My grandfather was the type of farmer we imagine when we place farmers on a pedestal.

He managed several acres of olives and grape

vineyards on the Achilles heel that is the boot of Italy. He worked the land with pieced

together equipment and the home my father was born in lurched into the hillside itself, a stone

building more the landscape than civilization. It was hard, thankless work. His harvests would be

delivered to the cooperative, which operated as an intermediary between growers and processors.

As a child, I stared at his thick, calloused hands, which had caused his fingers to swell and thicken

in ways I always associated as part of becoming a man. My father eventually

shared those same traits, a rite of passage that I both feared and deeply revered. My grandfather

died young by today's standards, his body broken from the toll of physical laborer of farming,

and then working as a laborer in road construction when arriving

here in the United States. His identity as a farmer never left. The postage stamp that was the house

he spent most of his life in the United States residing within left little space to waste.

The driveway was dressed in grapevines and a massive apple tree shielded the northern side of the cape from the winds that cut through the neighborhood, which was largely two family tenement homes.

It was his sanctuary in the new world.

His shift towards subsistence farming from conventional agriculture was marked by an increased interest in specialty selections and cultivars.

He grew heritage beans and tomatoes from seeds he had brought from Italy.

The squash Cuckoozy was one of his favorites to grow, and having glanced at the current world record for longest squash, I don't doubt he likely should be in the books instead.

We grew lupini beans, pressed grapes and made

jam and all of the conventional homesteading activities, partly to afford to raise eight children

on one laborer's salary and as a reminder of his roots, a reminder for his children of the land

where they were before the United States of America would fully take their identities.

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