Massachusetts

Farm

As they say, in every mis­for­tune, one should look for the pos­i­tive side. It was for­tu­nate that the inci­dent with the pipe hap­pened well before our planned trip.

We had planned a trip to Las Vegas. Levy had a con­fer­ence sched­uled for ear­ly Octo­ber, and the whole team was sup­posed to attend. Valenti­na took a few days off dur­ing that time, and Mark was about to start his break, so we decid­ed to go as a fam­i­ly to Vegas for a few days. Levy’s work had already booked hotel rooms. But then some­thing went wrong, and the trip was in jeopardy.

In light of this, Mark and I decid­ed to vis­it my cousin in Boston. Even­tu­al­ly, every­thing was sort­ed out at Levy’s work, and it turned out that every­one was fly­ing out on the same day — only Mark and I to the east to Boston, while Valenti­na and Levy head­ed north­west to Vegas.

We flew for four and a half hours and arrived late in the evening. My rel­a­tives live about forty min­utes away from Boston, in a small town sur­round­ed by forests and numer­ous farms.

On the first day of our stay, we were tak­en on a trip to a near­by farm to pick apples and pears. My sis­ter dropped the kids off at school, and her hus­band was at work. We (that is, me, Mark, my cousin Lena, and her moth­er (my aunt)) head­ed to the farm and explored local attrac­tions. The weath­er was won­der­ful; it was a warm autumn day. There were many school bus­es at the farm filled with young chil­dren. The kids fed goats, piglets, and chick­ens, and then they were tak­en to an orchard where they picked apples. We also checked out the local pet­ting zoo, vis­it­ed a green maze that Mark and I bare­ly escaped from, and then paid for four bags of apples before head­ing to the orchard to fill them up.

After the orchard, we stopped by a small farm­ers’ mar­ket. My sis­ter is sub­scribed to a pro­duce bas­ket. She pays $500 a year and every two weeks picks up a bas­ket of sea­son­al veg­eta­bles. We gath­ered some pota­toes, car­rots, pep­pers, corn, greens, and beets… Every­thing had to fit into the bas­ket. We also bought a box of toma­toes at the local store. The toma­toes were the last of the sea­son, but Mass­a­chu­setts toma­toes have an incom­pa­ra­ble fla­vor.

After the mar­ket, Lena drove us around to see local attrac­tions. In fact, the state of Mass­a­chu­setts is rich in its his­to­ry regard­ing the estab­lish­ment of an inde­pen­dent Amer­i­can state. We saw many old hous­es built in the 18^th and 19^th cen­turies, all of which have been restored and well-kept, with many con­vert­ed into hotels.

The next day, friends from Ari­zona were arriv­ing, and we were all set to go to Cape Cod, which trans­lates to “Cape of Cod.” Lena and her hus­band had rent­ed a house on the ocean for three days, and more friends from New York were sup­posed to join us. On the sec­ond Mon­day of Octo­ber, the states cel­e­brate Colum­bus Day, and my sis­ter’s chil­dren had no school.