Out to Pasture with Bev Rand: City cousins visit the farm

    My wife’s cousin married into an Italian family that lived in Conn. The DeLucca’s loved to come to the farm. Lillian, the mother had a specialty of making meatballs. She always came with enough ingredients to have two or three meals of Italian spaghetti and meatballs. We also looked forward to one of her meals.
    Mr. DeLucca was a great gardener. He had land enough on his city lot that he could grow a sizable garden. This year he brought to us a sizable eggplant along with some other vegetables. It so happened that a good friend of mine and good gardener was experiencing in raising eggplants for the first time. I said to Mr. DeLucca I know exactly what we can do with that nice large eggplant. My friend visits his aunt at the nursing home every morning now with his wife’s permission and while he is gone we will tie his eggplant onto his young growing eggplant. The next day we will visit and see how his garden is growing. The next day we did visit and my friend was glad to show us how his garden. He said he was growing eggplant for the first time and walked over to show it to us. “Oh look,” he said, startled. “See the size of it?” Then he spied the string that we had tied on. Without any more words about the eggplant he said, “Let’s go see the zucchini.”
    The sequel to this is that when the DuLuccas came the next year he brought a three foot summer squash. By the same procedure as the year before it was tied to the zucchini patch with just a short amount of string showing. The next day we were there to see how my friend’s garden was growing, especially the zucchini. At once he spied what he thought was a zucchini peaking out from under the vines. He started pulling on it and he pulled. And pulled and pulled till the three foot “zucchini” was out. “Good joke,” he said and that was it. No more Ran and DeLucca’s garden jokes.
    I was told that the long slim summer squash was grown from a vine that crept up the trunk of a small tree to a branch. The vine grew out onto the branch and from there the squash grew straight down toward the earth, hanging, you might say, from a tree.
Farm visitors
By Beth Rand
    Living on an Aroostook County dairy and potato farm in my early childhood brought special visitors. As a child returning from school, we would wonder who had sat at our dining room table for a special dinner. The lace cloth, china and centerpiece were ready to be put away. Leftovers (if any) were served to our family for the night meal.
    My mother was an outstanding cook specializing in the Maine farm meals. Everything was cooked from scratch and mostly grown on the farm. The new potatoes, peas, garden vegetables, homemade jams, pickles and pies were always served to our guests. Gentleman from the University of Maine, University of Maine extension, 4-H representors along with business men in businesses would meet with our father and advise him on his various projects.
    Relatives would arrive in the summer time. One family from New Jersey would come to visit, which we called our city cousins, consisting of dad, mom, twin daughters and a brother.
    My mother would work for weeks getting the house painted, papered and cleaned. Everything had to be perfect in my mother’s eyes.
    One time I remember very well when they all arrived one day early. My mother was in complete shock. Mom was always on schedule and this was a huge upset in providing and presenting a perfectly clean organized house.
    To solve the problem, mom had her mother living across the street. Somehow she managed to inform her of what needed to be completed and arranged for me and my sisters’ help. I do believe we all had a great week eating, playing and visiting with our city cousins.
    Editor’s Note: Beth Rand is one of Bev Rand’s twin daughters.