Lifelong dream achieved on Kent Valley farmland
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Lucio Boscolo spent his last moments doing the work he loved. The 78-year-old was planting beets on his farm when he collapsed and died Tuesday afternoon.
The Kent resident reveled in the life he shared with his wife, Anita, growing flowers, radicchio, kohlrabi and specialty Italian beets to sell at the Pike Place Market and his roadside stand.
"Some people like traveling or skydiving," Mr. Boscolo told The Seattle Times in a 1991 story about new farmers. "I get that same excitement from growing plants."
Lucio Pechiato Boscolo was born in the beach town of Sottomarina, Italy, on March 29, 1926. He was the third in a family of 10 children and spent much of his youth selling soda pop on a barge through the canals of Venice.
But his dream was to own a farm, as his aunts and uncles did in Cambroso, where he spent each summer.
"He always wanted to own his own piece of land, but it was unaffordable in Italy," said his eldest daughter, Grace Ellen Boscolo of Seattle.
Mr. Boscolo moved to Seattle at 25, met and married the love of his life, Anita Anicello, and settled in the Rainier Valley.
He worked for Oberto sausage company for awhile and then was a truck driver for The Bon Marché for nearly 20 years. But he always made time to grow and sell produce at area farmers markets.
At 60, Mr. Boscolo realized his dream through a King County farm-preservation program when he bought a 90-acre farm in the Kent Valley.
For Mr. Boscolo, vegetable growing was a lifestyle change that kept him in the fields from sunrise to sunset, endlessly battling weeds and floods.
"My dad's hands were smooth and he never drove a tractor in his life" before he took up farming, Grace Boscolo said.
His hands callused, and his palms blackened from tractor grease as he farmed and built a roadside stand.
Grace Boscolo said the stand, near Interstate 5 in Kent, was a place where many families came regularly to buy fresh produce, pick their own flowers and chat.
"Dad was an incredibly charismatic and loving man," she said. "People would come to buy one ear of corn and end up talking to him for half an hour."
In addition to his wife of 52 years and eldest daughter, Mr. Boscolo is survived by daughter Vicky Chinello of San Diego; sons Lewis Boscolo of Vancouver, B.C., and Richard Boscolo of Kent; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
A private service, arranged by Columbia Funeral Home, will be held at the farm today.
Nguyen Huy Vu: 206-464-3292 or vnguyen2@seattletimes.com