Farming Asparagus in Fair Haven?

"I remember when this was all farmland."

You may recall, or have emblazoned in your mind, your parents or grandparents spewing this common "quit your whining" mantra that is akin to the old "we used to trudge uphill in the snow" speech.

Well, they spoke the truth. A lot of the land we live on was farmland. However, we tend to think less of the Rumson-Fair Haven area as former farmland, but more a landscape that tells a different, riverfront steamboat travel era tale.

It, indeed, was all that — and more. In a time when we are scrambling to get community gardens up and running and protected from deer interlopers, it's hard to imagine a Fair Haven or Rumson landscape full of crops — wild crops — of asparagus.

Yes, asparagus, of all things. Not Jersey tomatoes. Asparagus. Spring is asparagus crop season. And, while it was and is farmed in New Jersey, Fair Haven may be one of the last spots you'd expect to see it sprouting.

It turns out that in the early 1900s, land that was not flush with single family homes, was rife with fields of asparagus.

Ken Lockwood was raised in Fair Haven from the time he was 2. He is now 90, going on 91. After 88 years of life in Fair Haven, he clearly remembers wandering into the fields where there are now houses and picking some fresh asparagus.

Those who love to cultivate their own gardens or participate in the community planting grow lots of vegetables — like zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, herbs, eggplant.

Have you ever or have you ever known of someone in the immediate area to grow asparagus?

Lockwood tells of how it was just a given around these parts. See what he has to, very matter-of-factly, say on the subject of farming in Fair Haven.