The Ranch in the Trakia Residential Area

My grandmother lives in the Trakia residential area and is about to turn 90 this year. She lives in block of flats 51, opposite the local post office. I remember I was 12 or 13 years old. She and my grandfather kept going “to the ranch”. The word had a strange ring to it, what was that ranch? Once I went there with grandpa. He loved the land and, I can imagine, a lot of the people that co-husbanded that ranch loved it too. What was the ranch? It was a plot of land, partly fenced off, partly not at all, but with specified borders. Trakia residents had turned these plots of land into vegetable gardens, with flowers and fruit trees. My grandma used to say that anyone can get as much (land) as they liked. Water was available only at a couple of points and we had to endlessly carry buckets of water for the crops. The most striking recollection I have of the ranch are grandpa’s strawberries – red, only medium sized, but unjustifiably scented and tasty. My grandma does not remember much about the ranch but just recently she told me about it again.

“It has been quite a while since, but we had a ranch here in the residential area some 15-20 years ago, over there to the side of our block of flats, close to the Lauta forest. There was a field this side, lawns with grass. We did not know anything about it. Yet, we had moved to Trakia from the very beginning, while the residential area was being built: the streets were muddy and dusty. Then your grandpa was forever there; off he went to the forest with his bags, feeding the plants, it was his ranch. One day we were going for a walk there, we saw some people and we asked them. ‘You come here’, they said, ‘you turn it over and that’s it’. There was that man who took possession of a lot of land. An entire decare (10 ares)! And he used to sell. Yes, he worked a lot, installed a pump there and had water for irrigation. It was a good thing. You did not have people from all over Trakia there but those who were close by. There were quite a few but those are gone. Trees were planted or something, a park of sorts. No more ranches for the people.”

From A.A.’s recollections of Trakia, an anthropologist, 33 years old, and her grandmother, 90 years old.