Family farms can’t find sustenance in Millstone
Local talks about town’s farming history, zoning changes and development
BY JENNIFER KOHLHEPP
Staff Writer

JEFF GRANIT staff A worker on Soon Hing Farm, located on Red Valley Road in Millstone, cuts up bok choy and places it into boxes on July 7.

Farming in Millstone Township is slowly becoming an outdated land use.

Resident and farmer David Lee has owned and operated his parents’ farm since 1980. Today, the 260-acre farm on Red Valley Road seems to be going the way of the potato.

According to Lee, many farmers grew potatoes in the Millstone area prior to the 1960s. His parents grew potatoes until 1964, when they couldn’t support themselves anymore, let alone the farm with the crop.

PHOTOSBY JEFF GRANIT staff A worker makes a box to store bok choy that will be cut from the crop at the Soon Hing Farm in Millstone on the morning of July 7.

“They just couldn’t make money growing potatoes,” Lee said. “All of a sudden there was competition from the Far West and Prince Edward Island, and the cost to grow them here was just more.”

In 1964, the Soon Hing Farm — what would soon become Lee’s farm — began growing oriental vegetables such as napa cabbage, white radishes, long beans, bitter melons/gourds, and oriental broccoli, which is similar to broccoli rabe.

A worker cuts unwanted leaves off the bok choy picked from the crop.

Today, Lee continues to grow and sell oriental vegetables. The major markets for his crops include wholesalers in New York City and Washington, D.C.

Although Lee has spent much of his life working on the farm — so much so that he has never seen what summer is like outside Millstone — he said he would never want his children to go into the farming business.

“Not many people want to take over farming anymore,” Lee said. “There’s no money in it. So what’s the next logical step to maximize profit out of this land? To grow houses.”

A worker cuts bok choy from the crop and boxes it on Soon Hing Farm, located on Red Valley Road in Millstone.

Although nowadays developers are offering large landowners in town — like Lee — up to $375,000 per building lot, Lee said he would prefer to see his farm go into the township’s farmland preservation program.

Lee began attempting to put 160 acres of his property into the farmland preservation program in the early ’90s.

On David Lee’s farm, a truck drives by the gas pumps used for cars, tractors and other farm machinery.

“I applied for the program, but the Township Committee said there wasn’t enough money for them to purchase my land,” Lee said.

If the township accepted his property into the farmland preservation program, Lee said he would benefit because he would get to continue farming the property.

“Through the program,” Lee said, “I would also gain equity in the bank, rather than just equity in the land.”

Farmer David Lee walks among extra parts for the machinery used on the farm.

Lee said that over the years he has lost equity in his land as a result of the township’s new zoning laws. When Lee applied to enter into the farmland preservation program, the township required developers to have at least 3 acres per lot. However, township zoning laws have since changed and now require 10 acres per lot.

Lee regards the zoning changes as “a loss of equity.”

“Back then,” Lee said, “I would have gotten between $115,000 and $125,000 per lot, which was 3 acres, whereas today developers are paying about $375,000 per lot.

“Sure, land values have gone up,” he said, “but the price per acreage has pretty much stayed the same.”

Lee attributes the mass exodus of farmers from Millstone Township in the past 10 years to the change in zoning laws; to a proposal in 1988 to build a toxic waste incinerator in town, which ultimately never happened; and to the 1989 stock market crash.

“Farmers were selling their land to developers because land prices kept going up dramatically,” Lee said. “What happened after that is rural sprawl.”

Lee said it’s difficult for the remaining farmers in town to coexist with many of the people moving into the township’s new housing developments.

“It’s difficult getting our tractors down the streets with so much vehicular traffic,” Lee said. “And some neighbors don’t like the dust we make or the noise of our machinery or when we spray.”

When asked about the ultimate fate of his farm, Lee said he would still like to put his land into the preservation program, if the township were to make him a reasonable offer.

“They should put up or shut up,” Lee said. “The officials in town today are making a lot of noise about preserving land in town, but they’re not really doing anything about it.”

Lee said he will keep his options open and also hear out offers made by developers.

“Land for the average homeowner in Millstone on a 10-acre lot is just property,” Lee said. “For me, land is a product, and I’m going to try to maximize the assets I have. I would like to retire one day and have something to leave my heirs.”

Lee said that newer area residents most likely don’t understand his predicament.

“Many people in the township are new residents, drawn to this area from places like Brooklyn and Staten Island [N.Y.],” Lee said. “They have no concept of what it’s like to own land — they just enjoy seeing farmland.

“The problem with how things are now,” he said, “is that the average homeowner isn’t losing money. [It’s] the farmers and large landowners that have been here [who] are.”

Lee said the number of new residents outnumber the 20 to 30 farmers left in Millstone.

“Farmers see the way new residents are changing things as an insurmountable barrier right now,” Lee said.

A Millstone farmer’s only option to offset loss of equity, he said, might be to raise higher value crops than in the past.

“Most of the crops in Millstone aren’t food crops like potatoes anymore,” Lee said. “They’re landscaping products.

“Many farms are now used for nurseries, greenhouses and sod,” he said. “That’s the way things seem to be going.”

For Lee, the often talked about “rural character” of Millstone is just a perception.

“Many people are moving here from the city and places that are overdeveloped,” Lee said, “so 10-acre lots look like a lot of open land, but what we [really] have here is rural sprawl.

“For me,” Lee said, “the rural character [of the town] is gone already.”