BY FRAIDY REISS
Staff Writer
MIGUEL JUAREZ staff Elaine Taylor is working to make the Southard Grange in Howell an important community resource. It is enough to make a developer cry. Nestled among the convenience stores, department stores and banks along Route 9 in Howell is a small red building on 1 acre of land, where the parking lot has not turned black and the front door swings open manually. The building houses the Southard Grange, the local chapter of a fraternal organization established by farmers in the 1860s. Its mission has nothing to do with first-quarter profits; it is simply to bring the community together.
“This organization is about fellowship,” Southard Grange Master Elaine Taylor said. “A real sense of community and caring about one another.”
Taylor, who owns the Shangri La Farm on Maxim Southard Road, described the Grange as a place for all types of people, not only farmers, to get together and share everything from advice to asparagus roots.
“My goal … is to give people a place where they can come and express themselves,” she said.
Since Taylor became master two years ago, the Southard Grange has signed up 60 new members — from Howell, Jackson, Freehold and Lakewood — and became the fastest-growing chapter in the nation, she said.
The members’ aim is to make the Grange “the hub of the community,” she said. Their strategy: good-looking turkeys — featured, along with chickens and ducks, at a May 21 poultry show — and programs that reach out to the community, including classes on backyard composting and organic-seed growing.
“That’s an example of a positive thing we think the community needs,” she said, “to learn to grow their own food without chemicals.”
The organization’s next community event is a flea market, June 25 (tables are still available); call (732) 901-0388 for details.
The aspect of the Grange that makes Taylor the happiest, she said, is its inclusion on a list of sites where people performing court-ordered community service can fulfill their hours.
“At first they’re reluctant, but their attitude changes when they feel the sense of community,” Taylor said. “They learn another way of seeing things.”
One of the Grange’s community service workers is presently putting in 180 hours because of a DWI conviction. He has raked leaves, shoveled snow and cut grass over the last several months.