Surf City resident Robert Walker has been in the farming industry since 1946, and he is looking to share his expertise with the area. He propositioned borough council members for a piece of land to start a small farm for the local community, but was turned down.
“We actually don’t have any space,” Mayor Francis Hodgson, who suggested the resident try the mainland, said during a public meeting Wednesday, Feb. 10.
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| Photo by Jack Reynolds Robert Walker shows off some of the equipment that he restored himself. |
The project, Walker said in an interview, would not be a community garden where participants each get a section to grow their own plants or food. He said those projects do not work because everyone starts taking each other’s produce.
Instead, Walker would like to lead the work and then turn it over to somebody else in a few years.
“I’ve done this all my life, and I can do it without any effort,” he said. “We did this when I was a kid with a wooden hand (water) pump in the yard. That’s how I learned. Today it’s nothing. With technology and everything, its easier and easier.”
Walker grew up on a truck farm in Mercer County that raised vegetables and produce. He has maintained his own garden since he was 8 years old.
By the time Walker was 18, he was farming full-time, raising 60 acres of commercial field corn and soybeans and also selling produce at a roadside stand and to small stores. He used his own equipment, which he restored himself.
“I was really successful at it,” he said. “By the third year, the big farmers were raising field corn 12 inches long. I was raising field corn 18 inches long.”
A few years later, Walker moved on to other trades and started many other fruitful businesses, despite not having a “proper education,” he said. The White House even asked him to join the National Small Business Association, which he declined because he was too busy.
Throughout the years, Walker has always kept a garden, which he also uses for canning food and drying herbs. He even raised plots in other people’s yards while living in a motor home for five years, working for General Motors.
“I would pull up in their driveway and say, ‘How would you like free vegetables for the year?’” Walker recounted. “I said, ‘You let me use that little plot of land over there, and I’ll give you all the vegetables you can eat.’ Most often they would go with it.”
With his extensive knowledge in farming, the local resident said a small farm in Surf City would cost the borough “next to nothing.” Participants would be charged a nominal fee to help purchase seed and other materials.
“It can help so many people,” Walker stated. “Most of the people that I’ve talked to about the concept want to know how soon I’m going to start it.
“As I walk around here in the evenings, I see more and more houses occupied through the winter months. All these houses are filled with senior couples. There’s nothing to do, and I think it’s a crime. That’s what community is all about, to work with the people and do things for the people,” he added.
When Walker asked council about the nearly 3 acres of land at the end of Third and Fourth streets, at Lazy Point, Hodgson said the area is already dedicated for municipal authority use only. Many people use it as a dog park as well as to play volleyball and baseball in the summer, he noted.
“I’ve been here for 24 years, and I’ve never seen anybody play on it,” Walker stated. “I think it’s a total waste for the couple people that use that property. I think there would be many, many more people that would use it as gardening than the few people that use it to throw a volleyball around. There are many places they could play volleyball.”
He said he tried a few times to fly kites at the location but the insects were so bad that “within minutes we had to get out of there.”
Councilman William Hodgson, who lives in that area, said the lot floods on a regular basis and the wind makes it hard to grow anything.
Walker also asked about the fenced-in lot in front of the water department “that’s been empty for years,” which Mayor Hodgson noted is used for vehicle impounds.
“I've never seen any vehicles there,” Walker stated.
When the resident inquired about land next to the library, Hodgson said the library wants to use it for parking. Walker is meeting with library staff to discuss the options.
“I really don’t think they’ll turn the lot into parking for the simple reason they have the lot on the other side, they have Central Avenue they can park on, and they have two side streets,” he stated. “Parking is really not an issue there at all.”
If he gets turned down, Walker said he will seek land in Ship Bottom.
“I’m going to keep on going with it,” he stated.
A member of the Garden Club of Long Beach Island who attended the Feb. 10 meeting said she had tried last year to open a community garden at the Ethel A. Jacobsen School in Surf City but was turned down due to the uncertainty of the school’s future. She invited Walker to join the community garden in Beach Haven that the garden club contributes to. Walker said he had checked it out, but it is “not at all” what he is looking for.
“I want to offer each person the produce that they need and also the drying and preserving of the food and everything,” he stated.
Hodgson noted a man had a garden on a borough lot a few years ago that caused trouble for neighboring residents.
“The guy had the garden going; they didn’t want him to have the garden there. He was putting cement blocks up to protect the garden; they didn’t want the cement blocks there,” Hodgson recounted. “Then they said, ‘What right does he have to be there when it’s borough property?’ They were right, so we sold it and got rid of it.”
Hodgson told Walker he would keep him in mind if something comes up.
“We just have no land. Sorry,” the mayor stated.
— Kelley Anne Essinger
This article was published in The SandPaper.
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