around the Garden State

Today I made a trip to Freehold to visit the nearest brew shop. I needed to buy a case of empties so I could bottle my beer tonight. I should have planned better and just saved my bottles since Christmas... oh well.

I wasn't in any sort of hurry so I welcomed the trip up Route 9, which is normally a pretty trafficky, annoying road. Today was no exception but it was sunny and all I really have planned for this evening is bottling my homebrew. Route 9 wasn't what really inspired this entry though.

To get to the brew shop, I had to take a few county roads just a few miles to get to the business district of Freehold. Along one of those roads, I saw a sign for one of the NJ Agriculture Experiment Stations. I regret not stopping to take a picture. It was really serene, just a large stretch of space covered in snow. I wonder what they'll be growing there this spring, summer and fall.

This was interesting to me because there have been a few articles in the news this week about the potential imminent close of the NJ Museum of Agriculture. This might not seem like a big deal to those of you reading this who are not food/agriculture nerds, but then there's me, who worked on the campus of Rutgers that had the farm and the Ag Experiment Station, whose faculty email address was on the Ag Experiment Station server... but it is a little more relevant than that. I understand funds have to be cut from somewhere but can't help but wonder if there's some sort of volunteer-based solution, or if they will maintain the building until they can open again. Every state has an agricultural museum, and come on, New Jersey is called the Garden State! While farming has declined since WWII for all sorts of reasons-- suburbanization, shift in agriculture around the country, issues with government subsidies (now I'm getting into stuff I actually taught in that class on Cook Campus), it is still very present all over the place. I love stumbling upon little farms in places where I might not expect them. I love our farmers' markets. It does still exist here, even if most people believe that New Jersey is best represented by the part of the Turnpike up around Elizabeth and Newark. Yes, we have urban spaces. But, we're a diverse state. That's why I love it.

Like I said, I wasn't in a rush, so going home I decided to just take roads south and east sort of whimsically. It's hard to get lost when you live at the shore. A little further along my drive I ended up here (give it a second to load):

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If you can't read that sign, it says, "SITE OF THE VERDSLOFF FAMILY FARM 1943-2006". This is where Business Route 33 rejoins the rest of Route 33. It's sad that small family farms struggle to sustain themselves and compete in the greater market, but I was amused by one more sign (literally) of our heritage as a super agricultural state.

Eventually, I stopped seeing little farms and found myself driving along the coast. It was a beautiful day and there were very few cars on the road once I got into Bay Head. I cracked the window on this cold day to enjoy a little bit of salty air before getting home and sanitizing all of my bottles and bottling equipment.

Also, my car is almost to 150,500 miles, which would be about 2000 since the start of the year... and I'm heading to Virginia this week for a short visit.


EDITED TO ADD: This article... it looks like the museum is definitely going to close unless some drastic intervention happens... sad.