This holiday season express your values by giving gifts grown in the earth beneath your feet, on the farms of Central Jersey. Support local farmers, promote sustainability, and encourage healthy lifestyles by shopping small and local.  You can also plan your holiday lunch or dinner at a farm-to-table restaurant to support local agriculture, or buy from a local beverage maker.

Many local farms are open throughout the holidays, selling everything from Christmas trees and wreathes, to gift boxes and baskets, meat and poultry, and other holiday season essentials.  Enjoy the experience of visiting our farms, wineries, and cideries yourself or take advantage of the convenience of online orders and shipping.

On Farm & Online

Numerous farms and wineries welcome you to their on-premise stores, while also offering the option to order online for direct shipping to your or your loved one. They include:

• Bobolink Dairy & Bakehouse, an organic farm in Milford, NJ can ship its award-winning cheeses, gift baskets, and even bacon, sausage, and charcuterie, usually frozen and packed in dry ice, to any destination nationwide!
• Cherry Grove Farm, operating sustainably in Lawrence, NJ offers gift boxes of local organic cheeses and gift baskets of artisan foods available for online purchase and shipment.
• Hidden Spring Lavender Farm in Skillman, NJ is open weekends offers online shopping anytime with a wide variety of holiday gift options made with lavender, including plush animals, lotions, soaps, candles, and fragrances, plus products made from the wool of its adorable alpacas.
• Hopewell Valley Vineyards, and award-winning winery in Pennington, NJ has an online store with the ability to ship wines in New Jersey and to a limited number of other states. Hopewell Valley brings Old World wine making methods to New Jersey.
• Old York Cellars is ready for the holidays, with a winery in Ringoes, NJ plus retail locations in two central Jersey malls, as well as its online store. They now offer an answer to the young French Beaujolais with a 2019 “Beau Jersey Nouveau.”
• Terhune Orchards and Winery near Princeton, NJ offers an enormous variety of gift baskets and boxes, plus gift wine shipments to many locations. Their “Taste of Jersey” baskets include farm fresh apples, Terhune made fruit bread, cookies, shortbread cookies, New Jersey pasta, honey, organic popcorn, and locally made chocolates.
• Unionville Vineyards in Ringoes, NJ offer a beautiful tasting room on site, as well as mail order They have been named one of America’s top wineries by Food & Wine Magazine, and New Jersey’s top artisan beverage maker in 2018 by Edible Jersey.

Discover Central Jersey

The beauty and bounty of Central Jersey is finally getting the attention it deserves. Visit DiscoverCentralNJ.com to see all the farms, restaurants, arts, and historic places that make our corner of the world special.  And share these stories with friends and family, by giving the gifts of Central Jersey this holiday season.

Fresh Heritage Turkeys & Much More

Holiday trips in the family car while growing up in the 1970s often featured my mother leading the family in singing “Over the River and through the Woods,” a holiday poem and song written by a prominent abolitionist in 1844. It goes this way:

“Over the river, and through the woods,

To Grandmother’s house we go;

the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh

through the white and drifted snow.”

Early snowfalls are rarer today, but otherwise the spirit of an old-fashioned holiday journey is very much alive in Central Jersey, home to dozens of farms, farm markets, and beverage makers, just an hour’s journey by car, bus, or rail from New York and Philadelphia. Make Discover Central NJ your guide to the Garden State’s holiday bounty.

Crossing the D&R Canal will get you to many Central Jersey Farms

Whether you are crossing the mighty Hudson or Delaware rivers from a major city, or just crossing the Millstone or Raritan rivers from a nearby town, Central Jersey’s Canal Region is the perfect holiday season destination.   Stock up on a bounty of traditional holiday foods and beverages, including a heritage breed turkey for Thanksgiving, an old fashioned Christmas goose, a holiday ham, or a wide assortment of prepared side dishes, fruit pies, local wines and spirits, and gift baskets.

You can make a full day or a weekend of your holiday foraging in Central Jersey by rounding out your itinerary with stops at farm-to-table restaurants, breweries, historic sites, recreation areas, cultural destinations, and hotels.

Turkeys and other poultry

Double Book Farm in Hopewell and Griggstown Farm in Franklin Township pasture-raise heritage breeds of turkeys, the most similar to what was available to the Pilgrims, making them the perfect center piece to your holiday table.

Double Brook Farm and its retail outlet Brick Farm Market are focused on raising turkeys and other livestock ethically.  Turkeys are bred, incubated, hatched, and nurtured until late spring, when they are let out to forage. They eat grubs, bugs and grasses and their foraged diet is supplemented by a non-GMO, feed grown locally by Zeng Family Farm in Ringoes. Turkeys are harvested the weekend before Thanksgiving and sold fresh, never frozen. Advance orders are strongly recommended. To order a turkey or other holiday fixings, visit the Brick Farm Market website.  The farm and market also offer locally pastured beef roasts and holiday hams.

Double Brook Farm’s guard dogs protect the turkey flock for Thanksgiving.

Griggstown Farm is well known throughout the tristate region for its “Griggstown chicken” offered by high-end restaurants. They raise a very wide variety of poultry in a historic canal village, including turkeys, goose, ducks, pheasants, and quail.  Griggstown Farm has been praised by the USDA National Resources Conversation Service for sustainable farming practices, including composting of manure waste to reduce runoff and provide nutrients to vegetable crops. The farm’s mandatory holiday pre-order system offers multiple pick up locations, including the train station at Bernardsville and HeadHouse Market in Philadelphia.

Bourbon breed turkeys at Griggstown Farm are similar to what the Pilgrims ate.

Farms offering a variety of holiday season goods

Central Jersey’s holiday bounty is also available at these on-farm markets:

• Bobolink Dairy and Bakehouse is best known for its unique approach to regenerative agriculture and cheese making practices, based near the Delaware River in Milford. They also make a wide variety of brick oven breads.
• Cherry Grove Farm is best known for its cheeses made from locally raised cows on a large dairy farm in Lawrenceville. Its market also sells a variety of local foods and beverages from other farms and wineries.
• Hidden Spring Lavender Farm in Skillman is open weekends and offers a wide variety of holiday gift options made with lavender, including plush animals, lotions, fragrances, and products made from the wool of its adorable alpacas.
• Hillsboro Farm Market is open daily and offers a wide variety of fruit pies, jarred goods, bakery items, Jersey Fresh fruits and vegetables, and Christmas trees.
• Now managed by the 12^th generation of the family, Suydam Farms in Franklin is open weekends only, offering locally raised meat and vegetables, and Christmas trees and wreathes starting the day after Thanksgiving.
• Even this late in the year, Terhune Orchards in Lawrenceville is open daily, offering a wide variety of its own apples, vegetables, herbs, many of which are certified organic. Terhune also makes apple cider, wine, fruit pies, other baked goods, and gift baskets.

New Jersey’s nickname, the Garden State, remains as meaningful as ever, particularly in the central part of the state that was settled three centuries ago by Dutch and English farmers. Many of those farms are still in the hands of the descendants of original farming families—to the good fortune of the rest of us.

Gift baskets from Terhune Orchards are an easy way to share Central Jersey’s bounty.

Your Guide to Visitor-Friendly Farms in the Garden State

New Jersey is the Garden State for a reason.  For more three centuries, the state’s fertile fields and valleys have fed America’s cities and armies. Indeed, Central Jersey was the site of the “forage wars” of the American Revolution, in which winning the loyalty of local farmers as a key to the American victory.

Today Central Jersey’s farmers welcome millions of visitors from near and far to partake in the bounty—and fun—of harvest season. Just an hour from New York and Philadelphia by train, car, or bus, Central Jersey is one of the most accessible agricultural areas in America. At DiscoverCentralNJ.com you’ll find farms and orchards to please everyone, including families, friends, young couples, and seniors.

The biggest crowds are drawn to harvest festivals, beginning Sept 14 an running through October:

• Terhune Orchards and Winery, near Princeton, is the region’s agritourism leader, inviting hundreds of thousands of visitors every year to a 200-acre family-owned and operated farm. Autumn brings Terhune’s Apple Days Fall Festivals, featuring pick-your-own apples and pumpkins, pumpkin painting, pony rides, pedal tractors, wagon rides, corn stalk maze, adventure barn, and a barnyard of farm animals. Every Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 14 to Oct. 27. Admission $10 per person.
• Snyder Farm in the Somerset section of Franklin Township offers a family-oriented Farm Festival weekends starting September 27. Activities include hayrides, pumpkin moon bounce, hippity hop, potato sack slide, corn maze, hay bale maze, spider web, pedal carts, corn hole games, bowling, hay bale activity center and more. General admission of $13 is required for pumpkin picking, plus cost of pumpkin.
• Suydam Farms is operated by the family’s 12^th generation of farmers in Somerset, located on State Route 27 and served by the 100 bus out of New York’s Port Authority. The history of local farming is a big theme of Suydam’s Fall Fest Weekends every Saturday and Sunday in October. Pick your own pumpkins, hayrides, apple cider, apple cider donuts and more! Free admission. Pumpkins, produce, and food for purchase.
• Hillsboro Farm Country Market in Hillsborough hosts Fall Family Fun Days every weekend in October. Activities include hayrides, pumpkin picking, corn maze, face-painting, pumpkin decorating, and more! The season’s festivities kick off October 5 with a special Antique Tractor Show and Pig Roast starting at noon. Free admission, food and produce available for purchase.

Thought not offering festivals, many other Central Jersey farms offer a bounty of fresh food and experiences you will enjoy.

• Bobolink Dairy & Bakehouse in Milford produces 100% grass-fed, raw cows’ milk cheeses, pastured meats, and rustic breads baked in a wood-fired oven. The farm has 60 mature cows, plus a new generation of Bobolink Grazers, the result of crossing modern dairy breeds with the ancient Kerry cattle of Ireland. Farm store open daily except Tuesdays. Tours Saturdays and Sundays.
• Cherry Grove Farm is a sustainable dairy farm and creamery on 480 acres in Lawrenceville, making award-winning farmstead cheeses from grass-fed raw cows’ milk. The farm also raises heritage breed pigs, lambs, chickens and beef cattle, raised without hormones, antibiotics or steroids. Farm Store open daily April through December.
• Griggstown Farm Market near Princeton sells its famous “Griggstown chicken” and other farm products using all-natural methods. The market sells seasonal fruit pies, pot pies, poultry sausages, quail eggs, and fresh seasonal soups. All products prepared in a USDA kitchen at the Farm. Thanksgiving and holiday menus complement the farm-raised turkeys sold in November & December. Store open daily.
• Hidden Spring Lavender Farm grows fields of lavender for bouquets, buds, oil, and culinary products made with their own lavender plants. The shop offers plush Buena Bears™, lotions, creams, moisturizers, hand soap, aromatherapy and bath and body items, lavender wreaths, dried Lavender, and more. Say hello to the friendly alpacas, raised for alpaca fiber products. Open Saturdays and Sundays.
• Ironbound Farm in Asbury, off route 78 in Hunterdon County, grows apples for its hard cider using fresh-pressed fruit to make complex, perfectly balanced ciders. Visit the Tasting Room to enjoy limited-edition ciders, wines on tap, and farmed-up Jersey street food made with ingredients raised and foraged in the Garden State. Open Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday.

Central Jersey is also home to tremendous farm-to-table restaurants, wineries and craft beverage makers, and wonderful hotels if you’d like to stay the weekend. Bring your family, tell your friends: Central Jersey is the place to be during harvest season.

Your authoritative guide to harvest season festivals and farms, just an hour from New York and Philadelphia.