My So-Called Pilgrim Life

Or how blogging is like Intrepretation and how it’s not
So I looked trencher up in the Oxford English Dictioneary (OED) again, and discovered I somehow have managed to overlook and/or forget part of the definition for decades. Seems one of the definations of trencher is ‘a cutting or slicing instrument’ . Actually it’s the first defination…. How have I missed this? There are several recipes that use trenchers to cut, often spinach. So it seems in my copious free time I should be noting the trencher/spinach and/or leafy greens ratio. And since the OED only has references from 1330-1553, for the chopping trenchers and the ones I’ve seen are later then 1553, I might have something to send them for their on-line updates.
Now, about other trenchers. It seems where ever I read (and I can see the words in front of my eyes, so I’m pretty sure I read it SOMEWHERE) that trenchers and treen ware are related is NOT from the OED.
Fie! Fie and for shame! Creeping factiods taking the place of information. Fie and for double shame!
The word trencher comes from the Old French ‘to cut’, more closely related to digging trenches then bits o trees. The second defination of trencher is a flat piece of wood, square or circular, on which meat was served and cut up; a plate or platter of wood, metal, or earthenware. Trenchers show up in colonial probate inventories, in Eurpean inventories, in all sorts of records where people are eating, and show up in all sorts of paintings.
There’s also a third kind of trencher that has become it’s own sort of creeping factiod, which is a shame because it’s cool in it’s own right. This third trencher is a slice of bread that’s used for a plate. The references date between 1380-1513. The 1513 citation is a translation of Virgil, so I’m not sure how current they were even in the 16th century. But eating the plates is one of those curiosities that some people can’t let go of, and want to put all over in the past. Trenchers made of bread weren’t the plates that most people ate off of most of the time; they were a product of a very specific times and places.
In royal and noble households, there were the officers of the table. These were the servents who had very specific duties.We still know butlers, but how many of us have one? If you had a butler, chances are you also had a panter or a pantler. These were not the servants in charge of the pants – they were in charge of the bread or the pane (remember 1066? Normans everywhere?) Norman French was the language of royal and noble households, pane was the word for bread, hence the man in charge of the bread was the panter. And the bread was kept in the pantry. (Butlers were originally in charge of the buttery, which was were the butts (as in casks) were kept, not the butter or whatever.
Anyhow, the pantler was in charge of cutting the cheate bread into trenchers for his lord’s table. These bread dishes would be gathered up at the end of the meal to put out to feed the poor. Generally, the people who ate off the trenchers didn’t eat the trenchers – other people did. People who didn’t have anything to put on a trencher, just the bread with whatever sauce or other bits was clinging to it were the ones eating the ‘plates’, which were really dishes….
So how is blogging like interpretation? A casual, conversational tone. A dialogue. A sense that none of this is the last word, the only word, the complete and the absolute. That anyone passing by can put two cents worth in. That it’s OK to ask a question.
How is blogging not like intrepretation? It’s in writing. And in writing I want to quote the books, not paraphrase them. It’s really hard for me to write without footnotes and you might have noticed I often slip in source citations anyhow. It’s not really a dialogue because I can’t see if you’re nodding in agreement or looking bewildered and I get to do a big bunch of talking before you get to slip a word in edgewise. And since I can’t count on the tone of my voice or the smile on my lips to let you know when to take me with less then a grain of salt….but I get re-dos.
It’s not just the food, it’s the ways.
KMWall
Colonial Foodways Culinarian

Diverse Salads Boiled. (so far, pretty easy, right)
Parboil spinach (cook until done. If using fresh, pick out anything buggy, too limp or slimy. Pull off the tough stems. Wash in several changes of water. Put the spinach in the water, swish it around and lift it out so that the dirt remains behind in the water. If you find a bug, there’s probably another, so add a little salt to the water and let it sit for a minute. I’d give the package stuff from the store another rinse; I don’t care how many times they say they wash it. Frozen? They give you directions…), and chop it fine, with the edges of two hard trenchers upon a board, or the backs of two chopping knives: (chop it fine – it you are using frozen, just buy the chopped…. A trencher is a dish, usually made of wood, hence the ‘treen ware’, sometimes made of pewter or silver, in earlier times (earlier the 1627) sometimes made of bread….OK, that’s a whole ‘nuther post, chopping knives are, I hope, self evident) then set it upon a chafing-dish of coals with butter and vinegar. (And you thought chafing-dishes were a throwback to the 1950’s? Surprise – they’re showing up in all the fashionable 17th kitchens, too. There was a 17th century one found in a downtown Plymouth archeological dig, and we have a replica in the 1627 English Village. Lacking a chafing-dish put the spinach in a heavy bottomed pot and place it over low heat on your stove.) . Season it with cinnamon, ginger, sugar, and a few parboiled currants. (This particular combination of spice is a little reminiscent of modern pumpkin or apple pie. Ginger was considered warming and good for digestions – actually, it is! Vegetables were thought to be a little troublesome to digest, so you’d season accordingly. Sugar was also considered somewhat warming and good for the digestion. Keep in mind that most people were between 1 and 2 pounds of sugar a year. Most of us now polish that much off in less than a week! Currants are dried currants, which are little raisins, so feel free to use raisins here. Modern dried fruit isn’t as dry as it used to be, thanks to plastics and the push to eat them as hand-fruit, so no parboiling necessary.) Then cut hard (boiled) eggs into quarters to garnish it withal, and serve it upon sippets. (Sippets are slices of bread that have been toasted or fried. Use something that won’t melt at first contact to the food, like a sliced, toasted baguette or a ciabatto . Think brushetta!) So may you serve borage, bugloss, endive, chicory, cauliflower, sorrel, marigold leaves (Calendula, or pot marigolds, not French marigolds; if you don’t know which you have DON’T EAT THEM), watercress, leeks boiled, onions, Sparragus (asparagus), Rocket (our old friend arugula), alexanders ( I can’t find these anywhere- if you have some, would you share? Call me. Parboil them, and season them all alike: whether it be with oil and vinegar, or butter and vinegar, cinnamon, ginger, sugar, and butter: Eggs are necessary, or at least good for all boiled salads.” (That would be hard boiled eggs, peeled and quartered and placed on top)
From John Murrell’s A Newe Booke of Cookerie, London: 1615, p. 34.

So, there you have it. You got this far. In simplest terms, boiled salads are boiled veggies seasoned with ginger, cinnamon and a little sugar, dressed with either oil and vinegar or melted butter and vinegar, served over toasted bread and topped with hard boiled eggs cut into quarters.

K.M. Wall
Colonial Foodways Culinarian

A 17th century cooking lesson
I’m not sure that the Pilgrims used these particular recipes. There aren’t any cookbooks in their wills and inventories, and most of these people wouldn’t have known what to do with one if they had had one. They knew how to cook the things they were familar with in the way that was familar to them. That said, some things turn up over and over again, so they certainly cold have been familar. My history training make me want to hedge and qualify. My big sister background make want to say, “Try it, you’ll like it! And so easy!”
I keep meaning to put more recipes on this blog, but I realize that I teach cooking, not just recipes, and I teach the way of a 17th mother would have: I put out the ingredients and the various pots, and hover about ready to stir the onions, as it were. This is hard to translate into print, so please bear with me. Don’t forget to be sensible – really use all your senses: taste, sight, hearing, smell and judgment.
We’re going to start with a recipe for a salad. Salad, even a boiled one, doesn’t take much to figure out. And why boil a salad? It makes it more artificial, and artificial is good in the 17th century when they had a whole different standard of artificial, which means made by the hand of man. So, a boiled salad is the plants improved by cooking, as opposed to grazing on weeds like a cow or a hog…makes you look at that side salad a whole diffeent way, if you compare it to an animal feeding. A boiled salad will put some familiar things on your table in a way that isn’t too unfamiliar. You don’t need to be growing heirloom varieties, any old spinach will do, I mean any spinach, and it doesn’t have to be an old variety. If you have a garden, go harvest.
….So here’s how it’s gonna go –
First Lesson – Looking at a resource, in this case a period recipe, copied out of the period cookbook. It’s easier if you read it out loud, because spelling isn’t standardized, but pronunciations aren’t that far from now, or so I’ve lead myself to believe. Someday, this will be enough to start you on your way, but if you’re not there today, keep on to
Second Lesson– a version in modern spelling with parenthetical notes to explain some of what going on, define vocabulary. The second one will be the longest of the versions.
Third Lesson– a quick and easy totally 21st century translation.
Put on your aprons, wash your hands, and lets go to the kitchen.
“Diverse Sallets Boyled.
Parboyle Spinage, and chop it fine, with the edges of two hard Trenchers upon a boord, or the back of two chopping knives : then set them on a Chafingdish of coals with Butter and Vinegar. Season it with Sinamon, Ginger, Sugar, and a few parboiled Currins. Then cut hard Egges into quarter to garnish it withal, and serve it upon sippets. So may you serve Burrage, Buglosse, Endiffe, Suckory, Coleflowers, Sorrel, Marigold leaves, water-Cresses, Leekes boyled, Onions, Sparragus, Rocket, Alexanders. Parboyle them, and season them all alike: whether it be with Oyle and Vingar, or Butter and Vinegar, Sinamon, Ginger, Sugar, and Butter: Egges are necessary, or at least good for all boyled Sallets.”
From John Murrell’s A Newe Booke of Cookerie, London: 1615, p. 34.

KMWall
Colonial Foodways Culinarian

Set herbs some more,
For winter store.
Sowe seeds for pot,
For flowers sowe not.
- Thomas Tusser
A recent issue of some magazine announced it was time for everyone in these economic times to consider “The Autumnal Garden”. Guess what? Back in the 17th century, that is SO been there, done that. The traditional beginning of the agricultural year is September. And that’s true for gardens, too. Until fairly recently – beginning in the late 19th century, but really since the mid-20th century –gardens weren’t for putting up or putting by, but to provide a fresh bit for as long a season as possible. There is also an overlap between the end of one season and the beginning of the next. It’s the prep work you do in the Fall that determines the success of the Spring.
In The English Housewife (1617) Gervase Markham begins his chapter on cookery with several pages devoted to gardening, his most constant advice being lists of the names of herbs to plant and the phase of the moon to in which to plant. There is a certain presumption that the housewife would know what to do from there. This full moon coming up is the last time you’ll plant before snow. Except for years with an early heavy frost – and we get one of those about every 10 years – this generally works, even in New England. Or at least out little piece of coastal Plymouth, with a large palisade all around in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Not only are you planting (and weeding – ALWAYS WEEDING!) but also deciding what to leave fallow to ‘fatten’ for next year, and generally making the decisions about next year’s garden. This is actually a good time to get yourself out into your garden, while the memory is fresh and true. Where were you more ambitious then realistic? What did you miss because you waited too long? What do you wish – right now – that you had done? This is a good time to write yourself a note, because come January, when there’s snow on the ground, you’ll either order everything in the catalog or get discourage and overwhelmed just looking at all the pretty pictures.
Between now and the full moon later on 4 October we will be sowing seeds of lettuce, spinach, radish, carrots, rocket to enjoy in October and through November, depending on the frost. Like Tusser says, things that are good for the pot – and no flowers. Flowers are produced after the plant makes roots and leaves, and there isn’t enough sun to get past the root and leaf portions this time of year.
Last year Justin had success with onion seeds sown in September that gave the Howland garden onions about a month before the rest of the town this summer. OK – he didn’t gather the onions that had gone to seed quite quickly enough and the sowed themselves, as they are wont to do. Leek, cabbage and parsnip seeds will be added this year to the autumnal sowings to see how they’ll do. As anyone who gardens knows, the micro-climates, even between beds in the same garden, can make a huge difference, so we’re always experimenting with different combinations of seeds and settings and sowings.
Lettuce, turnips, carrots, spinach, radish, even parsnip and leeks are good to sow right now.
Although the pot that Tusser is referring to is a cooking pot, it is also a good time of year to dig up some seasoning herbs to keep in a pot on your windowsill. My new neighbor trimmed some overgrown trees and I have sunny kitchen windows,so I’ll be digging up mint, thyme, marjoram and winter savory for the winter. I might try some sorrel this winter, just to see how it does indoors. Icompletely lucked out and found parsley, basil, watercress, arugala (that’s right – Rocket!) and even salad burnet at the grocery store as potted plants.I’m re-potting them and giving them all a try.
This once again gets us out of the garden and into the kitchen.
K.M. Wall
Colonial Foodways Culinarian

… until it is….
Vegetables and organ meats share a split personality in the 17th century. On the one hand, they’re dainty morsels, served with verve and flair on the noblest of tables; on the other hand, they’re the bits that are left to serve the poorest of the poor. Let’s save offal for another day – there’s a great haggis controversy bubbling up in food history circles…I’ll keep you posted. But back to vegetables.
I’m sure you all remember back to the third grade when you learned that the natural world is dividedinto animal, mineral and vegetable. And that’s exactly what a vegetable is in the 17th century – that whole large category of trees and vines and shrubs and grains and shrubs and reeds and cetera – not just the plants you grow for your plate.
If you grow it in your garden, particularly your kitchen garden, then it’s an herb. Cabbage is an herb. Carrot is an herb. Rosemary and rue are herbs. Parsley, sage, thyme – herbs. Turnip, asparagus, skirret – also herbs. There are sun-categories of herbs, often overlapping: pot herbs, sweet herbs, physic herbs, herbs for strewing, and of course, salad herbs.
Salads are made of herbs. Like so much else in the 17th century, there is a hierarchy of herbs, too. Cabbages, kales and coleworts (we know then as collards) – common, definitely food of the poor. Easy to grow, easy to keep, good for a long time in the garden, keep well after they harvested. Cabbages are also considered to be ‘windy’ – Nickolas Culpepper compares them to bagpipes and bellows…not dainty, even then! Garlic is considered to be ‘poor man’s treacle’ – good for whatever ails the poor. It’s also generally assumed that the poorer sorts are doing more physical labor, and therefore have more heat, hotter digestion, or decoction of their food. (That’s Doctrine of Humours in 25 words or less!)
Asparagus, artichokes, broom buds, sapphire, purslane (not the nasty garden weed – proper garden purslane), cowslips, gillyflowers are all dainties. Beancods – plain ole green beans to us now – dainty. Potatoes are a dainty – that’s gonna change, but not until the 18th century.
Lettuce is a salad herb, too, just not necessarily the first thing you think of for salad. It seems to travel back and forth between the dainty and the common. Just like now. Think of the difference between iceberg lettuce and baby Bibb. There are other leafy greens betwixt and between dainty and common. Arugula, known as rocket to 17th century Englishmen (and hence, rocket salad), spinach, endive, beets… If the technology is working for me today, (Buddy, I’m counting on you for backup!) there is a lovely image of a second year beet. But, wait a minute, aren’t beets red things that grow underground – this are large and green and waving in the breeze – and what’s with this second year business?
Side-bar on beets: what we now call Swiss chard is the beet of the 17th. What we now call beets is the beet root, or Red Roman beetroot of the 17th century. How did it become Swiss? I haven’t a clue, but it doesn’t happen until the 19th century. As for the chard part – that comes from the rib in the center of the leaf, which harkens back to the card in the cardoon….Why hasn’t anyone written the Secret Life of Beets? Perhaps in my copious free time….Beets form seed in their second year, so you have to hold a few through the winter to get more beet seeds.
Salads are usually boiled. Eating raw plants was sometimes fashionable, was sometimes distained. Generally, cooking food made it more artificial, which is a good thing in the 17th century because then it is improved by the hand of man. Cooked food was also supposed to better for your digestion.
So if boiled green beans or spinach or endive or Swiss chard have ever turned up on your table, then you have been making boiled salads unawares. In the 17th century Dutch cookbook The Sensible Cook there are recipes for boiled salads, and then there are recipes for various herbs, like boiled cabbage and boiled cauliflower that are not called salads, just a dish of….
So much for theory. Soon – recipes.
K.M. Wall
Colonial Foodways Culinarian

Pathetic. Pathetic and in disarray. Unkempt, rundown, keep up with the garden harvest and needs weeding.
The visitor comments are in for August and pathetic was the word used to describe the English Village gardens. More than once.

As discouraging as it is to hear, they weren’t mean or wrong.

Sigh.
Part of the trouble is some of our plants are weeds. Well, they weren’t then, but they are now. Tansy and chicory, for instance, were brought over for English gardens. Yellow flowered tansy is a medical herb, the seed good against the worm in the gut of children. Aren’t you glad you haven’t needed to know that before? One later New England writer said that the smell reminded him of funerals, because it was used to repel flies off the dead bodies. Aren’t you doubly glad you don’t need to know this anymore? Chicory, called succory by the English, was a potherb – still is – boiled for salads. This is in bloom in our corn ground and for the last 2 weeks I have often seen the little yellow goldfinches flitting around the blue flowered chicory, a study in yellow and blues and greens. And Queen Anne’s Lace? Wild carrot. And since 1627 predates Queen Anne by a bit, it wasn’t called that then, it was called Bird’s nest, which is totally apparent once you wait past the lacy stage and see the flower curl up on itself in the seed-forming stage.
And then there’s the nature of kitchen gardens themselves. One 17th century garden advisor suggests that you make sure that none of your windows overlook your kitchen garden because it’s always ‘decrepit’ – something going to seed, something pulled up, something not quite up yet, leaving bare spots and dried out bits.
Yet even by these forgiving and liberal standards, our gardens are… needy. They are in need of some serious muscle. On Spring Clean Day we had more volunteer help then we knew what to do with. Not that we didn’t find ways to keep them -you- extremely busy. But that was back in March and a garden needs constant care.
We’ve asked for more help, but our volunteer coordinator said she was turned down, that people had their own gardens to tend to. Fair enough. It was a long, hot summer full of snails and bunnies and woodchucks and rainy days and high humidity.
So I’m making a direct appeal to those of you who read the blog and are local and maybe aren’t part of the regular volunteer corps.
HELP! Our tender herbs are lurking and we need your help to rid the place of evil weeds. If you’ve got some time, some muscle and some patience I invite you to join THE PLIMOTH GARDENS CLUB.
Unlike the Spring Clean day, when the volunteer workforce has the run of the place, this meeting will be limited to one garden at a time. The only tools we’ll have are hand tools – no wheel barrows, no trucks, nothing to distract from the 1627 exhibit. We will be in the shadows, as it were, in front of the public and performing a ‘behind the scene’ function at the same time, a sleight of hand to hand pick the evil weeds out by their roots so we can prepare for our fall plantings. I haven’t done this before, so I don’t know what it would be like. If this works out we could continue to meet, perhaps for some training and not just for muscle.
What I’m looking for is stoop labor – bend over and pull out the weeds, and not pull out our heirloom variety plants, seedy though they may be. In return I’ll tell you about 17th century plants and practices. If you have any questions, please e-mail me at kwall@plimoth.org Even if you don’t have any questions you can reach me there.
Meeting times: Sunday, September 13th at 9:30 through 1:30 and Monday September 14th also 9:30-1:30.
Location: 1627 English Village –check in with the Museum Guide at the Fort, who will know which gardens we will be weeding.
Purpose: To remove weeds from the walkways and beds of the 12 English kitchen gardens, one garden at a time.
Bring gloves, sunscreen.
It’s not just the food, it’s the ways.
K.M.Wall
Colonial Foodways Culinarian

No, not THAT ‘First Thanksgiving’ – my first Thanksgiving consult for the 2009 season. I usually figure the Thanksgiving season as starting around here at the beginning of September, and sure as shooting, I was in a meeting and on the phone talking about the autumn of 1621. And the first questions were about food, especially recipes, especially authentic recipes for authentic food.
There is a certain extent where authenticity is in the mouth of the beholder, but I do a pretty good collection of 17th century English recipes– and some Dutch ones to cover those all important Holland years- and pretty good handle of what various evidences tell us about available foodstuffs, so if there’s something old that you’d like to see, make your requests via comments and I’ll post some recipes soon. Actually, my usual fashion is to post a 17th century recipe and then walk and talk you through it.
And while I’m at it, let me put in a shameless plug for Thanks and Giving by Kathleen Curtin and Sandra Oliver, who cover the history of the holiday, as well as provide great recipes, images and stories. Not only are they culinary colleagues, they let me test recipes for the book. Well, one. One recipe. For stuffed celery. Ok, I know you’re thinking stuffed celery isn’t really a recipe, but it’s right there in the first recipe section and I tested it. So buy the book! End of commercial break. Back to our program.
Foodways isn’t just about the food; it’s also about the ways. Thanksgiving isn’t just about the food (GASP) it’s also about the ways. Preparations. Procurements. Perceptions. Presentations. It’s about the table – where it is, how it’s set, who’s sitting at it, where they’re sitting. It’s about the kitchen – who’s in charge, who’s washing the dishes, who brings what, who chooses the menu. It’s about the meaning behind the food – what do you think and feel and remember about all this, is this something you only see and taste in this circumstance, is this familiar or usual, costly or rare or common or singular?
So just who was on First, Thanksgiving that is. There are lots of claims. They’re all right. Thanksgiving is not a race to be won going backwards in time. Each thanksgiving is the first. As a living tradition, first isn’t as important as the last – or the next. Whether you’re in a farmhouse in Missouri or an apartment in Manhattan, your Thanksgiving is authentic and the first one – the first one with someone new or with someone missing, a new cook, a new venue or a new dish or something new to be thankful for. For thanksgiving you don’t have to wait until November; you don’t even need a turkey.
K.M. Wall
Colonial Foodways Culinarian

Tuesdays are fish day day here at the museum this July. On Mayflower II at noon it’s all about Fish N’Ships, WIP at the Homesite is sponsoring Wampanoag Fishing Days (I thought they should have called it Where there’s a Weir….never mind) and I just finished a program in the Fort – Something Fishy. Something Fishy began as a Spring Training session for staff several years ago, Gone Fishin’, which was lecture and PowerPoint. In the Fort I have a salt cod and a fresh cod and as I process the fresh fish for salting, I talk about the fish trade in New England in the 17th century (Way to Wealth!) and how Plymouth never made big money in the fish trade and answer questions, but all as myself. No costume, just an apron. No dialect, except the one that says yes, I’m from around here. And I have a handout with fish head recipes, which people are actually taking, how polite is that!
And there’s been a hundred more things, and there are photos, somewhere, and someday they’ll be here, because a picture is worth a thousand words and then I won’t feel quite so guilty for writing so infrequently. If you’re free on a Tuesday in July, drop in to see our fishy business.

KMWall
Colonial Foodways Culinarian

One of the oddest things that visitors say to us, but appropriate here in that I want to mention a couple of things we have been discussing for future possibilities.

Our Director of Education (etc.) and I went to a conference sponsored by the New England Museum Association on using Web 2.0 properties (like this blog) to enhance and expand our web presence. To that end we are looking into expanding our use of our extant FaceBook page for greater interactivity. More on this to come.

Thanks to Kathleen Wall for ongoing contributions to this blog, they are always appreciated. She and I have had several discussions about how we could bring the “foodie” (and gardening as she has done below) niche to a greater awareness of what we do here at Plimoth Plantation. Foodies are a great (and, I suspect, luctrative) demographic that we need to explore.

So, for you foodies out there, here is a neat resource (read:enjoyable time waster, if you are anything like me): The EGullet Society’s online forum

Buddy

Back in March, the museum sponsored a Spring Clean Day. Denise from the Volunteer Program rounded up nearly 300 people. Teams were formed and everyone had work. Team Q was the English Village Gardens Team, and boy, am I a day late and a dollar short in extending my thanks.  Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. Or should i say “QQQQQQQQQQ” – Ten Q.

None of this was glamour work, by the by, it was moving compost piles, top dressing garden beds, taking out old, worn structures, moving the famous New England stones, creating new pathways and walk ways. Terry and Justin were great team leaders; I ran from garden to garden to try to keep track of what had been done and what still needed doing, moving the too few tools for the great number of people who showed up. Fuller and Hickes gardens were completely rebuilt and Allerton garden got a major face-lift as well.

The benefits of that work is very apparent in the gardens today. We’ve been planting spinach, turnips, radishes, cabbages and coleworts (coleworts are an older way of saying collards), lettuce, garlic, leeks… in short the things we’ll be using over the summer and into the winter. Things that are coming up, some as rabbit food (bad bunny) and some as ground hog salads (very bad woodchuck) and the cabbage family cousins as safe haven for flea beetle.  There’s so much life and death in a garden, it seems ironic that some people do it for relaxation. Although it is very satisfying, eating a plate of something that had once been a little seed in your hand. I’ve been advocating a 10 minute a day plan to keep up in the garden. Ten minute to pull a few weeds, plant a row of one thing, and just tromp around and see how things are going.  If I could just find ten minutes to follow my own advice at home!

We’re just now seeing the last of the asparagus, so it’s time to put in the cucumbers and pompions.

John Forti, Horticulturist  at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth NH – and formerly here – has an article out in Early American Life magazine on seventeenth century kitchen gardens, including directions on how to build your own.

Or you could stop in and ask a pilgrim.

KMWall

Colonial Foodways Culinarian