An Italian-Inspired Farm Stay in...NJ?
Beauty on the farm. (Photo: Farm Cooking School/Facebook)
The directions we were given warned us to take it slow on the driveway and keep an eye out for stray farm animals and potholes. As we pulled into the half-gravel, half-mud parking lot, the sun was just setting. The distant hills were awash in shades of red while the farmhouse emanated the orange glow of candlelight and old lamps. Inside we would soon find a jubilant group, each rolling and cutting homemade gnocchi with one hand while sloshing a glass of wine in the other.
No, we weren’t in Tuscany. We were in New Jersey.
As someone who grew up in Pennsylvania, I’ve always had what I thought was a healthy disdain for New Jersey — frankly, for no other reason than to ameliorate the otherwise bottom-of-the-rung self esteem associated with my own home state. When the world of Pennsylvania didn’t feel like it could get any worse, hey, at least we weren’t New Jersey. Things like the TV show Jersey Shore and the existence of Chris Christie only helped reinforce this disdain.
So during a family trip to Baltimore from our home in New York, I actually planned to bypass the Garden State as much as possible. Stopping to visit my parents’ near Allentown, Pennsylvania, I then thought it would be fun to visit an old friend who has a family farm roughly smack in between Allentown and Baltimore. So I emailed him.
Ian Knauer at work. (Photo: Farm Cooking School/Facebook)
“Actually I’ve moved to New Jersey,” my friend, the phenomenal chef Ian Knauer replied. “Come see me there. We have a farm stay.”
The last time I had done a “farm stay” was indeed in Italy. The country has a rich network of agritourismos — working farms or vineyards that offer overnight accommodations. As a fan of both food and rural quaintness, how could I resist? I recalled a particularly adorable experience nine years ago at a hazelnut farm in the Piedmont region. Breakfast included hazelnuts in every use imaginable. In my mind, even the eggs were dusted with hazelnuts. But that seems like an exaggeration now.
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The farm stay Airbnb (Photo: Airbnb)
My friend Ian runs the Farm Cooking School in Stockton, New Jersey. It’s located in the main room of a renovated farmhouse on the grounds of Tullamore Farms, a working grass-fed cattle and lamb farm. Above the cooking school is the Jersey equivalent of an agritourismo — a four-room apartment the farm owner rents out via AirBnB. The eggs in the basket on the kitchen counter when we arrived came from the chickens outside the window. There were also the aforementioned cows and lambs. When we visited, over a dozen calves had just been born. Like, literally, a few days old still stumbling and fumbling around their mothers. It was adorable. It was also educational.
“Will those cows make milk?” my 6-year-old asked.
“No, honey, they’ll make beef,” I reply. “Let’s go eat dinner.”
Fish gotta swim, ya know?
Our stay was definitely made special by Ian, who threw together a dinner party— as chefs do — that included homemade sausage and carrot cake. When we arrived, his friends were crowded around the cooking school worktop rolling out and cutting gnocchi. Ian served the pasta with sautéed kale fresh from Roots to River Farm, just down the road and owned by his girlfriend Malaika Spencer. The other guests included Shelley Wiseman, Ian’s partner in the cooking school, some academics from Princeton and some other farmers and local business owners. We ate and drank in both quantity and quality that would certainly rival any evening in Italy.
Related: The 9 Farm Stays You Have to Try in 2015
The store Modern Love. (Photo: Modern Love)
At dinner, Meg Metz told us all about the shop she owns, called Modern Love, located a few miles away in Frenchtown, New Jersey. So the next morning, after we fried up the eggs and said goodbye to the chickens and the very friendly goat, named Casper, we drove to Modern Love and stocked up on Japanese kitchen linens, a mid-century modern stapler, a locally-made long wooden cheese board, and a whimsical poster by illustrator Marc Boutavant. Truthfully, if we hadn’t stopped ourselves we would have bought everything in Meg’s exquisitely curated store. Just down the street, writer Elizabeth Gilbert has a store in Frenchtown as well.
The market (Photo: Stockton Market)
On the way back to New York, we had lunch at the Stockton Market — and indoor assortment of food stalls from local restaurants and farms. There was everything from crepes to barbecue, perfect for those moments when no one can agree on what to eat. We parked right next to the D&R Canal Path, a scenic bike trail that runs along the former canals and railroads of the Delaware River for over 60 miles, winding throughout the quaint towns and beautiful scenery of the valley. Next time, we’ll come back with our bikes and stop at the Solebury Orchards pick-your-own farm we heard great things about.
Thankfully for us city folk who fantasize about running away to live on a farm somewhere, Tuscany isn’t the only option. The New Jersey countryside around Stockton offers a perfect, weekend retreat.
Related: Yum-o-Rama! The 10 Best Farmers Markets in the Country
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