JERRY WOLKOWITZ Members of the grassroots group Farmers Against Rezoning in Manalapan meet to discuss a rezoning proposal supported by some members of the Township Committee that would create 6- and 10-acre residential lots and, say the farmers, destroy the equity they have in their land.
MANALAPAN — Taylor Palmer, who owns and operates Boxwood Farms on Iron Ore Road, is no stranger to fighting.
He’s been doing battle with Mother Nature for years, dueling with the elements around him all his life. Extreme cold, extreme heat, floods and droughts are the everyday elements he and his family have come to accept as a given.
They’ve learned over the years by trial and error how to change the things they can and adapt to the things they can’t.
Palmer sits in his office surrounded by images of the fruits of his years of labor. Photos of his family, his farm and his horses are displayed on the paneled walls of the comfortable office. Also gracing the office walls are numerous plaques and certificates, along with awards of honor, merit and achievement.
JERRY WOLKOWITZ Planning consultant John Madden and Helen H. Heinrich, a research associate with the New Jersey Farm Bureau, review a zoning map of Manalapan during a meeting with members of Farmers Against Rezoning in Manalapan.
Palmer always knew the dance he’d have to do with Mother Nature. He was raised with that mindset. He just never figured that someday he’d come face to face with a battle he wasn’t expecting to have to fight — the fight for his land.
A serenity connects him to a force other than the material things around him. Within this man of stillness and grace lies the noble spirit that will take measures to ensure the safety and longevity of what belongs to him — his land, his business, his livelihood, his retirement and his children’s future legacy.
As his farm stretches across the landscape, the smattering of brown and black that is his horses in the distance completes this pastoral scene — beautiful horses, some with their babies, sunning themselves, playing, living the life Palmer provides for them.
Most people can relate to the pride that owning their own land affords, whether that land is a plantation or a 20-by-50-foot patch of green surrounding a tiny cottage. And with that pride of ownership comes a responsibility — to protect it all.
JERRY WOLKOWITZ Taylor Palmer, owner of Boxwood Farm, speaks with fellow farmers during a discussion session held to plan a re-sponse to a municipal plan to rezone farmland in Manalapan.
Palmer is preparing to protect and fight for the land equity he said is rightfully his, equity he feels is in serious jeopardy right now due to a proposal by Manalapan officials to rezone current 2- and 3-acre residential areas up to 6- to 10-acre lots. Palmer said this ordinance, if enacted, will reduce the value of his land and that of every other farmer affected by this ordinance by almost 50 percent.
Palmer’s property is more than a farm; it is a testament to a way of life one seldom sees these days. Besides the original farmhouse, other homes line the landscape; his two sons, Taylor III and Scott, have settled on this property with their families. The home where his parents lived also sits on this land, gracefully attesting to the fact that Palmer and his family intend to stay in the farming business.
Palmer said he is not going to see what he has built over the years reduced in value. The noble spirit to protect, the spirit that lies in all men, deepens in Palmer, who is protecting his four children — Taylor III, Scott, Lee and Heather — as well as his six grandchildren.
Worried when he first heard of the rezoning proposal, Palmer and other Manalapan farmers attended a Planning Board meeting earlier in the year to ask officials to appoint a special committee to consider the concerns of local farmers and how this rezoning would adversely affect them.
JERRY WOLKOWITZ Coral Silsbe of Highbridge Horse Farm, Manalapan, looks over her notes before a meeting with fellow farmers to discuss zoning issues in the township.
Palmer called Helen Heinrich of the New Jersey Farm Bureau, who, along with Palmer and more than 100 other farmers, attended the March 29 Planning Board meeting to voice their concerns.
Eventually, the board appointed a subcommittee to investigate the farmers’ concerns. Palmer, who is the farmers’ representative, is joined by board members Stephen Pine, Howard Benkov and Beth Ward on that subcommittee.
Palmer’s family has been farming in Manalapan for more than 150 years, beginning with his grandfather, Clayton Palmer, who owned land in Englishtown and Manalapan in the 1800s.
Between 1953 and 1956, Palmer’s father, Taylor Sr., purchased 140 acres in Manalapan that would become Boxwood Farms. Originally, Taylor Sr. farmed beef and dairy cattle.
By the late 1970s, after Palmer and his wife, June, purchased the farm, Boxwood became a Standardbred horse farm, where he still breeds and boards horses.
Palmer’s history and reputation are his calling card, making him uniquely qualified to head up the farmers’ cause. He has sat on numerous agricultural and planning boards as well as state agricultural organizations. He has been the director of the New Jersey Standardbred Breeders and Owners Association for the last 18 years.
Palmer said he is one of the lucky ones. Two of his sons, Taylor III and Scott, work the farm with him now and will continue to do so. His other son, Lee, who is planning a career in veterinary medicine, and daughter Heather, a Manalapan teacher, have also been involved in the family farm all their lives.
Palmer has taken the initiative to bring together a group of Manalapan farmers and has been meeting with them since March to discuss and plan ways to deal with the situation that faces them now. The farmers maintain that the proposed rezoning will have a serious impact on their land and their lives.
There are now more than 20 members of the group Farmers Against Rezoning in Manalapan (FARM), with more that 100 others involved in the effort to stop the rezoning proposal.
At a recent FARM meeting at Palmer’s home, the effects of rezoning and the difficulties of farming in the once "farm-friendly" community of Manalapan were discussed.
Comments came from farmers who are tired of being labeled "bad guys." They say they are tired of being referred to as "selfish and greedy" and as people who only want to sell off all their land to the first developer who comes to call.
"People think we’re millionaires," said one farmer.
But they say they are not millionaires at all, that they are instead "land rich and money poor."
With the prices of materials and equipment the way they are, farmers say they are barely managing to make a living. Palmer remembers when the largest tractor a farmer could buy cost about $4,000. Today, that tractor costs about $150,000.
And the price of corn and soybeans? According to Palmer, they haven’t budged much from the market value yielded in 1953.
When asked why he stayed, Palmer answered quietly, "That’s a good question."
His voice became momentarily distant as he said, "Sometimes I wonder. It isn’t because we don’t know anything else; it’s the fact that this is what we have chosen to do with our lives."
And yet there are concerns — rules they can’t keep up with; regulations and ordinances they believe are impossible to meet; the demands of a lifestyle that society no longer rewards but instead penalizes them for; and a town with officials and residents who, they believe, essentially don’t care about them anymore.
"It’s not that simple to just walk away from a life that you know and have worked at all your life," Palmer said.
Yet despite the lifestyle the farmers said gets more difficult year after year, they stay; they hold on; they hold out.
"We’re hanging on by a thread," said farmer Hal Rifkin of Smithburg Road. "People don’t understand we’re trying to protect our IRAs, our pensions, our retirement."
Coral Silsbe, of Highbridge Horse Farm, Iron Ore Road, said agriculture simply cannot support a family anymore.
"You cannot survive," she said, adding that she is having a difficult time managing her horse farm which she bought as raw land four years ago. "Trying to get it up and running hasn’t been easy with all the new rules and regulations."
On Silsbe’s property sits a barn that she said she cannot build on because municipal officials won’t let her have a structure more than 15 feet tall. She said she was also told that the fence around her property can be only 3 feet tall, not the 5 feet she needs.
"Do they want horses running all over town?" she asked.
This lifestyle is not easy for Silsbe, but she perseveres.
"How many people would willingly choose to have their lives governed by when to put seed down?" she said. "Dirty fingernails, getting up at 4 a.m. to move animals during a storm?"
Farmers in the group said they, too, want to put the brakes on residential development. They say they are tired of the traffic congestion that only makes their work more difficult.
"How do you go about stopping development? By encouraging farmers to farm; by making it easier for us to do what we do," Silsbe said.
The farmers believe this group is the first step in ensuring that they will not be rezoned into extinction. The group members have been circulating petitions on behalf of the town’s farmers, and they intend to bring the petitions to township officials. They are also doing extensive research on the issues.
The farmers have hired a certified planner, John Madden of Flemington, to represent their interests. In addition to Palmer, others representing the group are Henry Daum of Four Seasons Nurseries, Millhurst Road; Donald Holland of Misty Meadows Farms, Dey Grove Road; and James Wycoff of Wycoff Farms, Gordons Corner Road.
Farmers say one definite result of rezoning will be a reduction in their borrowing capabilities.
Henry Daum explained that banks give loans based on the value of a farmer’s land.
"If we’re going to lose half of it, we’re going to lose half our borrowing power too, which in turn means we’ll have difficulty operating our farms," he said.
Rex Lazewski and his father, Steve, who farm soybeans and corn on Iron Ore Road, wanted to put the issue into terms residential landowners could relate to.
"If you have a house worth $300,000 today and I came tomorrow and told you it was worth $125,000 how would you feel?" he asked.
Bruce Brickman bought 10 acres at Woodward and Daum roads 17 years ago. His wife operates Cavesson Corners horse farm, where she teaches riding and boards horses. Brickman and his wife likes it here.
"It’s a lifestyle as well as a living," he said.
Brickman explained his theory on the result of rezoning, if it is enacted.
"It will speed up growth by cheapening the land. By lessening the equity of the farmer’s land, it will make it cheaper for developers to buy. Farmers will be forced out, developers will break the zoning and the end result will speed up development, not stop it," he said.
Brickman said most of the land proposed for rezoning is wetlands anyway.
"We don’t need rezoning to stop development," he said. "No one buys 3-acre parcels to build houses anymore. There is no basis for this proposal. This is solely a political calculus."
Manalapan Mayor Mary Cozzolino said the basis of the rezoning plan is to save open space and protect Manalapan’s environment. She explained that the proposal complies with the state’s plan to preserve environmentally valuable land.
"In keeping with the state’s plan, we’re rezoning one-third of our land," Cozzolino said. "We have to determine what development our town can sustain and what development the environment can sustain."
Cozzolino said she understands there is a certain amount of apprehension but that she doesn’t feel it is warranted.
"My belief is that this plan ultimately will not be as detrimental as the farmers perceive it to be," the mayor said. "Initially the land will decline, but it won’t stay that way. It’s simple economics. Time bears this to be true."
The mayor said municipal officials are working on incentives and grants to help farmers and make it easier to continue farming. She said they are trying to develop a municipal fund to help bridge the gap between what the county would offer the farmers for their land and what a developer would pay.
"When you’re elected to lead a town, you’re responsible to the whole town. No leader has ever said, ‘We need to do this,’ " Cozzolino said. "If we continue to grow, the point will be moot. There will be no farmland left. Someone had to step up to the plate and say, "Slow it down.’ "
Cozzolino, who will be running for a second three-year term in November, said she intends to use the only tool the state has given municipalities to control growth — rezoning.
"If we don’t use it now, our children will pay for it," she said. "We’ll do what we can for the farmers, but I have 33,000 other people to consider. It’s always a balancing act."
Township Committeeman Stuart Moskovitz, who lost to Cozzolino in the June Democratic primary, said he disagrees with the rationale of the rezoning plan.
"Rezoning should be done only as a result of careful analysis," he said. "This rezoning is an example of what has taken place all year long: written for headlines, not performance."
Moskovitz said no equity study was done to determine the importance of not only the value of farmland, but residential property as well.
"All 34,000 of Manalapan’s residents can have their land devalued by a bad rezoning," he said.
Moskovitz said this rezoning proposal did not wait for the natural resource study that was commissioned last year.
"This rezoning plan will not stand up in court," he said. "The best way to make sure rezoning fails in court is to state publicly that its purpose is to stop development."
Manalapan’s farmers say they have been placed at the bottom of the list. They say a town that once appreciated their hard work and welcomed their contribution to the beauty of the town has now turned their backs on them.
"We shouldn’t be forgotten because we’re in the minority," Palmer said. "We helped build this country; we shouldn’t be penalized because we own land and work land."
He summed it all up when, as the emotion of his comment filled him, he said, "Farmers are people that time has forgotten."

