I guess you don't appreciate something until you experience life a lot and figure out that at some point it is worth appreciating.
When I was younger, it seemed that everyone in South Jersey had a farm or was living on property with open space. Of course, that depends on your definition of open space. To a youngster anything with trees or fields was open space. So naturally it was easy to overlook the benefits and joys of being around farms. Afterall, I saw Grandpop's farm every day, saw chickens, steers and pigs and drove tractors and felt the wind and smelled the great smells every day.
As time went by, I slowly came to the realization that what I was experiencing was a changing way of life. I remember at about 12 years old, I wrote a story about the loss of farmland in Marlton. I don't know why Marlton became the symbol of change in agriculture for me at the time but it was an awakening. Ironically, that is where I teach school today. Just before the last farm went out of existence there I was able to meet the last few farming families. But that's a story for another day.
I have always believed that in order to be a farmer, you have to be a part of the fabric. My mother's family have always been farmers going back to their days in Italy. People who love the soil have that in them, as part of their DNA.
I was in my teens I came to feel the allure of farming. When I was younger, that farm meant hard work and some not so pleasant experiences with other family members because of it. It almost drove me away from it. But over time things changed and it was just Grandpop and I.
When I was getting ready to graduate high school, Grandpop said to me one day, "I know you like it here. Some day this place will probably be yours. But I'm telling you now, do not go into farming as your fulltime occupation. Do something else and farm on the side."
His words became more prophetic as time went on. I have never considered farming as a full time occupation but I have damn near come close to it or as much as my lifestyle and family commitments would allow me. In a nutshell, farming is the not bucolic existence that people who don't farm think it is. This again is another topic for another day.
When Grandpop passed away in 1990, the farm pretty much went dormant for a year or two. Then through a series of events, Dad, my brother Chris and I started to do things to bring it back to life. Chris and Dad picked up some of Grandpop's tomato route to South Philadelphia when they got the itch to start growing plum tomatoes again. At first, I didn't want any part of that, still having fresh in my mind the back breaking labor of picking the little red fruit. So I decided to raise some livestock and chickens and plant hay. I would sell the eggs from the chickens to anyone who would buy them from bakeries to Springdale Farms to Scott Powell. I also raised pigs and a couple of steers for the family.
But raising livestock got expensive with feed and the time of being there everyday wore on me as I was now teaching and had just started a family.
At some point in the mid-1990s, I came upon the realization that if this farm was to continue into existence, I would have to do something on a scale that fit my lifestyle and fit a niche that 13.7 acres could accomodate. I believe I started to hear and see that fresh vegetables from local farms where becoming in vogue for local restaurants. I started to investigate this and with the little bit that we were growing including basil and plum tomatoes, started to go to local restauranteurs and found that they were very interested.
At one point I stopped at every eatery in Camden County and some in surrounding Atlantic and Burlington counties. One of my first customers was Catelli in Voorhees. Lou Imbesi and I still do business after a decade of knowing each other.
I had a ball serving local restaurants with our veggies. It was a real learning experience in terms of finding out what they wanted and most importantly in getting paid. The restaurant owners of the Italian restaurants were the most challenging. Some of them were just over here from Italy and in the old country they weren't in a hurry to pay you. I remember Dad coming back from this one restaurant (which is still in business and shall remain nameless) and telling me that the guy would pay him Tuesday (immediately I thought of Wimpy and the hamburgers for those of you who remember the cartoon character . . . "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today"). Dad is a great guy but he is the not the pain in the butt like I am when it comes to this stuff. Well, when the guy didn't pay the next time, I decided to make the next delivery. After unloading, the guy BS'd with me and then walked into the restaurant without paying me or telling me to come get my money. So I decided to follow him into the restaurant and walk around behind him until he paid me. It took me over 20 minutes but I got my money back. We did that for two years before I decided enough was enough.
The craze for tailgate markets started in the early 2000s when Collingswood opened the first big time farmers market around here in years. Pretty soon it seemed every town in South Jersey wanted a piece of the action and were opening markets. It was the thing to do, very trendy. I liked the idea that we could sell to people who were willing to come to a central location and that's how we got into the tailgate market business.
Over time I have come to learn that it is the right decision to farm part time and on a managable scale. Dad and I would always go to meetings with other farmers and go to farm auctions (a big social event for farmers along with Oyster and Ham suppers and John Deere Day at Pole Tavern) and have to experience other guys look down on you because you farmed less than 100 acres. But truth be told, I could have went into big time farming with no trouble at all. When I was raising hay, I got the hairbrained idea (probably from peer pressure of the other farmers I knew) and started to go around and ask people who had ground if I could farm their property. They never said no (they loved the tax break) and I had very little competition from other farmers around here. At one point I had permission to farm over 100 acres. But I found that it was a pipe dream for me and a financial nightmare. I could have farmed 1,000 acres if I wanted to. But as I saw what was happening to other guys either because of the market conditions or money, I realized that Grandpop was right.
Also, Dad and I would go to farm auctions and basically out bid and buy whatever we wanted for equipment because we knew our limits and had the money to do it with. That was fun when those "big" farmers got outbid by two "little" farmers. Another farmer I met in my travels who was doing the same thing that we were doing with our "small" farm was Dave Monteleone of Vineland. He had a saying that I still recall today, "Big farms, big problems". How true.
We went to our first farmers market in West Cape May in 2006. What a wake up call. First, Dad only agreed to go there because we had the idea that everybody went to the Shore for the summer and that's where the customer base would be. He told me after writing the check for the stall, "The only reason I am doing this is because we can sell to restaurants down there." As it turned out, we didn't pick up one restaurant. That first day I learned right away what it meant to be at a farmers market. We didn't have a pop up tent and it was being held on a blacktop parking lot. We cooked and so did the vegetables. I thought to be folksy I would bring down some bales of straw and place them around the "one" table we brought. Another mistake. The KISS method soon came to mind. Also, we sat back and watched people go by and I think we brought home about $40 that day. As funny and difficult as it was, we were now in the tailgate market business and I was starting to like it. And Dad. He never said a word at the end of the summer about not picking up a restaurant for a customer in Cape May. He found out that his gift of gab worked to his advantage at a tailgate market.
Tomorrow I will continue to talk about our tailgate markets and the genesis of our CSA.
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