A day in the life!!

Developers out, flowers in

Published in the Asbury Park Press 9/21/00
By GRETCHEN C. VAN BENTHUYSEN
STAFF WRITER
In the back of Don and Kathy Patterson's 1834 farmhouse on Adelphia-Farmingdale Road (Route 524), one can almost get lost in the past.

Acres are devoted to growing hay and corn. Chickens cackle and roosters crow. An old cow barn retains its whitewashed rustic look.



PETER ACKERMAN photo

Don Patterson makes hay with a tractor at the Patterson Greenhouses and Farm, off Adelphia-Farmingdale Road in Howell. He and his wife, Kathy, cultivate and sell a variety of flowers, pumpkins, cornstalks and other crops.
Out front, it's a different story. Cars whiz by a few feet from the Pattersons' front porch. A development of new $250,000-plus houses has grown up across the street where trees once stood. Another development is around the corner.

Once a 70-acre dairy farm with 45 cows, the Patterson spread had change thrust upon it in the mid-1980s.

"I'm a dinosaur in my own time," says Don, 69, a tall man of Scottish descent with piercing blue eyes and a quick laugh. "We had to do something else or lose the show when the cow business went bad.

"I was 55 at the time, had been my own boss all my life," he says. "Where was I going to find a job."

He started growing mums, as much for therapy as for profit.

Both Don and his eldest son, Alan, 29, studied agriculture in high school and worked in greenhouses during their senior years.

"Alan has always wanted a greenhouse and we had to make a living, so we got started with them," Don says. "Now he is devoted to the farm 250 percent."

And now, Patterson Greenhouses and Farm is open to the public, beginning in mid-March with pansies and primroses, followed by dozens of annuals and 140 different perennials. In the fall, it's mums, pumpkins and cornstalks. Next come ornamental cabbages and kale; then, grave blankets, poinsettias and Christmas trees.

"When we got started, I didn't know what a begonia or an impatiens looked like," Don laughs.

Sharon, 22, the youngest of the five children, also helps while earning a master's degree in computers at Monmouth University. In busy times, the other three children come home to help.

This afternoon, a few cars roll into the gravel driveway, and Sharon and her mother handle the sales. Don and Alan cut hay this morning and will roll and bale it this afternoon.

Mother Nature is their boss. She dictates their days.

"As long as we can make a living, you won't see a housing development here," Don promises. "And, believe me, the developers have been making good offers.

"This is what we like to do. Once you have enough money for your needs, more of it can't make you happy. That sounds dumb, I know . . .

"But I would go crazy without something to do," says Don, who works 80- to 90-hour weeks.

Alan echoes his sentiment:

"We found something that works, something we enjoy and we keep doing it. . . . We're the lucky ones."



from the Asbury Park Press
Published: September 21, 2000