Farming Remnants

The Celery Farm past is present in the landscape. Follow along with this guide as you walk the trail to notice what remains to this day.

As you cross the bridge into the Celery Farm Nature Preserve from the parking area along Franklin Turnpike in Allendale, NJ, you are walking in the footsteps of the farming people who first built that bridge. Look under it to see the original steel beams placed there to support trucks and other farm equipment.

Farms were smaller back then. There were actually two farms in the area that is the present day Celery Farm. The Appert family grew onions and celery beginning in 1888 in the area you see as you look out at Lake Appert, having ditched and drained it. The adjacent Bajor farm located in the northwest corner of the preserve next to the present day Butterfly Garden was purchased from the Apperts in the early 1920s.

The Appert farm was sold to the McBride company in 1943 and went out of business in the 1950s. It was put up for sale in 1956 and marketed without success for many years. The combined area was eventually acquired by Allendale to establish the nature preserve, thanks to the persistence and persuasiveness of Fyke Nature Association founder Stiles Thomas and the collaboration of Allendale Mayor Edward FitzPatrick.

That happy story detail can be found in several places on this website, including How The Celery Farm Was Saved and Celery Farm History. This page is about the physical embodiments of the farms that you can still see today.

A few steps past the bridge not far behind the sign with the images of some of the special birds found here, look carefully and you will see the remains of a house foundation. The foundation extends back past the cellar pit depression. That is all that remains of a house where seasonal farm workers stayed. It burned to the ground in a huge fire around 1960. Beyond it you can see a trace of a road that the Bajor children walked on their way home from the Brookside School as a shortcut to their house located near the end of present day Fox Run.

If you go to the right to follow the trail counter-clockwise, the first thing you come to is the spillway that now drains overflow from Lake Appert into the Allendale Brook. The spillway concrete barrier was partially removed in 1981 after the Celery Farm Nature Preserve was acquired. There was a pump house next to the spillway on the concrete foundation. As it is understood, the pump drew water out of the fields into the spillway. The spillway barrier prevented water from flowing back into the fields.

The trail from the bridge to the spillway was also a farm road. The central farm fields drainage ditch ran north to south in a line from the Boy Scout Platform to the spillway, which remains the deepest part of the lake. You can see the Big Ditch in the 1953 aerial photo.

Continue along around the corner to the main flow of the Allendale Brook. The brook was routed around the perimeter of the farm fields. Look across the brook past the bridge with the closed gate on the far side to see the back of the Appert House. The house is still there on Cottage Lane. It was later occupied by the Herberts, who acquired the adjacent part of the Celery Farm along with the house. Look under the bridge to see the steel beams put there to support trucks, probably about the same time that the entrance bridge by the parking area was constructed.

Just past the first bench you come to a holly grove and the remnants of a fence next to the trail. The roof of the Herbert horse barn that was in this area is visible in this 1995 aerial photo and you can see the barn itself in this painting. The Herbert spit of land was added to the Celery Farm in later years after the Nature Preserve was established.

Continue along to the southeast corner of the property where the brook was channeled to follow the property line and head north along the trail. Look across the brook at the houses on Meadow Lane. That was once part of the Appert Farm that was sold off by the McBride company after the farm went out of business. The purchaser established a pet store fish hatchery. You can see the pool in the 1953 aerial photo.

The most dramatic evidence of the farming past will be found when you get around to the northwest corner of the Celery Farm and come out to the Butterfly Garden. There the Cletrac tractor was left to rest where it once tread, hitched to a harrow used to prepare the fields for planting. Now it’s an attraction for children who want to play around it and may be Anthropocene habitat for some creatures inside it.

Look out at the Pollinator Meadow and visualize the Bajor cow barn on the right edge behind the bat nesting structure and pick up a whiff hinting at Bessie the cow once kept in her stall inside. Further back in the center look through the foliage and imagine the Bajor house in the area now occupied by the Fox Run housing and see the greenhouse to the left of that.

As you continue along the path you may notice bits of cinder residue from coal burning that were deposited to build up the berm. The berm was the boundary separating the Bajor fields from the Appert/McBride fields. The No Name Culvert that crosses through the berm controlled the flow of water from the Bajor side. It had a circular butterfly valve inside used to open and close it.

Past the next bench the path turns right at the place labeled “Kickypoo Corner” on the Celery Farm map and continues a short distance to “Barking Dog Corner” where the trail turns left again. Along this stretch look to the right towards a large willow tree in the wet area. Notice a large pile of broken glass and decaying wood frames. These are the remnants of something called sashes that were placed over new plantings in the spring to act as mini greenhouses to protect the seedlings from the cold.

We know the most about life on the Bajor farm thanks to the two granddaughters who have shared their memories. You can learn more about them here.

Finally, as you come to the memorial plaque for John and Bertha Bajor next to the bench at Barking Dog Corner, look to the right and see the iron wheel of a farm implement mostly overgrown now and look for a post next to the drainage ditch that still has a strand of barbed wire attached. Across the way is the Bungalow, the house where the Bajor grandchildren grew up.

A collection of historical photos can be viewed here.

This is just the most recent history. Go back ten thousand years or more and the entire area was covered with a mile thick ice sheet. But the history between now and then is beyond the scope of this website.