Of fish and chickens One U.F. man's life at sea and on the farm BY JANE MEGGITT Staff Writer Upper Freehold's Les Osborn, 83, captains a fishing party boat off the shore of Barnegat Light. UPPER FREEHOLD - At 83, Capt. Les Osborn is still going to sea. One of the oldest fishing party boat captains on the Jersey Shore, the Upper Freehold resident sallies forth from Barnegat Light in Ocean County whenever he has enough customers for a party. Osborn's vessel, Little Chic, a 50-foot fiberglass boat built in 2001, can accommodate up to 34 people, but fishing parties nowadays usually average about 15. "In the summer, we have a fishing party three or four days a week," he said. "In the fall, we fish the canyons about 80 miles offshore. We leave the day before and come back the next day." The parties catch marlin, longfin, albacore and tuna. The most popular tuna among those who fish off Little Chic is yellowfin, but bigeye - which is often used in Japanese cuisine - is also considered a good catch. Osborn, a 1942 graduate of Allentown High School, has owned a party-boat business since 1955. Motorboat magazine featured his first party boat, Slic Chic, in a 1956 article. Designed by naval architect Phil Bolger in Gloucester, Mass., Slic Chic predated Osborn's Super Chic, a vessel built in Cambridge, Md., by Robbins Boat Builders, he said. Les Osborn, 83, of Upper Freehold, aboard his Little Chic, a 50-foot fiberglass boat built in 2001. Over the years, Osborn has had the opportunity to take several celebrities out on his boats, including Ray Romano of TV's "Everybody Loves Raymond." Life in general, however, hasn't always been smooth sailing for Osborn. He survived a bout with colon cancer in 1996 and years later underwent open-heart surgery. Although the surgery put him off his sea legs for most of 2005, Osborn got back on the boat as soon as his doctor said he could. Before 1986, Osborn ran a chicken and crop farm along with his fishing business. His wife, Evelyn - who had no prior farming experience - eventually took charge of the farm work, overseeing their 50,000 laying hens that produced 22,000 eggs a day and raising 30,000 chicks at a time. "I didn't know what farming was," said Evelyn, who grew up in Morrisville. Her husband replied, "She got a lesson when she married me." Although the couple took a shine to poultry, with Osborn having served on the high school's poultry judging team that won the state contest and garnered first place at the Northeast expo in Massachusetts, they do not share a love for fishing. Osborn said that on one of their early dates, mosquitoes nearly devoured his wife when he took her out on a rowboat. The couple's first chicken farm consisted of 15 acres where the Coleman oil business now sits on North Main Street in Allentown. They moved the business to Burlington Path Road in 1966 in order to expand it. Osborn said New Jersey once raised 15 million chickens on its farms but today only raises about 2 million. On the Osborn farm, the family mixed its own feed, using 50 tons a week. At one time, the family farmed 1,100 acres of corn. While the Osborns had machinery to wash, candle and grade the eggs, the Osborns had to take turns standing at the end of the packer in order to put the egg cartons into shipping boxes, Evelyn recalled. The Osborns were one of the first families in the township to put some of their property into a farmland preservation program. In 1996, the family preserved 137 acres even though a developer had expressed interest in putting 49 homes on the land. Osborn's wife had decided against selling the property. Today, Osborn has strong feelings about the direction of the township. Unhappy with the lack of progress on the township's master plan, which officials have been trying to revise since early 2005, he said, "It shouldn't take two or three years to come up with a master plan." He continued, "If it were a business, it would have been out of business two years ago. They're just spending money." Osborn said he would like to see the township survey its residents regarding land use in the community. He said officials should ask residents if they want the township to continue to have 3-acre zoning or to downzone to 6 acres, and that they take the results into consideration in their decisions. Raised in Allentown, Osborn remembers the area as a very different place. His father, who was a mechanic, had a shop on North Main Street, located across the street from the elementary school that was torn down in 1937. He remembers ringing the school bell every morning. Like many Depression-era youngsters, Osborn started working at an early age and remembers pulling weeds for 15 cents an hour at Andrew Breza's farm. The farm will soon serve as the site of the region's new middle school. He joked that he knows the farm doesn't have a historic pesticide problem like others in the area do because there "were too many weeds to pull." He also picked potatoes in the area that is now Byron Johnson Park, Osborn said, and went to school with the man the park is named after. Osborn further recalled how he and his friends trapped muskrats and played football behind what is now The Bank on North Main Street. In addition, Osborn remembered students helping build the high school's agricultural building. "It was a work project at school," he said. "Jud Harris, a carpenter, did the trusses and the students helped. Initially, heat had to be piped underground to the new building from the high school. "That's when pennies were tight," he said. In 1979, he had the opportunity to look at the community's schooling from a different angle when he was elected to the Upper Freehold Regional Board of Education. He served as the board's president from 1980-82 and was on the Monmouth County Executive School Board for a few years as well. Osborn does not agree with the Upper Freehold Regional School District's decision to build a new middle school to ease its overcrowding issues. He said he would like to have seen the district build a high school in a central location with neighboring Millstone Township and use the current high school as a new middle school. The Osborns have a son, Richard, whose house is in front of their property, and a daughter, Terri Tindall of Robbinsville. The couple has five grandchildren and a great-grandchild. When asked if he ever plans to fully retire, Osborn replied, "When they put me in a hole."