Issues → September/October 2008 → Interact → 10 Things to Do →

Wethersfield, CT, and Onions

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(page 4 of 4)

Comstock, Ferre, founded in 1820, lies across the street from Hart Seed. They are now Wethersfield's living testaments to its agricultural past. For Oniontown, with its thick aromas and fertile floodplains, was the home not only of the onion maidens, but also of the most important seed businesses in the country.

Indeed, Comstock, Ferre's founder, William Comstock, was a sort of Dr. Spock of gardening in the mid-19th century. His tome, Order of Spring Work, was the gardener's manual for its era; it told you when to plant, how to store seeds to keep them from going stale, when to fertilize. Comstock also brought the Shaker notion of sealing seeds in packets to its fullest potential -- commissioning enticing illustrations for the covers and distributing hundreds of varieties all over the country.

Today, Comstock, Ferre boasts that wonderful warmish, slightly acrid smell of things growing. Bales of grass seed (sunny, shady, play, or slope) sit in a corner, and in the back, oakwood bins shuffle millions of seeds. The ones that grow into Wethersfield red onions are tiny and jet black, like flecks of anthracite. A burnished old scale avows: "No Springs. Honest Weight." An annex, built in 1880, is still known here as the "new warehouse."

Corinne Willard presides over Comstock, Ferre today. (Willards have been in the business since the 1880s.) Years ago she had a Saturday-morning radio show on gardening, and people still ask her when she's going to get back on the air. Mrs. Willard brooks little nonsense. Ask her what's wrong with your ailing rosebush, and she'll expertly finger the leaves and say, "You've got spider mite, under the leaves and on top," as if any fool could see such an obvious thing.

Mrs. Willard despairs when Hartford's urban refugees move here and plant lawns instead of gardens. "They put a pot of geraniums on the front step and that's a big concession," she says, shaking her head. "I have no front lawn. It's all garden."

Perhaps on this spring afternoon at Comstock, Ferre & Company, the heart of Wethersfield's agricultural past still beats softly. See that toy wagonful of daffodils waving in the breeze? In the back, there's a case of sheep mxanure, and some buckwheat hulls, and a bunch of saltmarsh hay. Corinne Willard's in front, getting annoyed because someone put a packet of catnip where the chamomile should be. And just look outside at that one enthusiastically hand-scribbled sign. It says: "Onion Sets Are Here!" Judging by a certain whiff in the air, there seems to be a run on them.