A PLACE FOR KIDS, GOATS, GREAT PUMPKINS.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

To find out why hundreds of school kids in the Valley have been coming to a pumpkin patch on Corbin Avenue each day to see a pregnant goat named ``Pet,'' you have to go back a year - to the day Les Nolte walked into Joe Cicero's tool store in Reseda.

Les and Joe are a couple of old Vals who didn't know each other, but hooked up one day to turn the clock back to Halloween past for any kid in the Valley who wanted to see what it was like.

Back to a time when just about every neighborhood had a pumpkin patch, and kids knew that the orange gourds grew in the ground, not in bins over at the local supermarket.

Just follow the yellow school buses and parents in their cars over to the five acres owned by the venerable Disabled American Veterans organization in Canoga Park any day of the week, and you'll find it.

Halloween past - thanks to an old DAV commander and a retired farmer who just couldn't stay retired.

Joe Cicero, whose family farmed more than 800 acres in the Valley for decades, took one look around the DAV property last year and fell in love with the place.

``I had come out to help Les and the guys put up the canopy they had bought from my tool store, and mentioned to them that this would be a perfect spot for kids in the Valley to come and see what a good old- fashioned Halloween was like,'' said the owner of the Tool Depot.

An old baseball field stood vacant on the grounds, unused by a DAV membership that averages 77 years in age.

Cicero looked at the ballfield and envisioned hayrides through cornfields 10 feet high, children petting farm animals and thousands of pumpkins growing in the ground.

Pretty soon, he had Les Nolte envisioning the same thing. If there was one thing the commander of the DAV missed seeing on the grounds more than anything, it was kids laughing and having some fun.

They used to come all the time in 1954, when DAV 73 opened as a hospital chapter for paraplegics after the old military hospital at Birmingham High School closed.

Kids and grandkids came to visit their injured fathers and grandfathers - and stuck around to play baseball and pitch horseshoes at Sunday barbecues.

But those days are long gone.

``Yeah, it would be great to see kids here again,'' Nolte said, looking out at the old ballfield and saying all he needed to say to bring the Valley's most famous farmer out of retirement for a few months, at least.

For decades, Cicero Farms was a mainstay at the corner of Victory Boulevard and De Soto Avenue, before it lost its lease with Pierce College and moved to a new location on Sherman Way in Canoga Park.

But like most of the Valley, that land, too, was sold off to build more houses - ``gone to cement,'' says Cicero, who retired from farming and opened a tool store.

``Where are kids supposed to go to see a farm in the city, see that pumpkins grow in the ground, not at Vons?'' he asked that day as he helped the DAV guys put up their canopy.

Right here, Nolte told him.

The kindergarten kids from Sierra Canyon School in Chatsworth and Encino Presbyterian School were having a ball Wednesday, running through the pumpkin patch and sitting on the old buckboard for their hayride through the 10-foot-high cornfield.

But it was the farm animals they really wanted to see, one in particular - Pet the goat, who is expecting twins any day now, Joe's wife, Tina, was telling the kids.

They oohed and aahed, hoping that day would be today, while their mothers groaned. Twins. Ouch.

``A lot of the kids are coming through two or three times with their mothers just to see the pregnant goat,'' Tina said, watching another bus load of schoolchildren with their parents pull into the crowded parking lot.

Sharon Anzalone, who has been teaching at Encino Presbyterian School for 26 years, smiled.

``It's like the old Valley,'' she said.

Yes, it is - exactly like the old Valley.

All because Les Nolte walked into Joe Cicero's tool store a year ago.

The pumpkin patch, at 6543 Corbin Ave., is open from 8 a.m. to sundown daily through Halloween. For school tours, call Tina Cicero at [phone].

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Photo:

Pet, a goat pregnant with two kids, is the main attraction at the Cicero Farms' Pumpkin Patch at DAV 73.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer