Getting back to the garden at Gore Place

The Gores owned 400 acres that stretched from Main Street in Waltham to the Charles River in Watertown. Now 45 acres of the original estate remain intact. “It’s the real deal,’’ says Scott Clarke, director of gardens and grounds, a veteran of 23 years. “We have vegetables, meat, poultry and eggs, even though it’s on a smaller scale than the Gores’.’’

During the season, signs in the garden will explain what vegetables are growing. In the fall, Sam Hunt, chef at 15 Walnut restaurant in Hamilton, will cook dinners at the farm with its produce. “Instead of an ‘I need’ mentality, it is a ‘what do you have?’ approach to planning the menu,’’ says the chef.

The dinners connect to a time when the Gores hosted sumptuous parties for friends, including James Monroe and Daniel Webster. In “The House Servant’s Directory,’’ published in 1827, Gore butler Robert Roberts wrote about “A Most Delicious Salad Sauce,’’ which uses hard-boiled egg yolks and cream, and “Lemonade Water,’’ which calls for “loaf sugar,’’ lemons, and “essential oil of sulphur.’’

A daily account of chores from 1820 to 1826 left by farm manager Jacob Farwell shows how the estate functioned. This summer Agulian started sending daily tweets from Farwell’s journal to offer an insider’s view. He describes a variety of crops growing from March through November. In July 1822, he writes about “haying, harrowing, sowing turnips, and planting corn . . . weeding onions and carrots in garden.’’ By mid-August, he was digging early potatoes, picking apples, pulling beans, and making cider. He also mentions raising and butchering heifers and hogs. Gore saw his farm as a business, says Agulian, though he had other means of income. He called it “My Farm at Waltham.’’