Duffield's Farm Market in Washington Twp. celebrates 50 years
The frost had wrecked their peach harvest several seasons, and business for David and Mary Duffield selling their fruit and vegetables wholesale at regional markets was not enough to make do. Mary began selling strawberries from their porch.
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The frost had wrecked their peach harvest several seasons, and business for David and Mary Duffield selling their fruit and vegetables wholesale at regional markets was not enough to make do. Mary began selling strawberries from their porch.
From their Washington Township home, the Duffields could see opportunity. It sat at the southeast corner of Greentree and Chapel Heights Roads.
So, in 1965, the couple took to the intersection with some benches and produce and opened their own shop.
"Back when we first started, there was no traffic on the road," David Duffield, 81, recalled this week as he surveyed the crossroads. "It mushroomed over the years."
From 1960 to 1970, the township's population tripled to about 15,700, according to state figures, and today is Gloucester County's most populated municipality, with nearly 49,000 residents.
But as the town exploded with development that signaled a changing way of life, Duffield's Farm Market stayed put. This weekend, the open-air roadside stand that grew into a fully stocked red-barn market will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Photos that depict various stages of the evolution play in a slide show inside the year-round store.
"When you look back now, it's unbelievable," Duffield said in the market, which now includes a delicatessen and a bakery. He said he was grateful that "people want homegrown produce" and, more important, God. "All because of the Lord. He wanted us here."
Customers would also credit the family, now in its fourth generation, that runs the business. The Duffields' sons, David and Dan, and grandsons help on the farm - growing the market's sweet corn, tomatoes, squash, and dozens of other crops - as the couple's daughter, daughters-in-law, and granddaughters help work the market. Many of the Duffields live within walking distance of work, in the three homes that sit on upward of 250 acres of farmland. The family rents additional land for farming.
"When you're working with your family . . . everyone is working toward a common goal," said daughter Debbie Grelli, 50, as she sliced cucumbers in the market's kitchen this week.
Growing up on the farm had its perks, Grelli said. Her mother and father were always around. She drove a tractor at age 10. Her brothers learned the ropes of the farm. It was a way of life that the younger generation appears poised to continue. "It seems like it's perpetuating itself," Grelli said. "At least for now."
That's certainly the hope for Duffield, who continues to wake up at 5 a.m. to ensure things go smoothly. He said he had little expectation he would take over the farm before his father, Claude - who bought the land in the 1930s - died in 1953. Just months after graduating from Glassboro High School, Duffield assumed the business instead of pursuing college as planned; a brother, who shared their father's name, helped run the show for several years.
When he and Mary finally started the market in the '60s, it was a seasonal effort. As it grew - to four posts and a roof, and eventually to its current headquarters - they made it a year-round operation and began growing corn and other crops they previously purchased from other farmers.
Loyal customers are in no short supply.
Regina Saquella, 74, a retired secretary for the town's board of education, said she started shopping there in 1968. It was a small stand, she remembered, but nothing of the magnitude today. "Their corn's the best," she said. "Everything is quality."
Other customers remarked on the market's apple cider doughnuts, and the pumpkin patch and hayrides that signal another fall at the farm.
For Axel G. Bergenstjerna, 94, it's something else. The Swedish native who moved to town from Maryland in 2006 was urged by his daughter to try the market. A regular since, he typically stops in five times a week, he said - "sometimes six."
"It takes four minutes for me to drive - if the lights cooperate," Bergenstjerna, who worked in international marketing before retiring, said while gripping a cart carrying two sugar cube melons and grapes.
"The produce they sell is absolute choice," he said. "Equally important is that the people here are beautiful. I've been all over the world, and I didn't know this existed."
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