Four signs South Jersey is returning to post-COVID 'old normal' | Mullane

For two years, predictions that we’d soon return to post-COVID normal have fallen flatter than cryptocurrency.

But I have proof South Jersey County is returning to normal, and it’s not just that the mask mandate for school kids is going to be lifted in March.

Four popular festivals are returning after a two-year COVID hiatus: Lines on the Pines in March, the Cumberland County Fair in early July, the Burlington County Farm Fair in late July, and the Chatsworth Cranberry Festival in October.

How we’ve missed you.

If you’ve never been to Lines on the Pines, you gotta go. It’s everything Piney, set on Stockton’s beautiful campus. There are homemade crafts and local writers selling books about the pines and its lore. They also tell great stories, like the woman who told me that she knew there was proof that the Jersey Devil is real.

She told me that a plaster cast of the phantasm’s cloven hoofs had been stored in a vault in the old Watchcase Building in Riverside, but had been recently tossed out. The cast had been made by a zoologist from the Smithsonian Institution, summoned to Burlington in the winter of 1909, amid a rash of devil sightings that left locals frightened.

I looked into it, searching old newspapers. Sure enough, an official of the Smithsonian had come to South Jersey and made plaster casts of what was claimed to be JD’s (as Piney’s sometimes call the Jersey Devil) hoof prints. The Smithsonian guy told the press whatever made the prints was a “remnant” of Jurassic period.

But there are also guys like Mike Familant, who I met at Lines on the Pines in 2018. He’s a Bigfoot hunter or “Squatcher” as they call themselves. He has a YouTube show called “In the Shadow of the Big Red Eye.” He told me that he believes Bigfoot roams the Pines and that all the sightings mistook JD for BF.

He had a plaster cast of an alleged Bigfoot print in the pines.

It’s local lore and interesting people that make Lines on the Pines worth your day at Stockton. Mark your calendar, it’s Sunday March 13.

Two county fairs, in Cumberland and Burlington, return this summer. Cumberland’s web site says the tentative dates are July 5-9. Burlington’s Farm Fair is set for July 13 to July 23.

I’m looking forward to attending Cumberland County Fair, which I’ve never been to. Looking at the pictures, it looks fun. I’m far more familiar with the Burlington County Fair since I wrote about it for the local paper which, in turn, got me to take my kids. Those pieces were noticed, and I was invited to judge the pie and cookie recipe contests. Not bragging here, but Loretta Palmer, who chairs the Home Arts Tent (featuring baked goods, quilts and other home artistry) has invited me and my colleague Phil Gianficaro to judge the pies and cookies this year.

The Burlington fair kicks off with a tractor parade, and at the county fairgrounds are every country delight imaginable, from 4H Club goats and bunnies, to a midway with rides, to festival food and old farm equipment displays. There are also the pig races. I am among the many local reporters who, over the years, covered the pomp and pageantry of the pig races. Lots of fun.

Rounding out the year at harvest is the Chatsworth Cranberry Festival, Oct. 15-16. The Festival Committee of Chatsworth told me in an email, “It is our intention to have the festival this year!”

One of the best emails I've gotten in the last two years.

Cranfest, as it's called, is my favorite because autumn is my favorite season. Kettle corn, homemade soap, bags of fresh South Jersey cranberries to keep frozen until Thanksgiving. If the day is crisp, nothing tastes better than a cup of chowder and a sausage and pepper sandwich. There’s music and line dancing and crafts and, hopefully, Buzby’s General Store will be open.

The late Marilyn Schmidt bought and refurbished the historic store where, in the 1960s, author John McPhee quietly observed locals who came in and out of the place as he chronicled the residents, lore and geography. The store is open and you can sit on the same steam radiator where McPhee became a fixture, as he chatted with people for his 1967 feature for The New Yorker, later turned into a book, “The Pine Barrens.” (A good summer read, by the way).

There are also cranberry bog tours. They ain’t cheap, but are worth seeing, especially if it’s a jewel of an October morning. Scarlet berries floating and the autumn sky reflected in the bog. I know it’s just cranberries, but it’s beautiful. Take your best camera and be ready to upload to social media. Your friends will wish they were you.

Sure, right now it's the depths of winter, some still bicker over the pandemic, and spring seems far off. We're past weary, and we haven’t even hit Lent yet. Hang in there. A good year is coming to South Jersey.

Columnist JD Mullane can be reached at 215-949-5745 or at jmullane@couriertimes.com.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Want pre-COVID normality? S. Jersey's got it as 4 fun festivals return