Farmers’ fighting spirit keeps them going

JERRY WOLKOWITZ Manalapan produce farmer Hal Rifkin keeps a piece of farm equipment in tip-top shape on his Smithburg Road farm. Rifkin, who has been in the farming business for decades, says he does not expect his children to follow in his footsteps.

Hal Rifkin of Rifkin Farms, Manalapan, farms the same land his grandfather purchased in 1944 on Smithburg Road (Route 527), near the Millstone Township border.

Rifkin started his farming career collecting eggs at the age of 5, when the land was home to chickens. In a conversation this week, the farmer said he’s seen a great many changes since the 1960s when he started farming, but the most drastic change that has affected his farm business, he said, is today’s American woman, the new and improved millennium version.

Actually millennium stay-at-home dads could easily become members of Rifkin’s problem club as well. The bottom line is that anyone who wears the "chief cook and bottlewasher" hat at the time grocery shopping and preparing meals comes into play qualifies as Rifkin’s nemesis.

Rifkin, who operates the 65-acre farm with his younger brother and partner, Paul, said he’s witnessed a sharp decline in his produce sales over the last four years. This decline, according to Rifkin, is due in part to the fact that many people today have lost the desire to cook. His products being what they are — tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, broccoli and peppers, to name a few — are foods that need to be prepared when they’re taken home, and Rifkin said those products are having a hard time reaching the kitchens of today’s women.

JERRY WOLKOWITZ John T. Forrest of Howell stands by his 1950s-era tractor outfitted with cultivator bars used for weeding the fields on his Howell Road farm.

"Women are just not preparing foods at home anymore," Rifkin said. "They work, and when they come home, they’re tired. I don’t blame them."

The problem had become so blatantly obvious in the last few years that the farmer said he actually polled customers who shopped at his market three times a week because many of them had dropped their visits to twice a month.

"They’re either ordering food in, picking up food from a deli that’s already prepared or popping something in the microwave when they get home," he said.

The farmer said he doesn’t blame his customers but, nevertheless, he noted this phenomenon is putting a considerable dent in his business. He said he doesn’t see it getting any better in the coming years.

"Our kids are children of baby boomers. They eat out as it is now," he explained. "They’re never going to cook very much."

With all the problems and obstacles farmers in this area of suburbia face on a regular basis, such as increasing material costs and changing zoning laws, Rifkin said it makes him wonder who he’ll be growing his food for in the future.

He recounted a recent conversation with a builder who told him that one of his customers told him she didn’t really need a stove in her home, just a microwave.

"People don’t even sit down to a meal together anymore," Rifkin commented. "The whole face of the family unit is changing."

He doesn’t see his children farming either. Both children, Jessica, 19, and Brian, 23, attend college and have no desire to follow in their father’s footsteps, and Rifkin doesn’t blame them a bit.

When asked if this fact bothers him, he replied, "If this were 10 years ago, then yes, it would have bothered me. But now? They see it all. They watch me every day. It’s too hard. There’s just so many problems facing them, working against them from the start. They have no intention whatsoever of farming."

When asked if he has been tempted to sell his farm, his reflection was visible, the momentary silence palpable.

"We have so much going against us. It’s a losing battle," he said. "So yes, it is very tempting to sell.

"The equity in our farms is literally being destroyed," he said, referring to the practice of government zoning. "This problem goes on in every municipality, not just here. They don’t talk to us. They don’t reassure us about what’s going on. The only thing we have is our farm, and we could lose it all. So some of us put our farms up for sale. The state doesn’t want us here anyway. They’re putting the squeeze on us.

"It’s something to think about," Rifkin said. "Look at the list of problems I gave you," he added. "Everyone talks about farmland preservation. Everyone wants to preserve the land, but no one thinks of preserving the farmer. We’ll all be gone someday."

He admits that he has a hard time keeping it all up and though he has no immediate plans to sell his farm, he said he won’t be around forever.

"There’s no happy ending to this story," admitted the farmer. "I’m afraid our future looks very bleak."

Because Rifkin deals with perishable goods, his products need to be worked on immediately, making timing of the utmost importance.

"You know if you’re selling trees and you have no sale on one you can let it grow another year, you know? But when the eggplants are ready to be picked, they have to be picked.

"You take it day by day," the farmer explained. "It’s a hectic world today. That’s our big problem. No one has time to stop and smell the roses. It’s all changed so much."

Farming is a tough business and all area farmers who were interviewed said this is not a business for the faint of heart. It is not a job for anyone who can’t "cut it."

"It" being the workload, the stress, the aggravation and the physical abuse the job demands over the length of farmers’ lives and every ache and pain in the 52-year-old body of John Forrest III reminds him of this every day.

Forrest owns and operates his produce farm on Howell Road in Howell and has been farming this land originally purchased by his grandfather in 1933, since he was 11.

"Your grandfather takes you by the hand or by the scruff of your neck and tells you he needs help and you go," Forrest said. "After a couple of decades of this, you become accustomed to it. It becomes familiar to you."

Farms may look beautiful and inspire sentimentality and notions of romance, but Forrest sees it another way as he works his 35-acre property every day.

"When you’re cutting squash in 100-degree heat and your knees are beginning to get wobbly, that’s not romantic," he said. "When you’re outside on your tractor in March and you’re freezing, there is nothing romantic about that."

Forrest recounts how his father, who was stricken with degenerative lung disease, worked the farm until he simply couldn’t walk anymore.

"I remember moving a 40-foot irrigation pipe with him," the farmer said, momentarily consumed by the flashback. "I just felt so bad, you know, that I just couldn’t do it for him by myself.

"Most of us push ourselves over the limit physically. I know I do, and by October I’m out of gas," he said, lighting up a Camel cigarette.

Yes, farmers are tough.

Forrest said when he thinks about being on his tractor freezing, he remembers how his grandfather had to work.

"He was freezing in March, too, only he wasn’t riding on a tractor, he was walking behind a team of horses plowing," the farmer said.

Sitting in Forrest’s greenhouse was like being transplanted like one of his cucumbers to another patch. Far removed from the 21st century, the equipment surrounding us spoke of history and human sweat.

Tractors with wheels as big as a small car and trucks that had seen some good mileage call the place home. You know what the tractor does, you know what the farmer does with it every day and it instills in you a new respect for physical labor.

Leftover vegetables packed in cartons and cardboard boxes scattered here and there around the greenhouse were proof that the farmer’s hard labor for this season was officially over, for a little while at least.

Rows of pumpkins lying along the plowed earth attracted my attention. Were they misfits? Unsaleable? Sick pumpkins?

Forrest explained that a type of fungus had rendered these little holiday goodies diseased. Something called the "blight."

"Here’s another problem becoming inherent in this state," Forrest said. "When you farm the same crops on the same ground year after year, the longer you do it, the more chance there is of disease."

Forrest explained the theory that there are certain diseases endemic to the soil, and the end result is that a farmer’s chemical bill increases because he needs more of the "medicine" to arrest the disease.

He said the place where his pumpkins now lie will be covered with a different vegetable next year, one that hopefully will not be affected by the disease. Rotating crops is one way of controlling the problem, according to Forrest.

The farmer reminded us that we can’t grow crops the way the early settlers did, a method Forrest refers to as the "slash and burn" method.

"They’d cut down all the trees, grow their crops and after a few years just move west in their covered wagons. You can’t do that now, not on my 35 acres anyway," he said.

Although farming has been his life, Forrest did leave the farm to attend Rutgers University, New Brunswick, for nine years, majoring in English. Reaching the level of working toward his doctorate, Forrest decided to leave the field, stating, "It just wasn’t for me."

So he came home to the work he knew and has been here ever since. He’s seen the changes over the years, watched the landscape of his neighborhood change, bit by bit. Now, his farm sits in the middle of a sea of development homes and he admits it’s rather disconcerting to be one of the "last kids on the block."

Forrest doesn’t intend to sell his farm, at least not now anyway, but said he understands why others do.

"You go along year after year, doing the same thing over and over. You think to yourself, ‘I’ve always done it. Next year it will be better.’ Then," he said, lighting up another Camel, "something happens, could be anything, and it becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back. You reach a saturation point and throw your hands up and say ‘I’ve had enough!’ "

Farmers are tough, no doubt about it, and in an age where many people are looking for short cuts, the easy way out or how to delegate as much as possible to others, these men are all still doing it the hard way.

What makes them get up and face the farm every day knowing they are up against a wall in so many instances? Sheer determination? Superhuman stamina?

"If you don’t keep going," according to Forrest, "every little setback will throw you. You have to keep doing it."

Maybe "spiritual moxie" plays a role here, endowing farmers with the power to fight the elements, face the problems and overcome the obstacles that seem to crop up at every bend in the road.

This is another in a series of stories about area farmers and the pressures they face in a changing suburbia.