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The story is the same at
two of the newest vineyards in the region. Dan and Heather Brown of
Mickleton, owners of Wagonhouse Winery located at Grasso Girls Farm Market
in Mullica Hill, have just welcomed their third son to the family. Last
year they welcomed their first wine vintage grown on the farm Dan’s
grandfather owns and Dan worked growing up, until he went off to college.
“It’s a small farm and I
wanted to get back into farming,” he said. But it had to be profitable and
not much is these days on a small farm. But for grapes, you only need
three acres to get a license as a wine grower (from the state Alcohol
Beverage Control bureau.) So I planted my grandfather’s land and we
produced 4,000 gallons of wine last year.”
Except for the size of the
farm, Marsha and Ed Gaventa’s story is similar. Their Cedarville Winery is
still under construction with its opening planned for October. But five
acres of the family’s 200-acre, third-generation farm in Logan Township
are now in grapes, rather than the fruit and vegetable crops the Gaventa’s
have always grown.
“Part of the problem with
farming now is we’ve been growing so many homes in this area and that’s a
double-edged sword. The more families, the more support for local farmers,
but the more problems, too. People don’t like tractors on the road, the
smells. And property taxes rise,” Marsha Gaventa said.
“Farming’s getting harder
and harder, financially,” she added. “We want to keep farming. We have two
boys (13 and 16) and we want to have options for them when it’s their time
to make choices about their future.”
South Jersey is blessed
with soil that produces flavorful and plentiful grape crops, a temperate
climate just right for the sometimes-fussy wine grape, plus a longer
growing season than in North Jersey. Several varieties of white and red
grapes are suited to this area, and vintners are concentrating on those
types. But the real incentives for growing wine grapes seem to be
two-fold, said Casella, from the Co-op Extension Service.
“There was always a
tradition of making homemade wine in this area. One of the holdovers of
that is that St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Swedesboro hosts a local
home-made wine competition every winter.
“So farmers faced with a
need to innovate thought, ‘Hey, we know how to grow crops and we know how
to make wine, so why not grow the grapes,” Casella suggested.
The other incentive, of
course, is financial. “It’s all economics-driven,” Casella said. “Other
crops weren’t making the money. Grapes are a crop that bring in a higher
dollar amount per acre than other crops.
The labor costs are lower
and after the initial planting expense, grapes are perennial and will grow
every year. And it’s a crop that comes in after the traditional ones.”
Additionally, she said, “We have a lot of tourist traffic around here and
a wine stop would make sense.”
Penni Heritage outlined the
situation starkly: “Over the last 10 years peaches have averaged 30 cents
a pound wholesale. Grapes averaged 75 cents a pound.”
To the farmers, the appeal
of wine grapes seems to have just begun. There is a push from vintners in
the area to shepherd through an application to the USDA for designation as
a Coastal Plains Region for wines and grapes from South Jersey. This would
bring a marketing advantage and a branding to the area much as the Napa
Valley wines benefit from their regional designation.
But the farmers are even
more excited about their success in saving their land. “People are looking
for a way to stay in farming,” Penni Heritage said.
 Now,
because of the success of local viticulture, farmland is already
attracting a new breed of owner, one who wants to farm the land rather
than build on it. Auburn Road Vineyards in Pilesgrove Township is 16 acres
jointly owned by six partners. One of them, Scott Donnini, a corporate
lawyer in Philadelphia, said they sought land and grapes because they
wanted to live a fulfilling life and get back to the land.
“We bought the farm and
ordered 1,800 grape vines without ever having plowed a field,” Donnini
said. The retail winery has been open since last November and, response
has been terrific.” We are the ultimate city people but I am an
honest-to-god farmer now,” he said. “Hopefully I can quit my day job
shortly.”
The hope for the farmers of
long-held family farms goes beyond a successful financial picture. “A lot
of local farmers were not encouraging their kids to go into farming. It
wasn’t a paying proposition,” Penni Heritage said.
But with the success of
Heritage Farms and Heritage Station Winery, Bill and Penni have been able
to leave their day jobs to become full-time farmers. And the Heritage
sons, Richard and Bryan, are taking a serious look at farming after
college is done.
They would become the sixth
generation on the family farm.
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