Colma's farmers raised pork and beans

The labor force in  Colma was at first primarily single men, immigrants from Italy, and they lived a  primitive life-style by today’s standards.

Gradually, as they could afford to,  they returned to Italy to marry and bring their wives to California. It was  hard, labor-intensive work to raise the crops. Everyone in the family helped,  even the children. Often these cabbage-patch kids had to stay out of school and  work in the fields.

It was one thing  to raise the crops, but their work was not done until the vegetables were  cleaned and loaded into horse-drawn wagons for transport into San Francisco. The  men responsible for delivery often left the farms by midnight, the horses  struggling to pull the heavy loads. To make it up the steepest hills, the men  often had to make arrangements for extra horse-power for that portion of the  trip On the way back to Colma, they filled their now-empty wagons with loads of  manure from livery stables and used it for fertilizer in the fields. Being  organic-farmers had nothing to do with being politically correct. It was  economically correct.

By the 1890s, many  of the Italian farmers decided to change from vegetables to hog ranching. They  had noticed San Franciscans liked ham and bacon with their veggies. In 1891,  Swift & Company opened the Western Meat Company

in South San Francisco. By  1896, they were processing 3,000 pigs per week. In a few years, the number had  grown to 250,000 a year. Pig-farmers, established in Colma and surrounding  areas, provided the porkers. Now their farm wagons collected and hauled "swill”  to feed their voracious pigs. They would eat anything: left-overs from hotels  and restaurants, well-aged bread and fruit, spoiled vegetables. In other words:  garbage. But pigs are miracle-workers. Garbage in, bacon out. There was just one  problem. They smelled…awful. You might be able to hide a hog in the fog, but  nothing could camouflage the smell. Some of the hog ranches were so close to the  roads, such as Skyline Blvd., that the stench was unbearable for travelers.        

One ranch, 150  acres on the slopes of Westmoor Hill, begun by Giuseppe Gaggero and several  other investors in the early 1900s, had grown vegetables. Gaggero and his wife  raised their children here: Natalino, Anthony, George and Mary. To the west of  the Gaggero ranch, and north of what is now Westmoor Avenue to 87th  Street, was another large ranch called the Costa Ranch.

The Olcese family,  Francisco Olcese and his wife, Maria, raised five children here: Angelo,  Dominic, John, Silvio and Atillio. The two ranches were joined socially when  Gaggero’s daughter Mary married the Olcese’s son Atillio. From this new union,  three children were born: Marilyn, Alan Frank, and  "Tillio”.

After World War  II, Giuseppe Gaggero decided he too would forsake vegetables and turn to  hog-raising on a large scale. The Olcese family made the transition as well,  forming the Olcese Hog Company. Chicago may have been the hog-butcher of the  world, but Colma was certainly the hog-raiser. In 1906, the family built a  two-story house at 1697 Edgeworth Avenue. Marilyn remembers visiting the hog  ranch and that it was thick with flies and populated with rats who ate well and  reproduced exponentially. By 1968, the last little pig had gone to  market.

They had left  Italy for many reasons, looking for a new beginning, yet ironically the farmers  found comfort in the old ways in the company of other Italians and formed a  tight-knit community, closing themselves off from surrounding communities by  language, by life-style, by traditions. The immigrant story is so often the  same. The first generation crosses the border or the ocean, transplanting itself  and sinking roots in their new country with sacrifice and hard work. The second  generation sprouts new growth. The third generation harvests the fruit, grateful  the initial voyage was made for them. This evolution was fast-forwarded when  World War II broke out, with many of the young men leaving the tight little  Italian community to serve this country. Some chose not to return. Those that  returned chose to enlarge their circle. Many would engage in public service. The  Gaggero-Olcese families continue to contribute with land and real-estate  development. Marilyn Olcese, retired now, is active in the Colma and Daly City  history museums.