The Garden gets rain and lots of it

It has rained almost continuously since we arrived except for a very welcomed reprieve last weekend nonetheless there is progress underway on the farm. The field tilling has been stalled because the field is so drenched but, we paid a local farmer to till a small portion of the field for corn and vegetables and it is coming along well. It will be the largest garden we’ve ever had. Also two of the paddocks are ready for animals. The third paddock had a tractor accident and the broken tractor is still in the field, without its front wheel, which somehow got ripped from the machine when the guy was mowing the paddock. Who knows when the broken tractor will be removed, but there is no rush since we haven’t fully figured out where exactly to purchase farm animals yet. Lots of people sell chickens and guinea hens (which we want for sure) but since we actually have experience with poultry we know what we want and what is a fair price, and we have yet to find what we are looking for. We have been informed that there is a farm auction up in Hackettstown every Tuesday. We are planning to go up there this Tuesday and pick up at least some chickens, so our plans this weekend include getting some dowels for the chickens to roost on at night, and getting some laying boxes for the hens to put their eggs in.

The farmer who tilled the field for us has been very forthcoming with advice and information. His message though, which he never fails to convey to us every time we speak to him is, don’t bother trying to do this stuff commercially; “you’ll lose your shirt trying to farm anything these days.” He claims there is no money of any kind that can possibly be made in farming anymore, and after assessing things in NJ, we are hard pressed to argue with him. The average small scale family farmer has inherited both the land on which he farms and the equipment he uses to do the farming. Otherwise he would be completely priced out of the market here in NJ. Property values are in the obnoxious range, and taxes are off the charts. The cost of new farm equipment is so high, no one could buy these machines without sizable loans. These guys are not big enough to break into the soybean/corn military industrial complex scale agribusiness. They are also are too small to actually sell their vegetables to the grocery chains. The best they can hope for is drive by traffic at farm stands and self-sufficiency. And admittedly, these guys could grow and raise enough food to food to feed a large family on most of the parcels out here, but by and large, they can’t make a commercial enterprise out of it. Not the old way anyway.

How is it that in central NJ, a place that is equidistant between New York City and Philadelphia, two cities both noted for their prized place on the culinary map, farmers are having a tough time? This area is chock-full of high end restaurants and a sizable number of people who helped put The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle on the New York Times Bestseller’s list. If Joel Salatin can be pulling in good money in Swoope Virginia, there is no reason these guys, who are better located in New Jersey, can’t also make a good living in farming. I also can’t help but wonder how the Amish survive on their labors. The Amish still manage to keep a community alive on subsistence farming and crafting. There is a Pennsylvania Dutch Farmer’s market here in town, but it is very weak on local vegetables. I wish some of the local farmers would rent a stall there and start selling their vegetables. There is one lady, not even Amish, who sells vegetables at that market, and of a whole produce section she had one item that was grown in New Jersey, asparagus. I bought some from her on principal.

I suspect that during the course of the coming year here, we will often ponder the plight of the family farmer, because those family farmers are our neighbors now. And I wonder, what of the young person today who actually aspires to be a farmer? Surely such a young person exists. Where are all of our ag majors going? Are they all really just cogs in the agribusiness wheel? There must be some of those ag majors who actually want to be small scale producers. Where can they get land and equipment to get started? More importantly where will they get customers for what they grow?

We didn’t come here to be commercial farmers, and apparently we should be thankful for that fact, from what the locals tell us. We were looking for a place to have some animals who will live in humane conditions and a sizeable kitchen garden so we could know with some more certainty where our own food came from. We will certainly reach our modest goals, but I’ll leave off this post wondering who is making goals for the larger food supply? Is it market driven really? If so, why can’t I find the locally grown foods I’m willing to pay extra for? And lastly where have all of the agriculture majors gone?