On a rainy Thursday at the end of April, the greenhouse at Hildene Farm in the dene is doing two things at once. Along one row, the last of the winter-hardy greens are finishing their season. The tatsoi has already been harvested. The arugula is bolting. The mustard is starting to seed. On the benches in the next room over, trays of allium, peppers, and tomatoes are getting ready to go out into the gardens, into the beds at the Welcome Center, and up to the home itself. Beginnings and endings, side by side. It is, Ann Ogden Hausslein (Hildene Farm Co-Director and Educator) says, her favorite time of year.
“People love it at the end of the season when it's a jungle in here,” Ann says, “but I also find it's fun at this time of year, when it's in transition.”
Ann has been a familiar presence in the dene for years. She started at Hildene running summer camps long before the current greenhouse complex was built, leading guests of all ages through the woods and fields. Today, alongside Kim Pinsonneault, she co-directs Hildene Farm. Her own preferred description, though, is the one that has long captured how she spends her days: Gardener Educator. “Aren’t I the lucky one?” she likes to say to the students who pass through. “I am a Gardener Educator.”
That dual identity shapes everything that happens in the dene. Ann is responsible for the plants - the gardens, the greenhouse, and the high tunnel (a space the team has long known as the Cold House) - but she is just as responsible for the high schoolers, college interns, BBA students, Stratton Mountain School volunteers, and Hildene volunteers who work alongside her. The carrots, she will readily admit, sometimes go in a week later than they “should.” That is because the people who might plant them are arriving on a different day. The plants seem to be taking it in stride, however.
This is, in Ann’s view, the privilege of working on a nonprofit educational farm. “If you have a CSA, and everyone has to have the cucumbers, your whole menu is based around the cucumbers, and if they fail - thankfully, we’re not in that role,” she says. “So you can figure out and do some really different and unique things.”
“Different things” might mean watching to see whether chard planted in the greenhouse in the fall will bolt and produce seed by spring (it does, and Ann is curious about the reasons why). It might mean letting a class from BBA’s Farm and Food Studies program at Hildene Farm plant the long-game crops, like the onions and tomatoes that Scout and Maria of Someday Farm help shepherd through the winter. It might mean inviting a college intern, a volunteer, or a curious guest to set their hands in the soil and learn something they did not know an hour earlier.
“Creativity can happen once you are familiar with your materials,” Ann says. “It’s the same way with a garden.”
The system Ann tends is what she calls a closed-loop one. Garden waste, the diverse manure of the farm’s animals, and the food scraps from on-site events all become compost, which finds its way back into the gardens and beds after months of careful turning by Travis on the grounds crew. Heat for the greenhouse comes from a radiant floor warmed primarily by wood pellets, with sunlight and the building’s concrete mass doing their share. Even the rain that fell on that April afternoon, Ann pointed out, is part of the equation. The dene is a wetland - “a sponge,” in her words - and when it floods, the water does not come over the bank from the Battenkill. It seeps up from below.
The flood plain is why the gardens you see today are sitting where they are. After a major flood a few seasons ago, the team built up higher ground for the gardens. The water still might lap to the edge, but it does not cover the beds.
For a guest walking through the dene this May, Ann has a quiet bit of advice that is both technical and reassuring. The greens, peas, mustard, lettuce, onions, and brassicas you see growing in the high tunnel right now are also the things you can plant in your home garden today. The summer crops - tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers - need to wait, of course. Over the mountain where Ann lives, that means waiting until Memorial Day. Down in the valley, Mother’s Day is sometimes safe. A good garden center, she notes, will tell you the same thing. (She is partial to Dutton’s in town and Clearbrook Farm down the valley, where the grower is, in her words, “one of the best I’ve ever come upon in my life.”)
If a late frost still catches a tender plant, take comfort in something Ann learned from the friends and family who first taught her: a late, gentle snow is “poor man’s fertilizer,” delivering nitrogen quietly to the soil.
By the time the next Hildene Spotlight reaches your inbox, the high tunnel will look very different. The rows of tatsoi and arugula will be gone. The tomatoes and cucumbers will be in. The garlic out by the BBA Garden will be standing taller. There will be more bees in the air, more young hands in the soil, and another season of the gardens, new and old, underway.
If you find yourself on the property this spring, Ann’s invitation is open. “Come anytime and take pictures, and dig in,” she said. “It’s always changing.”
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The gardens and greenhouse at Hildene Farm in the dene are supported by ongoing partnerships with BBA’s Farm and Food Studies program at Hildene Farm, Someday Farm, and Hildene’s volunteer corps. Visit hildene.org to learn more or to plan your spring visit.
