To the editor:
At the conclusion of another holiday season, the Simonson family would like to thank our friends and neighbors for visiting our farms and participating in another successful year for our family enterprise. It’s an annual pleasure for us to see so many familiar faces. We wish we had more time to visit with each of you.
Our family has been growing Christmas trees on our Dey Road and George Davison Road farms since patriarchs Ray and Bus Simonson planted the first seedlings in 1952. Perhaps you were helped this year by "supersalesman" Taylor, our 8-year-old grandson, in from Montana, who represents the fourth generation of participation in the tree farm. We expect that he and his cousins will be serving you for years to come.
Thanks to the vision of planners at all levels of government, and especially in Cranbury, the future agriculture in our township is more assured than ever. But preservation of agriculture in our township is more than restricting development.
Agriculture is an enterprise as well as an idea. Farmers need to operate a successful business to stay farming. Much of the agriculture that you see in Cranbury and New Jersey is part of a world-wide food system in which our farmers put their crops in world hoppers and are subject to the same vagaries of market as are their competitors in Iowa and Australia. It is a fragile system, of long-distance movement heavily subsidized by fossil fuels, with very modest expectations of profit how many of us know that a current grain farmer is paid about the same for a bushel of corn as was his grandfather in 1950?
Our Christmas trees are one example of an alternative model of agriculture; one in which products of the land are grown and marketed locally. Here in Cranbury, in addition to our trees, you can also obtain sweet corn, pumpkins and a variety of fruits and vegetables grown by your neighbors. Nearby townships have vineyards and wineries and CSAs (Consumer Supported Agricultre) in which subscribers purchase shares in the Spring for a regular supply of produce throughout the growing season. We hope to see more of this in Cranbury soon.
Residents of our township who have been so successful in preserving the land on which crops are grown can continure to support agriculture by patronizing those farm enterprises that now exist and will exist in the future in our township, and at the same time reap the benefits of the freshet crops possible.
We do sincerely appreciate it.
Carol and Jim Applegate
for the Simonson Family
Cranbury

