"What are you doing in my house?" asked my Aunt Lenke.  She had been awoken by a loud noise in the middle of the night and noticed 3 men standing in her bedroom, one picking up her newborn son.  "We are here to take away your husband.  He is being arrested."  It was 1951 and the country was in the throes of communism and the integration into collectives.  The village had resisted these changes and now the leaders of the village were being rounded up and taken away in an attempt to scare the population into compliance.  It worked. Incredible hardship, starvation and desperation ensued.  Four years later, Aunt Lenke's husband was returned to her in a wheelbarrow, too weak to walk on his own.

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I heard this story when I was 8 years old, visiting my Aunt for the first time in 1970.  My Mom and her sisters were born and raised just outside of Cluj (Kolosvar in Hungarian) and at the end of WWII my Aunt Lenke married into the Basa family and started a farmer's life.  This heart wrenching story, along with many others, made a significant impact on this American 8 year old girl.  

The Basa Family Farm has a long, rich history with incredible stories of prosperity and hardships.  Built in the early 1830's, it still has the original architecture of an era long gone, and is now a working flower and vegetable farm, with multiple generations living under the same roof and striving to bring a better life for themselves and to the youngest generation.