South Jersey farming women share experiences through Annie's Project

Palma "Rosie" Sorbello was an Italian-immigrant "farm wife" 51 years ago when she opened a summer produce market on busy Route 322 bordering her family's 60-acre spread in Mullica Hill. For staff, she relied on her peach-farmer husband, Michael, seven children, siblings, and in-laws.

After Sorbello died of breast cancer in 1992, Michael added running Rosie's Farm Market - by then a popular Gloucester County stop among Shore-bound tourists - to his long list of chores.

His death at 78 a little more than a year ago dropped those duties into the laps of the couple's children - especially daughter Lisa Westermann, 50, who took over as manager of the farm, which grows fruit and vegetables on several hundred acres in the county.

"My father always said, 'They can line up $100 bills from here to China and I'll never sell this farm.' He kept it going all those years, and now it's our turn," Westermann said last week as she and family members prepared greenhouses on the property, which is now surrounded by housing subdivisions.

But how to keep the business going amid development pressures and the usual agricultural challenges was daunting to Westermann, her five sisters, and one brother, who range in age from 40 to 52.

Though they had worked there since their childhoods, when they would run through the fields after dinner and pick beetles from the tomato plants - and all were raising families of their own on or near the farm - the siblings had gone on to other careers. Westermann most recently worked as a quality-control specialist for Lockheed Martin.

"We have found over the years that no matter where you go, you always come back to the farm. This is a legacy my brother and sisters and I want to make sure we can leave for our children," Westermann said.

When the invitation came to join Annie's Project, a seven-week seminar for female farmers that covers everything from writing a business plan to marketing crops to estate planning, Westermann jumped on board.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture program, named after late Illinois farmer Annie Fleck, is offered in 22 states, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The annual wintertime course - given during farmers' off-season - is administered in New Jersey by the Rutgers University Cooperative Extension Service and was given for the first time in the Garden State last year.

According to federal officials, most of the 10,300 farms in New Jersey and 63,000 in Pennsylvania are run by individuals or families.

There are no statistics on how many are headed by women, but experts say anecdotally that more and more mothers, daughters, and female siblings are involved in agricultural operations.

"As families decide they want to hold on to a family farm, it often falls to a woman to do it," said Jenny Carleo, a Cape May and Cumberland County agent for the Rutgers Cooperative Extension. "In some cases, we are seeing that women are the ones buying the farms and starting out themselves."

This year, the program is taking place simultaneously at the Rutgers Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Bridgeton, Cumberland County; in Burlington County at the Rutgers EcoComplex in Bordentown; and in Somerset County at the Rutgers Cooperative Extension Center in Bridgewater.

At each site, about two dozen women have paid $85 to meet weekly for dinner and learn about and share their farm-management experience, Carleo said.

The extension service has long offered agricultural classes, she said. But it found that unless a seminar was geared specifically to them, female farmers didn't attend.

"The networking among the women that ultimately takes place is invaluable," Carleo said.

Marilyn Campbell - who has operated Scotia Acres, an alpaca farm in Lumberton, since 2006 - agrees.

"There is a lot of benefit to hearing what other women have to say about their experiences, and that plays into the back-to-basics [agricultural] issues that are being discussed," Campbell, 65, said. "I've learned a lot."

Campbell and Westermann noted that some Annie's Project participants have said that, although their methods are those all farmers use, their ideas were second-guessed by their male counterparts.

Campbell and her husband, Jim, owned a medical-testing firm in Marlton for years, but it was Jim's dream to go into farming. When he died in 2010, running the operation became Campbell's reality. With the help of her sons Bill and Jim Jr., and the younger Jim's wife, Laura, Campbell may expand into raising beef cattle.

The Annie's Project classes, which Campbell attends with her daughter-in-law, have the family considering mounting an agritourism business on their picturesque property - which has grown from five to 53 acres - and features a restored 1832 brick manor house.

"Putting the ideas down on paper in the form of a business plan has been really valuable for us," Campbell said of the training she received. "Then having a chance to get to know the other women, and hear their stories have been even more valuable."