| AUGUST 14, 2009 -- Amid the homes stretching down hilly Allen Avenue, Mildred Bell holds onto a piece of the area's farming past, dispensing it one butternut squash at a time.
The 91-year-old was at the self-serve farm stand outside her home on Allen Ave., Friday morning when Vivian Fontaine, of Meriden, stopped on her way home.
"We just pop the money in the jar," Fontaine said. "We love it. ... My husband was dying for some cucumbers."
"I'm so glad you're going to do this again this year," Fontaine told Bell.
Laid out on a little table are cherry and regular tomatoes, basil, string beans, cucumbers, flowers, squash, eggplant and a few other items Bell grows in her garden, which resembles a small farm field. The tilled portion, lined on one side by raspberry bushes, takes up a large part of her 2-acre backyard.
On the table next to the produce sits a jar in which people can put their payment and make change when Bell is not around. Most of the time, however, she greets her patrons and chats with them for a bit.
Bell and her husband, Joe, before he died, have stocked the little table since around 1970.
It started simply enough, Bell said. They put in a few plants and found it wasn't quite enough for their family, so they planted more. Year after year they added more and after one bumper crop, her husband wondered what would happen if they put the extras on a table.
People started stopping by. The farm stand was born.
Bell's agricultural roots stretch back beyond the backyard garden started for her own family.
She grew up on Allen Hill Dairy Farm, owned by her father, William Hourigan. The 150-acre farm concentrated on milk production, but also had a large vegetable garden.
"I always helped out around the farm," she said.
By the 1960s, burdened by new regulations, Hourigan sold the farm for development. He put several lots aside on Allen Avenue for his children. Bell and her brother, 85-year-old John Hourigan, built houses there. She and Hourigan are the last of seven siblings.
John does the tilling on an ancient-looking tractor. Bell said she's in charge after that.
She moves steadily and sure-footedly through her garden, spending four hours a day tending to it.
"It's a lot of work," she said. "All my children are after me to quit, but I say, 'What do you want me to do, sit inside the house and watch television?' "
The 100 tomato plants have all come down with late blight, she said, and she hasn't had the heart to do much weeding around the center of the garden where they're rotting. With all the rain, the rest of her crop is a bit stunted, too, she said, but she still has plenty for the farm stand.
The tomatoes she sells come from the garden of her son, Bill Bell, of Southington, whose crop has escaped the late blight so far.
Her garden and work with the Southington Grange have kept his mother going, Bill Bell said.
"She was born and bred up on a farm," he said. "She's very active and still drives around. If there were eight nights a week, she'd probably be out eight nights a week."
"I think she enjoys talking to people as much as she does putting the stuff out there," he said of her farm stand. "Whenever she sees a car pull up she's goes out to chitchat. She's old school all the way. She's happy-go-lucky."
Bell has four children, nine grandchildren and 23 great grandchildren, she said with obvious pride. Her son said family has always played a large role in her life.
In 1950, when the Southington Grange decided it was going to have an agricultural fair, Mildred Bell was among those who organized it, said Jim Lamoureux, president of the Grange. She's still organizing it 59 years later, and is getting ready to work at this weekend's fair.
"She's probably our longest-standing member, and our oldest," he said.
Bell has been a member for 76 years, now serves as treasurer, and has held a variety of other positions.
"I almost consider her our historian," Lamoureux said. "She knows the history of the Grange over the last five decades. ... Her knowledge is sort of second to none."
Bell's lemon meringue pie inevitably brings in quite a few bids in the fair's auction, he said, usually selling for $15 or $20.
"She's a real good baker," he said. "She's very reliable. She never misses a meeting." |
