Cream of the crop: New Jersey’s farm stands
Local farm stands showcase fresh peaches, corn, and more.
August is the month when New Jersey really lives up to its nickname — the Garden State — and farm stands burst with vibrant, just-picked sun-ripened tomatoes, baskets of sweet corn, and ripe, juicy peaches.
Yvonne Peplowski’s father-in-law bought the Gloucester County farm when he returned home from WWII, and she went from insurance adjustment to farming when she married his son in 1978.
She, her two sons and a daughter, and their families now farm the 87 acres, growing everything they sell — peaches, corn, watermelon, onions, cantaloupe, tomatoes, and even farm-fresh eggs.
Rosie’s opened in 1961, and has been at its current location in Mullica Hill, Gloucester County, for over 50 years.
Palma “Rosie” Sorbello was an Italian-immigrant “farm wife” when she opened a summer produce stand on busy Route 322 bordering her family’s spread in Mullica Hill. For staff, she relied on her peach-farmer husband, Michael, seven children, siblings, and in-laws. She died in 1991, but the generations since — even those who left for college and have other jobs — still help out at the market.
Mood’s Farm Market on the Bridgeton Pike in Mullica Hill, Gloucester County, offers pick-your-own fruit. Visitors currently are going for blackberries and raspberries; in another month or so it will be apples, pears and pumpkins, with a corn maze in the fall.
Tom Pagels retired from a career as a seed company representative and now grows a small amount of produce behind his Parvins Mill farm stand — right outside the entrance to Parvin State Park in Pittsgrove, Salem County.
His daughter, Laura Pagels-Vaughn, cultivates flowers, including lisianthus (Eustoma), commonly known as prairie gentian, which has a reputation for being tricky to grow.
Generations have experienced the simple joy in pulling off a crowded highway into a roadside farm stand, transforming a drive from the neighborhood or on the way to or from the Jersey Shore into something richer: a connection to the land, the season, and the people who grow our food.