Free Republic

HAMMONTON -- Jack Tomasello has not slept well in months, not since the summer’s torrential rains swept through his sprawling Hammonton vineyard. In its wake, the rains left behind acres of grapes now cloaked in deadly fungus. Desperate to salvage the crops, Tomasello, who runs the state’s largest winery with his brother, has risen at daybreak each morning to inspect and spray fungicide on the 70 acres of Cabernet, Riesling and Chardonnay grapes. Even so, with just a few weeks left in the harvest, the winery will most likely reap less than half of last year’s 215 tons, when weather...

<p>Under a steel-gray sky, workers waded through the swirling mosaic of red, pink, and yellow cranberries at a Burlington County bog last week as wide-eyed onlookers snapped photos. A year’s worth of labor had come down to this moment, when the Lee family and its helpers, filled with excitement and a sense of urgency, began the autumn harvest ritual.</p>

When he pushed away from computer screens three years ago and turned to clearing and planting open ground, Pedro Guimaraes wasn’t just buying the organic precepts of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) or finding new avenues for small farms rooted in local economies. He was following a passion and finding a better way to live. "Working in an office, I used to have a lot of migraines, the bad headaches," he says. "Once I started working on a farm, I had very few. It’s not good for my head, being in front of a computer. Being outdoors improves your health." This...

I thought it would be a smart way to cut household expenses during these challenging economic times: forage for free food in parks, woodlots and along roadsides. In the past month, I've found three black walnut trees, with large, heavy nuts lying right on the ground while I was walking the dog, hunting for squirrels and watching my kids run in cross- country meets. I've found, however, that there are several downsides to collecting all these tons of free protein just lying around the state every autumn: 1) You may wind up with a bunch of maggots squirming around in...

A rare wildflower never before seen in the Garden State has been discovered in a forest in northwest New Jersey, state officials said Thursday. The fern-leaf scorpion-flower, or Phacelia bipinnatifida, was found on the forest floor and adjacent rock outcrops in the natural area at Whittingham Wildlife Management Area in Sussex County, a botanically rich location already home to 22 other endangered or threatened plants. "The amazing discovery of this beautiful wildflower underscores the importance of the work we are doing to thoroughly inventory the natural treasures that exist within hundreds of thousands of state-owned lands," said Lisa Jackson, commissioner...

-snip- Consumers may have to look harder and pay more for their fresh berries. But it's good news for New Jersey farmers, who will get paid a premium for their crop. "I heard through the co-op that there's a demand," said Sam Moore, a cranberry farmer in Tabernacle. "I hope it continues." Moore's farm, like many others in the Pine Barrens of South Jersey, is part of a national farming cooperative that supplies Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc., and other companies with hundreds of millions of pounds of fresh cranberries annually. New Jersey accounts for 7 percent of the crop, behind...

When it came time to decide what to do with his family's Christmas tree farm in Monroe Township, Thomas Allen didn't have a lot of options. His grown children had no interest in the business, and Allen couldn't work the land while holding down his full-time job supervising town recreation. The farm in Middlesex County, where Christmas trees have been sold for 40 years, didn't generate enough profit to provide his sole income. So Allen did what so many farmers in New Jersey before him have done. He sold his land to developers. As farmers like Allen leave the cut-your-own...

Charlie Fisher guided the copper pole into the still pond and poked around. Within seconds, a steady stream of bubbles began to rise, showing signs of life from the spring below. "This is ready to be something special," said Fisher. "It's going to be a great resource." The spring, which on Tuesday afternoon had a healthy coating of a mosslike substance and was clogged with fallen leaves in various autumnal hues, and another just like it on the 43-acre Hunterdon County farm are probably Fisher's last chance to preserve the land. His hope: Going into the bottled water business. Fisher...

Of all the yaks lumbering around Edelweiss Farms, No. 49 was never going to win the Miss Congeniality award. She could often be seen walking alone, away from the herd. Her farmer, Dirk Milz, described her as having an "I'm the yak and this is it" mentality. She was the yak who took no flak. "You need two eyes on her," Milz said. Even so, no signs indicated she was capable of trouble -- until a baby yak named No. 85 came along. What came next is believed to be the first yak attack in Garden State history. It unfolded...

 Joe Silvestri, owner of Goffle Road Poultry Farm in Wyckoff, with Pennsylvania-raised turkeys destined for Thanksgiving dinner tables. Thousands of families across North Jersey will eat Thanksgiving dinner with a real local flavor -- with fresh-killed turkeys from Wyckoff, rutabagas from an organic farm in Emerson and Jersey-grown cranberries and squash.  "Thanksgiving is the perfect time for sharing locally grown foods with friends and family," says Carol Rice, a Ridgewood resident who has been trying to "eat local" to support area farmers for about five years. "Isn't that what the holiday has always been about?"Thanksgiving dinner done local is...

The wind schusses through the grove of tall trees, rustling their soft, bright green needles that, strangely enough, are the color of inchworms. The morning sun spills down through the branches, casting the glade in a pale green light, a hue unlike anything the visitors have ever seen. These metasequoia trees -- all 360 of them -- are living fossils, the lonely representatives of a species that once filled the forests of the Americas, Europe and Asia when dinosaurs roamed the Earth more than 60 million to 100 million years ago. The stand of trees, located on a Rutgers University...

It's little wonder that peach growers throughout New Jersey are wearing big smiles these days.  Mother Nature has provided ideal conditions for what is shaping up as a banner year for one of the state's premier crops. Barring extreme weather in the next four to six weeks, New Jersey peach growers should approach last year's totals of 34,000 tons and $35.7 million, said Jerry Frecon, an agricultural agent specializing in fruit at the Rutgers Cooperative Extension in Gloucester County. Fast facts •  Approximately 150 producers grow 8,000 acres of peaches in New Jersey.•  In 2006, New Jersey produced 34,000...

The tree, like the man who planted it, is still here. The 200-year-old house is gone, the old southern Somerset County farm has been turned into some 200 new houses. But the sugar maple tree Charlie Grayson planted on Arbor Day when he was 8 is right where he put it. A little stooped and creaky, like Charlie Grayson himself, but still here. Charlie Grayson's tree has weathered nearly nine decades of change in the landscape. Once the smallest tree in a clump of mature shade trees in front of a Colonial- era farmhouse (circa 1700s), it's now the old-timer...

At the Weis Ecology Center in Ringwood, trees are tapped in February and March. When the trees bud, the sap turns bitter. See those wide-spreading trees with the broad leaves that are bigger than your hands? The ones whose seeds helicopter down into your lawn every spring?  They're maples. And even here in North Jersey, they're full of that sweet sap, which can be boiled down into what is rightfully called liquid gold: pure, clean, bright maple syrup.   "New Jersey's is every bit as good as syrup from Vermont," said Candice Stockdale, an environmental educator at the New Jersey...

There is nothing better than going to a farm for all-natural food. The air is crisp, despite the occasional whiff of cow manure, and the two-lane blacktop is winding and scenic. But the real enjoyment comes in the following days, when cave-aged cheese, wood-fired bread, organic eggs and meat from grass-fed animals brighten your meals at home.  Small farms in Morris and Sussex counties are close enough for comfortable day trips, but given that cozy inns, restaurants, antiques shops, parks and wineries are nearby, you can easily stretch your visit into a weekend.Routes 80 and 23 will speed you to...

Fifteen years ago, Irwin Richardt was asked this question as he sat in the kitchen of his sagging clapboard house with no heat, little plumbing and only one room with electricity. "Who will take care of you when you get too sick or too old to work?" "My neighbors. That's the way God intended it to be." Richardt said this with absolute confidence. It was how the old farmer spoke. In slogans and dogmatic truths. Strong words from a slight, soft-eyed man with a thinning white ponytail. The question was asked as Richardt explained why he chose to live like...

Multimedia: Making apple cider(please enable pop-ups to see the gallery)Doris Heddy remembers when apple cider was the drink of choice each autumn.  Years ago, it was the most popular drink, but now there are choices that are unbelievable," she said, referring to an ever-growing soda and bottled water market.  Heddy owns Van Duyne's Cider Mill in Montville, the remnants of a large farm that dates back to the late 18th century. Every year, from late September until April, she sells thousands of gallons of fresh apple cider, pressed from apples trucked in from Mellick's Orchard in Oldwick.  "Doris has a...

Amid the squirrels and jays pouncing on acorns early this fall was 10-year-old Junior Girl Scout Amanda Diacont. As Tropical Storm Ernesto whipped the white oaks around her family's vacation campsite near Cape May, Amanda poked out of her canvas tent and swept falling acorns into empty milk jugs, working to earn her Inchworm of Service badge by contributing to the state Forest Service annual acorn collection. She filled 2 1/2 containers. "Every five minutes we would go out and get some more," said Amanda, who is from Ringoes, Hunterdon County. "I probably could have filled 10-ish, but my mom...

Emilio Camacho and Jennifer Caruso could hardly be more different. He's a migrant worker from El Paso, Texas. She's a home-schooling mother from Hightstown. What they have in common is Honey Brook Organic Farm in Mercer County, the nation's largest practitioner of an increasingly popular business model called community-supported agriculture. Camacho and his family are the field crew, the backbone of the 60-acre farm. During the growing season they till the fields and pull the weeds, commuting from a rented house in Trenton. Caruso and 2,986 other New Jersey and Pennsylvania residents are the farm's members. Their checks fill its...

Like most New Jersey farmers, Chester Stephens has to get a little creative in order to make ends meet. A bit too creative, officials say. Now, Stephens is making his way through the appeals process in an unusual case involving the sale of firewood that calls into question the legal definition of "agriculture." On the farm, a familiar sight to motorists along Flanders-Drakes town Road that's been in his family since the late 1700s, Stephens grows mostly corn and hay while raising beef cows and pigs. But one field of the 115-acre farm in Mount Olive is given over to...

Perched on the hillside of Wightman's Farms in Harding, the peach trees' fingerlike branches offer visitors yellow- and white-fleshed gifts. The orchard parcel is home to the Jersey peach -- one of 150 farms, about 8,000 acres in all, that grow the fruit, state officials said. Yesterday, growers, officials and industry experts gathered at Wightman's to sing the praises of the iconic, juicy, summer fruit, whose very name has become slang for something well liked. "New Jersey peaches are 'leaners,'" Department of Agriculture Secretary Charles M. Kuperus said at the farm. "You have to lean over, otherwise the juice falls...

With a sputter and a bang that sent a whiff of diesel fuel wafting through Long Valley, the 1936 John Deere Model B started up as if new. To farmer Harvey Ort, the 70-year-old tractor is better than new. "That's the typical green and yellow color you always found on John Deere tractors, although I don't think it had that shine back then. This is the oldest one we got," he said, admiring the wire-spoke wheels on the two-cylinder tractor. The machine is just one of 23 old-time tractors his family and friends have restored -- an impressive collection of...

Life has been anything but sweet lately for New Jersey's state insect, the honeybee. First, an onslaught of tiny mites began killing bees in massive numbers. Then a few towns banned beekeeping. And beekeepers, a folksy group who raise the insects in backyards and on farms, started to dwindle. "It's very discouraging. They're a very important insect," said Bob Hughes of Hamilton Township, president of the New Jersey Beekeepers Association and owner of Bob's Buzzy Bees. He said the association's membership has fallen dramatically since the 1980s. After years of feeling a sting, New Jersey's beekeepers have something to buzz...

HAMILTON, N.J. - Here, on a 43-acre former dairy farm, John Culley has a vision of what the future of farming might look like in New Jersey. Forget the Garden State. Think crustaceans. In a venture that state agricultural officials say would be the first of its kind in the state, Culley, 31, plans to grow Pacific white shrimp in special indoor tanks and ship them live to specialty markets in Philadelphia and New York. Talk about Jersey Fresh. But Culley, son of a former New York City policeman, will tell you that this is no chimera or passing fad,...

George Dealaman Sr.'s father sold his first pig in 1905, back when Warren Township was a farming community of small villages and dirt roads, when dairy cows dotted the sides of the Watchung Mountains and Route 78 was not even on the map. Nowadays, the township is a wealthy Somerset County suburb. The median household income tops $100,000, an average house sells for about three-quarters of a million dollars and shiny corporate buildings, not cows, dot the landscape along the interstate. Amid all that, more than 100 years after they began raising and butchering pigs there, Dealaman's farm is still...

It was mid-March when a nasally scream of "kee-aah" became a regular feature of the woods behind Bob Szuszkowski's house in Passaic County.The noisy new neighbors were a pair of endangered red-shouldered hawks, Buteo lineatus, of which there are just a few dozen left in New Jersey.A few weeks later, Szuszkowski heard the distinctive whine of a chain saw.----A state regulation to create broad new habitat protections has been on the drawing board for at least six years, through three administrations. It is now bottled up in the administration of acting Gov. Richard Codey, its prospects unclear.---But others fear it...

Picture this: Fluorescent rocks It could be argued that New Jersey is the rock capital of the world - just ask any Springsteen fan.But did you know that the Garden State is also the fluorescent rock capital of the world, long regarded as the "Promised Land" of fluorescent minerals by rock collectors worldwide?Stuart Schneider has written a book about it called "Collecting Fluorescent Minerals." He has an extensive collection of fluorescent rocks, with more than 800 species from around the world, but mostly his rocks are New Jersey-grown.The photography darkroom in his basement has been converted into a mineral room,...

For something so vital to the game of baseball, dirt sure does get a bad rap. Players spend far more time on the dirt in the batter's box, pitcher's mound and infield than they do on grass, but no one ever recalls their first visit to Yankee Stadium with a teary-eyed description of the base paths. And they didn't call the Kevin Costner movie "Dirt of Dreams." Yet to hear a Warren County farmer explain it, making the perfect baseball dirt is an art. Meet Jim Kelsey of Independence Township, the DaVinci of Dirt. He supplies the reddish/orange clay that...

Urban 'farmers' reap benefits of subsidies Even though he lives in a city that has 17,857 people per square mile and actually drives a truck for a living, Donald Jacobs, 65, of Paterson, is a farmer, according to the federal government.Because he is a farmer, Jacobs receives a subsidy each year from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the crops he hires someone to plant on 13 acres he owns in Salem County.President Bush's 2006 budget takes aim at farm subsidies, proposing to cut all crop and dairy payments by 5 percent and limit the total per-farmer payout to $260,000....

A Wantage dairy farmer has become the first Sussex County farmer -- and only the fourth ever from New Jersey -- to be named a winner in the 49th annual National Outstanding Young Farmer competition. He also is the first dairy farmer in New Jersey to win the award, said Lynne Richmond, a spokeswoman with the New Jersey Department of Agriculture. "The recognition means a lot to me. I was just happy to be there," said Jeff VanderGroef, who operates the 337-acre Havendale Farm, one of the largest dairy farms in New Jersey. VanderGroef, 37, received the New Jersey 2005...