JERRY WOLKOWITZ Aberdeen resident Louis Sigismondi, owner of Sigismondi Farms and Nursery, Manalapan, works among the poinsettias he’ll be selling this holiday season.
Howard Waters said he doesn’t know what it’s like to be stuck in a traffic jam, not on his way to work anyway.
When the owner of Waters Nursery on Baird Road in Millstone Township walks out of his house, he’s already at work. His work site is the earth and his time clock is the sun.
Waters has been operating his family-owned farm since 1979, and he’s not taking kindly to the idea of trading in his tractor and spades for a 9-to-5 job and traffic jams two trips per day.
Waters said his farm has been in the family for 60 years. His parents bought 160 acres on Baird Road and started a vegetable farm in 1940. When Waters took it over in 1979, he added 40 acres and converted it into a wholesale nursery farm.
JERRY WOLKOWITZ Howard Waters is surrounded by spruce trees at his family’s Millstone Township farm. Waters says developers who want to build more homes in suburbia have their eyes on his Baird Road property.
Touring Waters’ farm instantly puts you in a holiday mood. Rows and rows of Christmas trees from tiny to tall line his land on both sides of the road named after his family. How long this bucolic scenery will be the norm is anybody’s guess.
"When we make this turn, you’ll see the whole face of the scenery change from rural life to city life," Waters said.
He was right. Although the beauty of the homes being built on a recently sold nearby farm were pleasing to the eye, the whole structure of the scenery had indeed changed, sharply and quickly, indicative of the story of suburban society.
"We’re dinosaurs in a changing world," Waters said. "It’s our future we’re talking about here. We want to preserve the land and our way of life, but the farm is our business, too, and we need to also preserve our assets for our children as well. It’s a Catch-22."
Waters explained that the whole inner structure of farming has changed drastically, changing the way he is able to operate his farm business.
"There are no more road stands, no small guys left to sell to," Waters explained. "We lost that business."
He explained that since a large part of his products were sold to smaller garden centers which have since become virtually non-existent, he felt the need to add retailing to his wholesale business. He did so about four years ago.
Stores like Home Depot have also put a considerable dent in the farmer’s business. Businesses that sell trees in plastic containers have made it easier for people to care for the plants and trees they buy.
"When the market for container plants became popular in the early 1980s, I decided against doing it," explained Waters. "There were two choices for farmers at that time, container plants and shade trees. I took the middle of the road."
His trees are grown with the "balled and burlapped" method. Waters saw the trend toward container plants escalating and began the process of changing over, slowly.
"We’re trying to catch up," he said. "Doing this involves a big change in your farm. For retailing, you need a place to store your trees. All this increases your costs of operating."
Waters said his decision not to switch over to container plants years ago is a decision he’s paying for now.
"I didn’t change soon enough or fast enough," he added.
The market for their products has also changed sharply, according to the farmer.
"We sell 6- to 8-foot tall Christmas trees. They used to be ideal for everyone. Now, people only want to buy this size to put on their porches. They want a 14-foot tree in their living room."
Waters said houses being built locally are so large that they need large plants and trees to go along with the design of the house. He purchases what he needs to from other sources in order to accommodate the changing needs of his customers.
Howard’s wife, Kathy, is also very involved in the farm business. Besides helping with farm work, she educates her neighbors’ children in the ways and methods of farming.
"It’s a learning experience," she said, adding that she loves the farm and doesn’t want to sell it or give up her lifestyle.
Waters said he’s always been a middle-of-the-road man.
"I like to sit on the fence and balance both sides of issues and problems."
His apparent easy-going nature allows him to do this.
Waters admits his parents do want to sell the farm. They’re worried about the investment they’ve put in over the course of their lives being in jeopardy for many reasons, Waters said. With ongoing zoning changes, they worry they’ll never know if their farm will lose its value. Waters said developers come in every day to make offers on the farm.
"My parents come back every summer," he said. "My father is 87, and he still works the land when he’s here. My mother knows exactly where everything is supposed to be. If things are not the way they should be, then she feels the farm should be sold."
Kathy Waters added that the more houses the retired couple see being built in the area, the more nervous they become.
"We don’t want to sell our farm," Howard Waters said. "I don’t know what I’d do. It’s all I’ve ever done. A farmer is what I am."
His wife said it’s something they talk about every day, the possibility of having to make a living in a different way.
Waters couldn’t give a definitive answer as to what he would do if he didn’t farm. His hesitation reflected the fact that the thought just seemed too far removed from his everyday life right now, but the look on his face and the confusion in his eyes reflected the reality of what he may eventually have to face sooner than he ever planned to.
Area farmers know the pressures and pitfalls that seem to color their daily working world yet they continue to do what they’ve done for most of their lives.
Louis Sigismondi of Sigismondi Farms and Nursery, Manalapan, recently moved back to his parents’ house, the house he grew up in on Lloyd Road in Aberdeen. This childhood home was also the place where Sigismondi, at the age of 5, began his life as a farmer, helping his dad, Constantino, and his mom, Algisa, work the 20-acre vegetable farm purchased in 1939.
Sigismondi has done the same work since then. His farming life eventually took him to the 100-acre vegetable farm his parents purchased on Dey Grove Road, Manalapan, in 1958. He now continues to work the 32 additional acres, later purchased on Millhurst Road in 1979; this farm is now a nursery.
There’s something quite extraordinary about this picture and Sigismondi agrees. In a society of mobile people where disconnection between families is not uncommon, it may seem unfashionable, unusual, but oh so sweet to see a man who still believes in putting down roots.
To walk the same land his father did, to make his living the same way his father did, to make that living literally from the rich earth on his father’s land can only be called spiritually poetic.
The market has changed and Sigismondi changed with it. He grows annuals and perennials now. The 24 greenhouses he operates are full most of the year, with spring and fall being his busiest seasons.
The farm operated a primarily wholesale business until about four years ago when Sigismondi added retailing to his operation, a move he felt his business needed.
"Wholesaling is very difficult," said the farmer. "Retailing gives me cash money right here, right now in my register."
He revealed that his business suffered over the years because of uncollected funds from wholesale customers.
Sigismondi said farming is in his blood and finds it virtually impossible to imagine himself doing anything else.
"But," he admits, "there aren’t many of us left. We’re a dying breed. So many things, like the government, the state and the county make it harder and harder to maintain making a living in farming."
Business isn’t the way it used to be, according to the farmer.
"It was easier to make a living years ago," he said, explaining that in 1979 mums were $1.85 a dozen. Now, 21 years later, those mums are getting $1.65. Combine that with the rising costs of plant materials, plastics and fuel, and this makes for big problems. "We’re making less money now than we did back then," Sigismondi explained.
According to Sigismondi, farming has changed drastically over the last 10 years.
"Things have gotten so much worse," he stated, citing stiffer regulations and damage from deer and other animals as the reasons why his work has become a job fraught with constant difficulties.
"We had more damage from deer last year than from the drought," he explained. The government "makes it so difficult for us to control the problem. I love the animals, too, but when they’re destroying our crops, it becomes a tough situation to deal with."
Sigismondi recalled a difficult time he had in 1997 when his farm operation ground almost to a halt because of another suburban concern — development.
According to a story which appeared in Greater Media Newspapers’ News Transcript on Aug. 6, 1997, Sigismondi experienced severe monetary losses due to the closure of Millhurst Road during the time when sewer and gas lines were being installed for the new homes at Knob Hill development in Manalapan. The road was closed for more than four weeks at Main Street in the Tennent section of Manalapan.
Sigismondi said he had to lay off workers, making running his business virtually impossible, making customer access to his nursery virtually impossible and making his access to roads he traveled everyday to deliver his plants difficult at best. There were days when he was denied access to the road itself.
Even with the difficulties he experiences on a regular basis, Sigismondi said he’s not ready to sell his farm. He’s not ready to retire. He’s never done any other type of work.
Unlike his three brothers, who all secured other means of work to supplement their farm income, Louis stayed home on the farm. He said he married late and since he and his wife, Pam, have no children, it was easier for him to remain on the farm.
His brother Frank and Frank’s sons own Sigismondi Greenhouses II Inc. in Aberdeen and Manalapan.
Sigismondi can’t see himself away from the farm for any length of time. Vacations are a rarity.
"It’s such a part of you. You do the same thing every day in the same way and at the same time. It’s difficult to be away from it," he explained.
Although Sigismondi has no plans to sell his farm now, it’s a subject that does cross his mind — and more often lately.
"You’re caught in the middle," he explained. "If you want to sell, it takes three or four years to go through the process. It’s not like selling a house. Someone doesn’t just come in, offer you a good price and you sell it. You have to really fight to get what you want. People just don’t realize this is your pension, your security, everything you’ve accomplished all your life."
Like any other work done over the course of a person’s lifetime, farmers say they’re entitled to their pension, their security, their reward commuted to monetary value when their time comes to retire.
But these pensions are not secured, protected or insured by any government agency. Farmers say their future is always hanging in the balance because of this.
Farmers say their pensions, their life’s investment, should reflect the time, energy, "sweat equity" and money they’ve poured into their "pension plans" over the years, and not be contingent on things like what governing bodies are in office or what zoning changes have taken place recently causing their land to be worth less.
It’s with a bitter taste in their mouths that they discuss the possibility of having their property decrease in value because of laws which were not in effect when these farmers planted the first seeds of life on their particular piece of earth.