed for the year in time for the first day of hunting season.
Hutchinson Gardens was a family affair. Lyndol’s three children, Cheryl, Joan and Ed, worked in the fields and in the store until they left for college. Ed recalls his grandmother Grace picking beans into her 70’s. “They said she hated to see a bean go to waste,” says Ed. Frank, disabled from diabetes, would sit in front of the store in his wheelchair greeting customers and listening to Red Sox games on the radio. The farm hired Goddard students, and, says Ed, “almost every kid in Plainfield spent at least a summer pulling weeds.” Lucy Blue fondly recalls riding to the farm in the back of a pickup truck with a load of schoolmates — her first job.
By the 1980’s, Lyndol, who was born in 1912, was slowing down, and he no longer had the help of Ed and Cheryl. He still planted easy crops like corn, and each year planted less. When Shelley Vermilya and Maxine Reizenstein approached him about letting them take over the farm building, he was ready to retire.
Photographs courtesy of Ed Hutchinson
II Trout Lily Gardens
Shelley Vermilya was one of the wave of young people who came to Plainfield as a college student and stayed. For a while, she had a gig selling T-shirts on Church Street in Burlington. Then she and her then-partner, Maxine Reizenstein, decided to start their own business. Both loved gardening. They took over the north part of Hutchinson Gardens, and established Trout Lily Gardens, a plant and garden business. They sold plants and garden supplies from the old farmstand, as well as garden-related gift items. They also did landscaping and gardening for individuals. Almost 40 years later, Kit Gates and Mark Yorra still enjoy the shade garden Vermilya installed in front of their home on Upper Road.
It was a “sweet situation,” Vermilya recalls, with a sandbox for children, but it was very hard work and never produced enough income to keep up the monthly payments on the property. The business was plagued with vandalism. In retrospect, Vermilya thinks antisemitic, anti-outsider, anti-feminist and homophobic attitudes were factors in the business’s failure to thrive in the 1980’s. Today they would probably flourish. In the early 1990’s, Trout Lily closed, and the property reverted to the Hutchinson family.
—— —— —— —— —— Article continues after ad —— —— —— —— ——
III Legare Farm Market
Merrill Legare bought the farmstand and three-acre lot on the north side of Route 2 from the Hutchinson family in 1993 to supplement his on-farm retail outlet and his farmstand on the Barre- Montpelier Road.
Legare, from Groton, was originally a logger. He bought an 80-acre property along Route 14 in Calais in 1966. After clearing part of the land, he planted an acre of sweet corn and sold the corn in the fall from a roadside stand. That was such a success that he kept clearing and planting until, by 1993, he was one of the leading produce farmers in the area and was looking for other outlets for his produce.
Legare removed the old Hutchinson Gardens farmstand on the site and built a more permanent building facing the highway, which is the core of the store today. Called Legare Farm Market, it had a 2700 sq. ft. farmstand market, with a 4483 sq. ft. seasonal greenhouse on the east side. Ninety percent of the plants, fruits, and vegetables sold at the market were grown on the Legare farm. Originally a year-round store, Legare cut back to a three-season store in the 2000’s.
Here is a description of the market by Jess Taylor (recent Plainfield Co-op board member) in 2003, when the market was in full swing:
There are large bins of potatoes, onions, fresh produce, homemade dressings, pickles, and relish. Pies baked on the premises, homemade fudge, locally baked cookies and breads are just a few of the treats to be found. There are bags of nuts, raisins, dried fruits and more. All this is in addition to the daily needed items of milk, cheese, and eggs.
After the rush of spring planting, flowers give way to garden produce. Peas, lettuce, and spinach lead the way, soon to be followed by the famous Legare strawberry run …. As the summer progresses, the produce increases – beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, broccoli, and so on.
Sweet corn is another one of Legare’s top sellers …. The summer salad bowl at Legare’s slowly gives way to the fall harvest. Squash, pumpkins, local apples and hardy mums add autumn color to the market. …Christmas trees, also grown on the home farm, usher in the last of the Legare Market seasons. (from the East Montpelier Signpost)
As it turned out, the very last of the Legare seasons was in 2005. Legare sold the market and property in 2006 to Rich and Gaye Christiansen for $312,000.
Part 2 of this series appears in the Plainfield Co-op Newsletter, Fall 2024