A patch of feral asparagus along the old train bed approach the Pamet River in Truro.
When I was five, I made friends with a boy whose family had moved into a new house at the far end of our road. It was on a parcel subdivided from a farm, of which I have no memory. reward, when we’d walk by the house in the spring, my mother would scan the area around their stone wall and remind me that their house was built on the farmer’s old asparagus field.
In my memory, she never found any remains of the asparagus patch. I asked her if we could plant some in our garden — which is a mystery since I didn’t like it as a kid — but she said ‘no, it takes too much space and water; it’s not worth it.’ Indeed, I don’t think I saw how asparagus grew until after college, when staying at an inn in New Hampshire for a work retreat. I was delighted to learn the asparagus we ate at dinner was grown in the garden behind the inn. And I walked out the next morning to see the recognizable shoots emerging from the spring mud.
From various readings, I knew that asparagus had once been a big cash crop on Cape Cod, and when I started my garden in 2019, one of the first plants I installed was asparagus. It turns out my mother wasn’t exactly wrong about the cost / benefit relationship of the plant. Asparagus does take up a lot of space in the garden and, at least in my small domestic garden, offers a relatively small culinary award. Still, after cutting season, I’ve come to love the tall, feathery plants that provide a backdrop to the garden bed near my studio. I take great delight when I encounter these plants in the wild too. The Outer Cape has a lot of feral asparagus (which might be the title of my first book of poetry — if I ever finish it). It’s ‘feral’ rather than ‘wild’ because it’s escaped domesticity, but is not an indigenous plant.
Another stand of feral asparagus growing near the Pamet River marsh.
Last night, amongst the declining grasses and plants along the Old Colony train bed near Corn Hill in Truro, I found a surprising abundance of feral asparagus. Surrounded by salt marsh, the bay and Tom’s Hill, it’s unclear to me how these plants found there way here — but the abundant berries on these plants allow me to suspect that birds lent some aid.
It shouldn’t be surprising that there’s so much feral asparagus around here. In the 1920s and 1930s, Eastham was the asparagus capital of the United States, shipping 2-3 full boxcars a day to the Boston market at the height of cutting season (April to early summer). In Eastham alone, in 1920 there were 150 acres of asparagus fields, and by 1930 the number rose to 230 acres. Arthur Wilson Tarbell, in his book, “Cape Cod Ahoy!” noted farmers got about $400 an acre. The regional asparagus market collapsed shortly after the Second World War, when Florida got into the asparagus game and refrigerated trucks allowed it to be shipped more widely.
The vestiges of the Outer Cape’s asparagus glory are in small details: Asparagus Lane in South Eastham, and the funny fact that the South Wellfleet Drive-In was built on an asparagus field. And. Of course, in the abundant of feral asparagus on the side of roads and paths across the region.
WCAI has a wonderful story on working the asparagus fields based on the Eastham Historical Society’s oral history archive:
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