Come to the Free Soil Party!

Editor’s note: If you are looking for the column or updates about Vera Gleason, please follow this link.

Free Garden Plots available! Seven Four* 100 square foot garden plots are available to the community for immediate planting at the Hartford House in Geneseo. The plots are protected by a 6-foot, welded-wire deer fence. They have been roto-tilled, limed and fertilized with organic compost only. Soil test results of this Ovid silt loam are available. Irrigation with village water available on a barter basis.
Experienced gardeners preferred.
* Hurry! Three plots have already been taken! Call Biff at 233-5338 or e-mail him.
Limit one plot per family.

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Visitors to the Hartford House this spring have noticed that change is in the air. A collection of vintage farm equipment is taking shape and four acres of the old sheep pasture east of the main driveway has been plowed up.

Part of the old pasture has also been enclosed with a 6 foot fence, but it is not, as some have thought, a new tennis court under construction. It is a deer fence intended to keep four-legged predators away from the juicy vegetables that are already growing in a new vegetable garden.

This is the first season for what owner Corrin Strong hopes will some day become a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farm. Corrin has over 15 years of commercial farming experience, operating a 600-acre grain farm in Caledonia from 1976-1992. This time around, he’s starting on a smaller, but more intensive, scale.

Outside the fence, he hopes to grow a few acres of sweet corn and pumpkins , however, the bulk of the land will be sown in cover crops to increase the soil’s fertility and tilth. A compost pile incorporating the manure from neighboring Big House Stables as well as grass clippings and other organic waste from the Hartford House will soon be underway.

Corrin is offering free 1oo square foot garden plots to local families. (See Ad above.) The offer is being made through this blog, by e-mail to members of the Genesee Volley Tennis Club and will be posted on Facebook. He hopes that those who take up the offer will form the nucleus of the board of directors of the future CSA. Experience gathered in this first trial season will help make better crops in the future!

Come grow with us!

P.S. The Hartford House was built by Gen. James S. Wadsworth in 1835. The General was one of the founders of the Free Soil party in New York. That party opposed the expansion of slavery and eventually merged into the newly formed Republican Party prior to the Civil War in which the General gave his life.

The odd couple

Author’s note: When word got around about Vera’s illness and this column, my traffic to this blog has soared with many people leaving their good wishes as comments. Now some family members have also posted updates on Vera’s condition. Please be sure and check back from time to time for the latest information. Get well soon, Vera!

When Vera Gleason turned 65 years old in 1993 she was required to retire from her job as at Precise Plastics in Avon. Not quite ready to relax and enjoy her Golden Years, she came to work for a fledgling Avon newspaper, The Clarion. Thus began an association that has lasted for over 15 years but has recently been interrupted by poor health.

Vera was the last full-time survivor of the Clarion newspaper staff. When the paper was discontinued two years ago, I kept Vera on to run my continuing business ventures with the Clarion Copy Center, Genesee Graphics and more recently the Genesee Volley Tennis Club. I did so because I needed some one to keep the office fires burning as I transitioned into other fields and I really couldn’t imagine life without Vera.

In her quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) way she has kept me on track by constantly questioning, reminding and sometimes nagging me to take care of all those pesky details I would sooner ignore. It has been a great shock to my system then, that for the last two weeks Vera has been in the hospital and I don’t know if she will ever make it back to work.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be such a shock, that someone 80 years old might retire, but Vera has always been my Rock of Gibraltar– the one constant in a world of turmoil. In the last two weeks I’ve come to realize even more how many important details she routinely took care of, details that I have even less time to attend to now, in this very busy spring season.

I first noticed a problem with Vera’s health about 6 weeks ago when she developed a hacking cough. This was unusual, because she is normally as quiet as a churchmouse in the office. Through a number of courses of antibiotics and other drugs, she continued to work, but her strength ebbed.

At the end of a tough day two weeks ago she told me that she did not feel well enough to drive home and that her daughter was picking her up. Her daughter took her to the doctor, who promptly called an ambulance and Vera has been in the hospital ever since. Talk about working right to the end!

I visited her in the hospital last week after she was transferred to Strong’s heart unit. She had been developing fluid on her heart and was pretty wiped out. She told me that the way she felt, she couldn’t imagine ever returning to work, but I told her she might surprise herself. It wouldn’t surprise me.

For now, I am keeping Vera’s position open for her. I’m keeping sporadic hours at the copy center with a sign on the door that basically says “call me if you need service.” It’s not a permanent soultion, but it will do for now, until we see what happens.

Vera is beloved by many, but I’ll admit she sometimes annoyed me. Her biggest sin was attacking me with a list of questions and problems as soon as I poked my head into the office. Now that there is no one there to do that, does that mean the problems have gone away? Not hardly!

Get well soon, Vera!