Red, bell-bottomed tomatoes with green crowns growing on sprawling vines in a glasshouse along Wellington's south coast help keep Nina and her mother Teresa Cuccurullo connected to their heritage. The Island Bay family has been growing tomatoes originally sourced from seeds brought over from the Italian island of Capri in the 1960s, for more than six decades.
It is a rich tradition first started by Teresa's father Luigi Ruocco and carried on by her husband Antonio, before daughter Nina took it up after his death.
"It's part of our history and it's a time where you think about your grandparents," Nina told Country Life. "I think about my father and [how] we are now getting it out to the rest of the community and to the family. It's great to see how some of the younger people are starting to grow these tomatoes too, because then that legacy has continued."
Their family was part of the "chain migration" from Italy to the Wellington suburb of Island Bay last century, Nina explained.
"They were coming here to better themselves, to start new families," she said. "Nonno was one of the early ones in the 1920s, but there were others before him that were here as well."
Read more at RNZ
