Eating New Jersey

2005-08-30T06:29:00.000-04:00

Forgot This Local Food

One of the local foods that NJ is famous for is seafood and I nearly forgot to include it in our menu. A visit to a couple of fish markets however, showed that it is nearly impossible to discern where the fish is coming from. The only thing we could do was select types that are native to NJ and hope for the best. Of course we could have gone to one or two of the "buy off the boat" type of places, but even then there's no assurance that the fish is caught in NJ waters. So we selected bluefish which is a very common local species this time of year, bay scallops which are "farmed" on Delaware Bay, and Tuna also common this time of year. We also could have selected a number of different types of clams, but that would have been too much. Clams are however, the most famous of NJ seafood products. Since we were planning on eating the fish fresh that same day, we had enough.

So we marinated the tuna steak in an orange-pineapple sauce from Hoboken Eddie's (NJ made) and grilled it. The accompaniments were a peach salsa (100% locally grown) and some sauted string beans with garlic. The beans were from the garden and the garlic was from a farm stand, but the cashews we added were not local. The bluefish was covered in a homemade marinade and grilled also, along with eggplant (farmstand). The scallops we sauted in garlic butter that included local butter, garlic and wine. It turned out to be quite a feast for two.

On the subject of seafood there's an interesting situation going on nearby. There's a large preserved farm not far from here where the owner wants to establish a shrimp farm. This would require the building of a couple of larger buildings (barns). The shrimp farm is an OK use under the farm preservation rules, however the township will not grant a permit for the use or the construction of the buildings. Seems the neighbors are up in arms over the idea that the farm's current look will change and the production will create odors. Its the ongoing problem here in NJ with preserved farms no longer being production farms that contribute to the agricultural economy, but instead become senic wonders and protected estates for the wealthy. I say let's have some locally raised shrimp! If you take the economic incentive away from farm operations by not allowing them to produce, what's the point. By the way, these neighbors who are against this operation live in an area that nearly backs up to the NJ Turnpike where the constant din of trucks and cars is overwhelming. So they bought homes completely accepting the noise and pollution, but are somehow worried about the smell of a shrimp farm?

2005-08-26T07:57:00.000-04:00

Less Than a Week to Go!

With less than a week to go in the August Challenge we are still keeping the local food first on our list and first on our plates. However there are some kinks:

Breakfast is still the most difficult. Keeping in mind that locally made bagels and muffins are readily available along with melons and peaches, that's about the limit. Cereals and granola have crept back into the diet and are not local. We gave up on the local yogurt because it contained high-fructose corn syrup and we avoid that. Speaking of granola why is it that so many brands on the store shelves contain partially hydrogenated oils? We won't buy those either.

With the garden producing so well right now and the roadside farm stands full everything else is pretty easy. If fact we're going to end up with left-overs of poultry and cheese that we bought locally at the beginning of the month. There's a frozen duck, a pheasant, a whole chicken, and a pound of ground turkey. One or two of those will get us through the week ahead.

So it looks like the local food challenge may become the local food habit! Which was one of the goals anyway. Good luck to everyone else this last week! Look for a post soon from us revealing our menus and some recipes. No time now I'm afraid.

Dave

2005-08-19T08:14:00.000-04:00

Returning to Eating Local

Of course it was impossible to eat local New Jersey food while traveling, but we got right back on course upon Sunday's return. A visit to the NJ Wine and Food Festival was an interesting trip this year. It was really hot out, maybe 97 degrees and that kept people away. Good for us, but bad for the event. Last year's we walked away from because it was too much of mob scene. This year we got the time to actually visit, taste and talk to the vendors, both wine and food. Again our friends at the Silver Decoy Winery took care of us - none of that tiny sip stuff like the other booths. They gave nice full glasses - oh and gave Michele a beer!

The find of the day however, was Esparrago Asparagus Guacamole & Salsa made by Cedar Run Farms in Pittsgrove, NJ http://www.bettersalsa.com. These guys have been asparagus farmers for generations and make this stuff right at the farm with mostly their own ingredients. This is really good and I would say that you don't even have to like asparagus to enjoy it. To me this is the way it should be when you have prepared foods made locally with local ingredients. Individuals have been preparing and canning etc. their harvests for generations. Now maybe there is a commercial reason for the farmers to do so. In our explorations of local foods we have found lots of locally made prepared items, but no one can say that the ingredients are local. For instance, tomatoes abound this time of year and we have three or four jars of locally made tomato sauce, but are the tomatoes in that sauce local? I'll just have to track the producers down and find out.

I made another good stop yesterday: Lee's Turkey Farm in East Windsor very close to where I work. This is a real working turkey farm and orchard with a farm stand full of their own vegetables. The nice thing is that they stay in business there while surrounded on all sides by mcmansions. I hope they stay there forever, but I used to think that they only did the turkeys for the holidays. Turns out you can get frozen turkey and parts any time of the year - that's good to know. They had an article about them in the local paper. Seems they got a bunch of money from the state to install solar panels on their barns to generate their own electricity. Infact they may be able to generate enough to sell some back to the power grid. That's one of the greatest ideas I've heard off. Who gets more sun around here than a farm and with that kind of investment, they are going to stay around for awhile.

It's taken all week to catch up after being away for four days. The garden was nearly out of control - not with weeds, but with food. Tons of tomatoes, green beans and okra.
I gave away nearly all of the grape tomatoes and processed the plums for future sauce making (this weekend?). The okra got cut, blanched and frozen same for the green beans except for those that were used right away. All this harvesting, preparation and maintenance (oh and work too) has kept me from posting all week. Hopefully I'll have some time soon to give a review of some of our menus and a few recipes.

2005-08-10T08:37:00.000-04:00

NJ Beer!

Wow, there is so much time spent finding, procuring and preparing the food it's hard to find time to post on the blog. This past weekend we explored another avenue of local products - local beer.
NJ has 16 micro-breweries and brewpubs. Unfortunately, in exploring a couple of those, local food was an afterthought. However, since the bulk of our consumption was the beer...

On Friday we visited, for the first time, Harvest Moon Brewpub in New Brunswick. It turned out to be a quick train trip from our work locations to the brewery. Very good beer, non-local food and numerous folks who come to a brewpub to drink wine or Coors Light. I don't get that? Seems like brewpubs rely heavily on food sales for their business so the crowd around us was primarily diners so we appeared to be the only one's bellying up to the bar for decent beer tour.
When the hell are they going to outlaw smoking in these places? Every smuck who needed a cigarette left the dining room and planted themselves near enough to allow us to share the smoke. Yuck! Michele came up with the great idea of taking over each person's vacant seat at their table during the interlude. Someday she'll actually try it.

On Saturday we attended an open house at Heavyweight Brewing in Ocean Twp www.heavyweight-brewing.com. A very small craft brewer with some very different but very good beers. Snacks were in abundance, but none were confirmed local foods. Missed again! But we did bring home a bunch of bottles so our beer consumption for the rest of the month will certainly be local.

Sunday the bug was just too great and we went to the Brewer's Apprentice to brew our own beer. If your into beer and don't want to mess up your kitchen with a homebrew, this is the place to go. You pick out a recipe and they pull together the ingredients and you can brew your own 13 gallon batch of beer. We'll go back in three weeks to bottle it and bring it home.

All the food that we've prepared at home has been majority local. One exception was Saturday's traditional Irish breakfast for my birthday. The eggs and the tomato were the only local foods in that cholesterol leaden feast. We knew that eating outside the house would be the biggest challenge and that's proven to be true. This weekend will be impossible for me since I'll be in Chicago.

On Monday or Tuesday I'll report back on the NJ Wine and Food Festival that we will be attending on Sunday.

2005-08-04T08:32:00.000-04:00

First Failure

I had my first major failure of the August Challenge yesterday when I forgot to pack my already prepared lunch for work (sauted vegetables with organic ground beef and non local rice). Walked right out the door without it! The choice was to turn back and get it and be late for work, rush home at lunch hour and pick it up, and be late or to go to the local deli and buy a sandwich. The final option won out. I'll definitely try not to let that happen again. The good part is I got to eat the lunch for dinner.

The local cheese arrived via UPS. We had it shipped because it was just too far to drive to get to their farm store. Even though it was hot, the cheese came in an insulated container with freeze packs so it arrived in good shape. There is now Cave Rippened Cheddar, a cheese called Frolic, and another called Drumm. Should be enough for the whole month, but this stuff's expensive. Hopefully the taste will be worth it! On Sunday and Monday morning I also made a Melomel (Mead) from local honey and blueberries. It's fermenting in the basement (the yeast is not local) and should be perfectly aged by next year's August Challenge.

Next weekend is the NJ Wine and Food Festival at a park not far from home. I'll be coming back from a trip to Chicago, but we will try to make it. The local paper is already playing it up, but our experience there last year was a disappointment. Big crowds of people with kids in tow taking up space in front of every booth. Not easy to get a good bit sampling in, just a cheap day out with the kids for most. I'm sure this is a tough event to put together.

This is heavily touted as a NJ product event, but I'm not sure attending it and sampling and eating would qualify for the local challenge better than what we are already doing. To Sherry's comment to an earlier post all I can say is that I agree that the Dept of Ag could do a better job of promoting and in fact encouraging the use of actual local ingredients. Many, if not most NJ wineries do not grow their own grapes (our local one, Silver Decoy does). The restaurants that will be preparing food are being promoted as using local food, but we'll have to see if that's true. Hopefully, we'll be pleasantly surprised.

Now maybe this post will stir up some comments from the New Jerseans who are lurking out there?

2005-08-02T09:01:00.000-04:00

Day One has Come and Gone...

So far it hasn't been perfect but it's working out. Without boring anyone with details of each meal or snack I'll just provide quick rundown on what we had that wasn't local:

asparagus - ironic because NJ is know for the stuff, but it's out of season here now.
Assorted spices and olive oil.
Butter - even though we bought a local brand, we didn't want to waste what was already opened.
Tortilla Chips
That's it, everything else was locally grown or produced.

One challenge we faced over the weekend was getting rid of things that we had on hand and would not be using. Anything that wouldn't last was tossed and what could be stored was pushed back on the shelves to make room for our growing supply of local products.

The subject does come-up as to where to draw the line on items that are produced locally, but we know the ingredients most likely are not. For example, we got pasta from a Trenton Italian market that they make on site. Or, the prepared polish mustard locally made and bottled but where do the ingredients come from? It would be great if there were prepared items that were 100% local, but that may be too much to ask. For now knowing that we are buying from small local producers rather than giants will have to be adequate. Even defining large from small is an issue, but I'll stay away from that one. Let's just say that Mars, Nabisco, Anheuser-Busch (thank God I don't know how to spell it) and many others, though all made in NJ, are off the list.

Sweet Corn

This is the most popular common food here for this time of the year and it is sooo good. This year is especially good so far I guess because it got hot so early this summer. Right off the cob with butter is the best way to eat it, but I like using left overs in other things.
I made a Salsa Verde with roasted tomatillos, roasted corn, roasted peppers and onions - all locally grown. Too bad there are no local tortilla chips.

Oh don't forget musk melons (cantaloupe) unbelievably good.

More later...

2005-07-29T08:13:00.000-04:00

The Time is Almost Here!

Final tune-ups are in order for this coming weekend to get ready for the August 1st start of the Local Food Challenge. After our visits to local farm markets, etc. This weekend we'll have the basis of the first week's menu in order. Hopefully it will be organized enough to post it here.

I was checking out the blogs of some of the other participants and saw some comments regarding the usefulness of the channeling. Eventually I'll comment on those blogs, but I wanted to make a statement here on my own first. I think some people are taking the challenge way too seriously. When comments are being made about participants being "elitist" or "food snobs" I recommend not bothering to defend against that sort of thing. Everyone has their own agenda and ideals for doing the challenge and I don't see anything negative about anyone's efforts. You can set your own standards and then try to live by them. My own wife asked me "what happens if we fail?" I said "nothing!" I don't think any punishments are going to be doled out at the end. Its just an effort to try to learn.

My own agenda is to examine the feasibility of using local products on a regular basis throughout the year. Not just farm produce, but also prepared foods. Even if the ingredients of those foods are not local, as long as they are made on a small scale and are produced in NJ they're fair game (no pun intended) in my book. I'm thinking that people here in NJ have no idea of the diversity and quality of the locally produced food products and it can't hurt to try to get the word out. For the most part in our efforts to source food we've found great stuff that we never knew about and I've lived in NJ for most of my 47 years. These producers are great at what they do, but for the most part they are bad marketers and salespeople. If I can help them in some small way that's a good thing. It's not easy sometimes to get our hands on these items, because they are spread all over the place and as I pointed out in a previous post, driving around is not fun. However, it is worth it short term just to experiment. Maybe some comments by others along the way here will help some producers come-up with better local marketing strategies.

More later...

2005-07-26T05:48:00.000-04:00

Which Came First?

Found a local source for eggs about 5 miles away, I just have to call a day or two ahead so she can hold for me. Apparently they get a lot of stop by traffic. The location is Earth Friendly Organic Farm. They are mostly a pick-your-own operation.

I also took the time on Friday to drive to Griggstown Quail Farm to stock up on some poultry (they also carry eggs). I brought a cooler because it was very warm. Purchased one whole chicken, two chickens quartered, one duck and two pounds of ground turkey. It's all in the freezer now and this amount should get us through the month, or maybe one more trip.

It occurs to me though that all the driving around that is needed to get the local stuff is somewhat detrimental to the environment. This is the opposite impact we hope to have by eating locally. Even in a small state like NJ, driving almost an hour to pick-up some poultry rarely makes sense. They don't ship either, I asked.

In a similar vain: an interesting section on NJ wines was in the New York Times a week or so ago. One article in the section pointed out how arcane NJ liquor laws make the wine hard to find other than going right to the vineyards. Some of these wineries appear to be very successful so that represents a lot of people traveling to buy this product. And getting around NJ is not easy with the traffic and unbelievably stupid driving habits of some individuals. We don't want to die trying to eat local!

(More on local wine and beer in NJ in a future post).

IN Other News:
Rick Nichols a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer seems to be advocating local options in his columns. You can find him at www.philly.com, but you have to register to get to the columns.

Other columns that often advocate local food are Peter Genovese of the Star Ledger and Susan Sprague Yeske of the Trenton Times. You can find both of them at www.nj.com.

For those that might be interested, I'll be ranting about the "de-production" of preserved land some time this week.

2005-07-20T07:57:00.001-04:00

Fresh Vegetables

Finding fresh local vegetables will not be much of a problem during August here in NJ. There's a farm market less than ten minutes away - and its a pleasant bike ride to get there. On the way to work there are two old timers with huge gardens. They both have tables set up and offer self-service on whatever they have available at the time. Squashes, melons, eggplant and tomatoes are the standards at both of these stops. Then of course there is my own garden. Although I must be the only gardener in NJ that cannot seem to grow zucchini.

Other foods continue to be a challenge to find. Chicken and wild birds like pheasant can be found at Griggstown Quail Farm which is about an hour away. Buffalo meat in all kinds of cuts can be had about an hour and a half away. Not that we necessarily need meat for the month, but the alternatives like dried beans and soy products are even harder to find from local sources. There's NJ made cheeses, but ironically they are hard to get because the farms sell at farmers markets in NY City not in NJ. Ordering in bulk is a possibility.

So our strategy may be to visit some of these places and stock up. A freezer may be needed to hold it all and we certainly don't plan on stopping the local food use after August. However, with less than two weeks to go before the start of the month, we are not necessarily well prepared. Old shopping habits die hard and the last trip to Acme is occupying most of the refrigerator/freezer space.

Stay tuned!

2005-07-16T19:10:00.000-04:00

Trenton Farmers Market

We took the time today to visit the Trenton Farmer's Market which is not in Trenton. Its about a 1/2 hours drive away. There were a lot of booths carrying everything from fresh vegetable and fruits to meats, breads and even a dairy. So we found a local source for milk (although it's only packaged there, who knows where the milk comes from?), ice cream and yogurt.

Blueberries are in season here now and could be had by the bucket along with broccoli, and greens. Best of all though is that its been relatively hot so there is already sweet corn, and some tomatoes. I am going to roast the sweet corn on the grill tonight. It's always best to eat sweet corn the day its picked. We will definitely go back there regularly.

Russo's Farm had a big presence there, but their farm and market is less than ten minutes from home so we will be going there more.

Is it local?

It was obvious that at one stand (not a farmer's stand) at the farmer's market that the produce was not local. There were Dole and other brand names on the items. Even some of the farms were displaying items that seemed to be out of place for this time of year. It's too early for cantaloupe, but two farmer's had it. I guess the best strategy is to ask.

Thanks Jennifer and Liz for commenting. I am hoping to get some comments and attention from current residents of NJ so if you know any, send them over. Also, as I reveal items that I've found that are unique and NJ made let me know if you are interested in buying anything and I'll get it for you.

Time to roast that sweet corn.

Dave

2005-07-14T09:07:00.000-04:00

Too Much Money!

A big problem with farms here in NJ is that there is just too much money available to buy land.
In my first post I pointed out that NJ has a well established farm preservation program, but farmers need to be able to make money off the crops or the preserved farms turn into horse farms and such. Well there's more to this than I even recognized. The following was taken from the newsletter of the Honey Brook Organic Farm. Looks like even the Organic Farming Assoc. can't resist money. Read this and question preservation programs:

In New Jersey and Pennsylvania, we have strong government run farmland
preservation programs. These programs compensate landowners for giving up their
right to develop their farms for non-agricultural purposes. The farmland is
protected from development, and the landowner still owns it and may continue to
farm it. Typically, a preserved farm will sell for less than developable
farmland, since the development rights have been stripped away and the bulk of
land value comes from its development potential.When non-farmers buy farms and
use them primarily for their privacy, peace and protection qualities, they are
called "estates". When the landowner decides that he or she no longer wishes to
own the preserved farmland, they may sell it to whomever they wish. Since
neither agricultural production nor farmer ownership are required, farmers who
farm for a living, and have income primarily from farming (like we do), cannot
compete with non-farmers for these potentially more affordable farms. Without
the hope of owning farms of their own, young farmers are discouraged from
continuing in a farming vocation and some have either left or are contemplating
leaving the area.The problem is especially severe for farmers who are direct
marketers, as their businesses rely on proximity to concentrated populations,
where land values tend to be the highest and preserved farms are also highly
prized by non-farmers. You may operate a successful organic farm to no avail,
since the challenge is to generate the income of a stockbroker or land
speculator while doing it! In fact, in Central Jersey alone, both a doctor and a
financier have purchased preserved farms, and one land speculator has purchased
at least four to add to his real estate portfolio. These taxpayer-subsidized
country estates very often cease to be working farms with any payback to the
public, and although taxpayers may have contributed 50 - 100% of its
preservation costs, they may never have the right to set foot on the property,
nor have access to agricultural products grown or raised on these estates. In
other words, the public's investment may not necessarily result in any tangible
public benefits, other than stemming sprawl.In New Jersey, Senator Shirley
Turner drafted a bill (Senate Bill No. 1891) that, if enacted, would provide an
opportunity for working farmers to have a chance of farm ownership. In this
state there are programs where governmental agencies buy developable farms,
preserve them and then sell them at public auction. As proposed in her bill,
governmental agencies could sell their preserved farms only to working farmers,
eliminating competition from non-farmers for these properties.The bill was
referred to the Senate Economic Growth Committee who put the bill on hold while
they await the recommendations of the Farmland Affordability/Availability
Working Group, a group set up by the state's farmland preservation program. We
were at that meeting, and were dismayed to hear the Committee not take any
action in moving this bill forward. Representatives from the New Jersey Farm
Bureau and the state’s farmland preservation program both gave incorrect and
misleading information to the Committee, as the Working Group already made their
recommendations in the fall of 2004. There is nothing for the Committee to wait
for, the report already exists and its recommendations include statutory changes
to the fee simple program in order to prohibit non-farmers from bidding and
purchasing land through this program which would give ‘real’ farmers a better
shot at farmland ownership. You can view the bill at
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/bills. Utterly frustrated, we requested the help of
the Northeast Organic Farmers Association of New Jersey (NOFA-NJ) in our effort
to get Turner’s bill passed. In the past, organic farmers’ associations were in
the lead in supporting progressive land use policy, as many organic growers do
not come from the "old boy network" that is the breeding grounds of conventional
agricultural policy makers. Unfortunately, during the NOFA-NJ Board meeting in
which this bill was discussed, there was "no consensus regarding appropriate
remedies and divided opinion about supporting Sen. Turner’s legislation, with or
without further amendment", according to new NOFA-NJ President Donna Drewes. In other words, NOFA-NJ has chosen at this time not to support us in our efforts to
ensure there is affordable farmland for farmers in perpetuity. Frankly, we were
quite disappointed in NOFA’s decision. Time is of the essence on this important
issue, for as we write this, more and more preserved farms are in the process of
being converted to estates. Why is this issue so important to us? We may be some
of the only farmers in this state who haven’t given up on farming as a living.
Each year, our state loses a tremendous amount of farmland to development.
Often, this farmland is owned by farmers who have lost the will or desire to
convert to a more profitable crop. But the success of our CSA has demonstrated
that you can make a living at a vocation that is environmentally, economically
and socially responsible. What we have going here is really special - haven’t
you felt it while picking berries, or sharing a recipe with a fellow CSA member
or watching bluebirds and barn swallows hunt for insects at twilight? We have
child and young adult members of the farm who actually want to farm when they
grow up! We believe it’s up to all of us in this community to ensure that these
youngsters should have the option in the future to farm if they chose. They
should have the hope of owning some farmland when they make the commitment to
farm for a living. And if they choose a more conventional occupation, shouldn’t
they at least have the opportunity to continue to come to a farm like this, with
their children and grandchildren? We believe the future of farming and farmers
in this state are at stake here.

2005-07-13T22:17:00.000-04:00

Getting ready for the challenge has alerted me to an issue I've not seen discussed at all - home gardens. We have a small garden that produces some good stuff. You can't get any more local than the backyard! However, the garden doesn't support the local food economy as part of the premise of eating local. On the other hand, it's healtier, fresher, saves gas and is more satisfying to eat. So I'm including it!

For practice we ate a meal tonight that could have fit our rules very well.

Tonight's dinner came out as follows:

Stir fried pork and vegetables ingredients

Garden grown:

Broccolli
Snow Peas
Carrots
Scallions

Locally grown or produced:

Onions

Not local at all:

Boneless pork chops
Soy sauce, peanut sauce, red pepper, peanut oil etc.
Hoegaarden Belgian White Ale (Dave)
Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio (Michele)
Cashews
Garlic

So on a numeric basis, we didn't get the majority of ingredients locally. By weight it may be close between the vegetables and the beer/wine (always a winning meal when the alcoholic beverages outweigh the food). More importantly, the beer, wine, garlic and pork can be had from local sources (not considering brands and styles). Even the red pepper could have been made from scratch with the dried cayenne I have, but haven't ground up yet. So there's hope.

The next mission is to clean out some of the pantry and refrigerator/freezer items that are not local, but have comparable (better) substitutes locally. So we will be eating our way through our stored items soon. More to come...

2005-07-12T19:53:00.000-04:00

Meeting the Challenge:

After scanning a number of food related blogs, I found one that offered a challenge. That is to eat food that is grown or produced in our local area for one month. The challenge is presented by a blogger in the San Francisco Bay area at Life Begins at 30. The idea being to purchase and eat as much locally grown or produced food as possible during August.

We have decided to accept the challenge!

We are in New Jersey, the often maligned Garden State and are partially taking the challenge to prove (mostly to New Jerseyans) that the availability and diversity of foods from here can match those found anywhere else. Are there any other New Jerseyans who want to join the challenge?

Here's how we will do it:

Food must be grown or made in New Jersey.
Exceptions are some obvious things such as black pepper, flour, sugar, salt and other things that are everyday items that aren't produced in NJ (It is possible that many items are produced by major corporations based in NJ such as Campbel's Soup but they don't fit our definition of local). Other exceptions will be certain fruits such as banannas and alvacados that we can't live without, tea, coffee, yogurt, cereals and fruit juices such as orange. Apple juice on the other hand is plentiful here. Meals eaten out will be an exception as will meals at friends and families homes. However, effort will be made to use restaurants that at least make some effort to use local foods and to bring local foods to potluck style events.
Our goal is to have the greater portion of ingredients in every meal be of local origin. This can include prepared/processed foods such as sauces, jellies, snacks and meats as well as fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs.
Milk and other dairy products are a problem and will usually be an exception. There's is plenty of milk products packaged in NJ by the likes of Kraft, Tuscan and Welsh Farms, but there are very few dairies in NJ. Of course there are a couple of small cheese producers which we will use - some have goats milk, but we ain't going for that.
A futher goal is to use what we have learned to extend the challenge for ourselves indefinately.

New Jersey (finally) has a strong land preservation movement and property owners can restrict the use of their land to prevent future development. However, if there is no strong market for the fruits and vegetables the farmers will turn to horses or sod (two big industries around here) to make ends meet.