Visiting with these bovine beauties this week re-awakened so many memories
By now you know it doesn’t take much to get me going about the subjects I am passionate about. Some of my readers may think I am even slightly rabid. However, I am willing to gamble that the loss of so much of New Jersey’s rural character over the last 50 years is one of those subjects that bothers at least a few others. A couple of events recently got me really going. Perhaps you will allow me to reminisce, if not ramble, just a little bit……….
There aren’t that many people I currently know who grew up here, but being that I have lived within a 20 mile radius for all of my 58+ years gives me a treasure-trove of memories from which to draw upon. Unfortunately, not all of those memories are good ones.
Farming – hmmmmm: While farming on a small scale is making a comeback in New Jersey and the local farmer’s market community is booming, I remember local farming as a centerpiece of our area – even in Morris County. But no one can bring back the beauty and charm of our area that once was, not to mention the architectural wonders and town centers which were once here. Back to this in a moment…………
There is no explaining what someone is instantly and instinctively attracted to. I am newly in love with the bovine beauties I photographed above, who live in our town. As I mentioned on Thursday, they are among the only livestock left in our Harding Twp., which, when I was growing up, still qualified as “rural”. What does it mean to be “rural” anymore, anyway? I am guessing this varies widely, and wildly by state. I am so totally nostalgic for the New Jersey of about 50+ years ago. “Back in the day” Mendham was a “country” town and when my uncle moved there from Morristown, it felt like he was moving to somewhere “out there”. Back then, Chester was really out there. But all of that has changed.
Most people of the current generation, including my kids, have absolutely no concept of why NJ is called the Garden State, nor do they have an appreciation for what our area looked like 50 or 100 years ago. Do they even care? Will they ever care? I, for one, consider, even the asking of this question to be a travesty of sorts. Furthermore, I definitely feel that “we” in NJ went through a period of about 40 years or so when we definitely lost our way – were lost in the throes of a development binge that resulted in a landscape forever scared and tarred.
I remember, for instance, when you had to drive through Union to get to the Garden State Parkway in order to drive to the shore. There was no 287 in New Jersey. I also remember when there was no Rt 78. That actually means that when I grew up the landscape through Hunterdon County was not littered with the ubiquitous collection of housing developments born of independent farmers who sold their land because they could make a killing by selling to developers vs continuing to farm their land. I said that poorly. The farmers, in fact, could not pass up the guarantee of an amazingly lucrative profit being all but given to them vs all the uncertainties and risks and variables of potential profits over the years to come. And so, they took it. Their kids were probably not committed to farming as a future vocation anyway and everyone was going off to college. Farming lost its caché as everyone rushed off to the boom of NYC-centered finance. I sincerely hope those farmers got a fair deal and were not all driven by desperation, although, undoubtedly some were.
I also remember when Madison Avenue in Morristown, all along where the hospital is, was an extended row of priceless mansions, a major piece of our architectural history from the gilded age, considered to be of a quality and significance rivaling Newport, as featured in the publication shown above. When I was an adolescent, they were torn down, one by one. I remember being crushed and disillusioned back then, as I still am. Who would preside over the destruction of such history and artistic wonder? I also remember how beautiful Morristown was, the green and all – Town House on the Green, where my Dad’s Aunt Madeleine was a hostess, Santa Claus coming down off the top of Bamberger’s, the Sugar Pine Country Store and the Book Shop on South Street. That the town lost so much of it’s traditional charm from that time is to me still difficult – so much so that I usually avoid going there.
It was the tearing down of the home on Spring Valley Road, shown below and visiting with the cows and cornfield recently that just set me off. When I was driving Ryan to the train recently, I saw that they had demolished this once-priceless masterpiece. I could have cried. Does anyone else care or feel this way?
I also attended the Mansion in May in 1976, which presided over the “end” of Giralda Farms as we knew it – now it is an office park. And, the Moore Estate on Woodland Avenue – need I go on? That no one really wanted nor could afford these homes any longer is an ugly and tragic truth surrounding this story. That the land they stood on was more valuable to developers was fact – and so, down they went, never to be recovered, and to most, never even remembered. A tragedy, indeed. Yet, in so many towns in New Jersey, like Princeton and Bernardsville, and the Somerset Hills in general, many of these homes have been preserved and are even highly valued for their architectural significance. Yet again, economic woes have raged their destructive wand and estates like Natarir continue to try to re-invent themselves. There is an amazing home on the ridge over 287 on Mt. Kemble avenue that a local architect has tried to save – even that has now worked out. Well, I digress here, and where is this all going?
the Nugent home – one of my very favorite houses since childhood, now they are advertising its “replacement” on Zillow and omg I am appalled
circa 1886 Stanford White’s “Hurstmont”
Riding down Rt 31 South now, as I spend a lot of time in Lambertville on weekends, is always a treat. This is where I can still see the farms I remember – with cornfields and farmhouses and silos. This is the landscape I love. My mental images of old are why I live where I live, I can pretend I’m in the country, enjoy my views in all seasons, and get inspired by them.
Anyway, visiting with my bovine friends this week has awakened many memories of the rural areas I knew as a child – when my Grandmother used to drive us to Wightman’s or the corner of Blue Mill and Featherbed Lane to get fresh picked corn. I remember when the town decided it was no longer a good idea for the farmer to sell corn on this corner. After all those years, why?
The point of this post is to try to describe the loss of beauty, in the mad rush to “develop”. Develop is a strange word to me. It implies progress and progress implies a positivity. I am not, nor have ever been convinced of this. Lots of people made tons of money over the last 40 years “developing” New Jersey – the strip malls, parking lots, big box stores, malls, highways, and their adjacent housing developments and corporate parks. Did someone actually believe in their heart that they were making something worthwhile? Did they think their creations were pleasing? Or was everyone enveloped in the mad dash to exploit? The relative reality between progress, development, willful participation and exploitation is, what? In retrospect, after 2008, I think we can all find issues to ponder if not soul-search here.
What does it mean – beauty is in the eye of the beholder – it is so case-specific and relative – like the beauty of those homes on Madison Avenue vs the office buildings which replaced them. This is a subject which is worth pondering, at least for me, because it is what we are left to live with in our lifetimes and creates the new standard – of living even, here in NJ. To consider the value of history in the commerce sector, the agri-culture and the management of landscape and residential conditions is an interesting dilemma, again for me, someone who has lived here and watched it change.
Now we are trying to recover from the over-building syndrome. Small town centers have been decimated and the small retailer nearly gone. The loss of small retailers and the scattering of their patrons to, where? the mall? the internet? is particularly distressing to me. (how could I open a little coffee shop/bakery when everyone, including my kids want to go to Starbucks?). Well, anyway, you can’t turn back time……….
I, for one still love to drive to what is left of rural New Jersey. If you haven’t done this, you should. There is still an abundance of beauty left to behold.
What I do enjoy nowadays is to drive along what is left of the New Jersey I knew when I was a kid – a few highlights of mine include: Pittstown, Pottersville and Pennington and down through Princeton, Lawrenceville, Neshanic and Ringoes and, Lambertville, too.
Oh well, all of that may only be of significant interest to a jury of one – me, but in an effort to try to tie this all into something useful and not just a list of woes, I dug up some sites to visit which are, heartening about the current state of affairs in NJ. At least I was able to stir up these positive bits of information – check them out!
- Here’s a list of the Farmer’s Markets in New Jersey: – http://njmonthly.com/articles/lifestyle/a-trip-to-bountiful.html
- Blueberry Bonanza in NJ: http://www.pineypower.com/blueberries.htm
- Info for aspiring farmers: http://www.nj.gov/agriculture/sadc/farmlink/resources/newfarmers.html
- NJ Farms: http://www.visitnjfarms.org/
- Pick Your Own: http://www.pickyourown.org/NJ.htm
- Community Supported Agriculture – http://bestofnj.com/new-jersey-community-supported-agriculture-farms-2
- Edible Jersey – home of my favorite local publications featuring local producers – http://ediblejersey.com/
- Organic Farming in NJ: http://www.nofanj.org/
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Sustainable farming in Newark:
Mayor Booker Celebrates the Creation of Newark’s Largest Urban Farm; Photos from the Ribbon-Cutting – sustainablenewarknj.comIncidentally, don’t miss the feature on attracting butterflies on this episode of P. Allen Smith’s show on Create:
ok, butterflies, these are for you!Well, I hope some of you appreciate the memories I tried to capture here. I still think New Jersey is an amazing and beautiful state – even if sometimes you have to hunt for that beauty. It is worth preserving, isn’t it, in every way we can……..? I am the beholder – of beautiful memories and of current vestiges of local beauty. Have a great day – even though I can’t recognize this weather for anything resembling a July – New Jersey Summer – but that is another story.
