HRT - Hormone Replacement Therapy in Allamuchy, NJ

Plainview Growers, located in Allamuchy, New Jersey, announces that they have signed a contract with Havecon to build a 250,088 ft2 greenhouse facility at their main location in Allamuchy. This construction is scheduled to begin this summer, and the expansion will be completed by the end of spring 2023.

Plainview Growers is a family-owned business where Arie Van Vugt is a 2nd -generation Dutch grower. In 1950, Arie's father started growing several different types of plants in his greenhouse. After working together with his father for a while, Arie started his own business in 1985 and started under the name Plainview Growers. Due to their success, Plainview Growers outgrew their 88,000ft2 home farm, and in 1996 a new plot of land was purchased in Allamuchy, New Jersey, where the first 2 acres of greenhouses were built. Through dedication and hard work, they have continued to expand their home farm over the past several years and added other locations. Plainview Growers, led by the father and four brothers, now have a total of 1,000,000 ft2 in production across three locations while leasing another 210,000 ft2 of production space throughout the tri-state area.

Plainview Growers is currently growing orchids, succulents, and finished and bedding plants for the Northeast market. Now, with his four sons by his side, Arie continues to grow with Plainview Growers, and they look to this latest building as their biggest build to date. Joe, Arie's oldest son, runs the operations, while Tom manages sales, Ben focuses on logistics, and John, the youngest son, oversees finances.

On being asked why Havecon was chosen, Joe replied, "With Havecon's reputation for meeting milestones and focusing on details, the decision was made quite easily. In addition, Joe also mentioned that with an office in North America, Havecon gave them a positive vibe. The market for flowers is good now, and with these extra acres, Plainview Growers will be better able to serve both their existing and new clientele, and they can also begin to centralize their production and logistics.

As the Van Vugt family is always looking to the future, they are now poised to continue to grow the business for the 3rd generation.

For more information:Havecon Kassenbouw B.V.Lorentzstraat 82665 JH BleiswijkTel. +31(0)10 266 32 70[email protected]www.havecon.com

Publication date: Wed 1 Jun 2022

Story Written By Kevin Lechiski

ALLAMUCHY — When the community came together on Saturday, May 22 to celebrate the recent opening of the Mountain Villa School, they were at the same time truly celebrating themselves.

Without the overwhelming support of the community, there would have been no Mountain Villa School for which to hold a dedication ceremony on Saturday.

It was a group of community residents, the Key Communicators, who in 2006 recommended the board of education purchase 10 acres of the Rutherford Mansion/Madonna Villa site on Route 517 to convert into a school to ease overcrowding at the grades pre-kindergarten to eight township school district caused by new housing start-ups. And when it was time to authorize the school district to acquire and renovate part of the site into a school, it was the community who stepped forward to approve a $10.4 million bond referendum in January 2007 by a margin of 4-1.

Construction for the Mountain Villa School was completed last fall and the final certificate of occupancy issued in April. Kindergarten and first grade classes are currently housed there. In September, that will be expanded to include pre-kindergarten, pre-school disabilities, and perhaps second grade, said Chief School Administrator Dr. Timothy Frederiks. Instructional space totals 27,000-square-feet with many opportunities for students in the school building and outside, including a trail system that is used regularly by students of the district’s other school.

“This building will embody the best practices of green technologies and will serve as an instructional enhancement for all our programs, both inside and out,” Frederiks stated.

The school is located on a property with a very rich history and scenic location surrounded by Allamuchy Mountain State Park. At the turn of the 20th century, the Rutherford family built the existing mansion on the site. The building was later acquired for a convent by an order of nuns, the Daughters of Divine Charity. The nuns in 1959 added an infirmary, which was converted by the township school district into the Mountain Villa School. The nuns stopped occupying the site in 2004 after moving to Staten Island.

School officials decided to pursue the acquisition and renovation of a site with existing buildings, noting that it would be more economical than new construction. Part of the district’s plan for the site called for allowing the West Morris YMCA to utilize the mansion portion of the property not used for classroom space.

As part of the referendum approval for the Mountain Villa School, the state government is paying a portion of the annual debt service.

Story Written By Jane Primerano

ALLAMUCHY — The signs run from Jersey City to Phillipsburg. They inform travelers where the Morris Canal crossed, carrying Pennsylvania coal o the Hudson River from the Delaware.

Now much of the canal itself is gone. Only sections remain, mostly in the less developed western part of the state.

The Canal Society of New Jersey is working to save the Saxton Falls stretch near Hackettstown. With a grant from the state, the society will determine how complicated, and expensive, it will be to restore Locks 4 and 5 West and the Lock Tender’s house on Waterloo Road.

Lock 5 West at Saxton Falls was filled in by the state as part of the process of dismantling the canal in the 1920s. Brian Morrell, president of the Canal Society, said the walls of the lock are probably intact and good candidates for restoration. The adjacent section of the canal bed was flooded and for decades used for swimming, Morrell said.

Lock 4 West is also long-buried, although one downstream wing-wall is visible. Morrell said its condition is unknown.

The locks and inclined planes are numbered east and west from Lake Hopatcong, the highest elevation along the canal.

The condition of the Lock Tender’s house, also known as the Mahler House, but familiarly called Elsie’s after the tavern that occupied it for many years, is known and it’s not good, Morrell said. “It presents a challenge,” he said in a recent interview. “It has not been treated kindly.” The tavern still functioned in the early 1980s, but by the early 1990s, a nephew of the former owner took over. He ended up in prison and the property was put up for sale, Morrell noted.

The state bought the site as part of the Allamuchy Mountain-Stephens State Park complex and received a grant to install a boat ramp, improving access to the river. The Canal Society is negotiating a lease with the Park Service.

Helen Maurella, superintendent of Allamuchy Mountain, Stephens and Hopatcong state parks, said the state park division would like to see the house restored. “In the long term, we want to get the building functioning.”

The canal society intends to use the house for exhibits on the trail network’s resources, particularly in the Saxton Falls and Stephens State Park area and in the Musconetcong watershed. According to a grant application prepared by consultant Kate Gordon, “This will be one of the few trailside facilities focusing on historical as well as environmental resources in the New Jersey trail network.”

The house will also provide ADA compliant restrooms. The former parking lot for the tavern will serve the trail as well. The lot is suitable for public programs related to the trail, Gordon wrote.

The canal society first collaborated with the state parks division more than 10 years ago, Morrell recalls, to develop a management plan for the historic transportation corridor first used by the Lenape Indians and including Waterloo Road that was built sometime before 1828, the Musconetcong River and the Morris and Essex Railroad as well as the canal. This Waterloo Valley corridor remains vital today, linking Routes 46 and 206.

Funding has come from the Leavens Foundation and the NJ Highlands Coalition, $5,000 each. In addition, the Canal Society is applying for funding from the Warren County Municipal and Charitable Trust Fund Committee and the National Recreational Trails Program, Gordon said. She said about $17,000 of construction costs for the project is expected to be offset by donated materials and labor by members of the canal society which has a long history of hands-on work on its projects.

The National Recreational Trails Grant would fund improvements for canoeing and kayaking along the river, Maurella, said. She said the park will also work on watershed awareness programs and has been working with the Musconetcong Watershed Association on streamside watershed management.

The entire project is expected to cost $78,000. Architectural fees are projected at $12,000 and permitting fees for the state will be about $7,000.

Almost a reservoir

This stretch of the canal was almost lost when a reservoir to supply Hackettstown with drinking water was proposed. Bungalows along the river were taken over by the state, although many residents were given life rights to live in them.

Morrell said there was a thriving bungalow colony opposite Elsie’s, discovered when Waterloo Road was widened.

The first residents of the area may have been related to Nathanael Saxton's sawmill. Workers building the canal lived in modest cabins, a history of the canal reveals. Later, Bayonne residents summered in the area, Morrell said.

When the reservoir was proposed in the 1970s, many of the older bungalows were still standing. There were probably about 100 cabins along the river, Morrell said, although some were not habitable due to malfunctioning septic systems.

When core borings were done, engineers determined there was no solid base for more than 100 feet, Morrell said. The area is just south of the terminal moraine of the Wisconsin Ice Age.

With no reservoir possible, the state started renting the bungalows. “It became an unsavory area,” Morrell recalled. Some of the houses are still standing along Waterloo Road and on the private lanes that branch off the county road in the area of the Saxton Falls dam.

Dairy farming is a tough form of agriculture — especially for a young guy just out of college who grew up in a development.

But Chris Hoefele, 23, has taken the plunge, creating Hope Hill Dairy. Raised in Raritan Township (Hunterdon), he’s rented a fully equipped dairy barn in Allamuchy Township, where he has close to 50 cows producing milk.

His girlfriend, Amy Cooper, grew up on her family’s dairy farm in Delaware Township (Hunterdon) and helps with his farm work.

“I remember when Chris told my dad he was going to be a dairy farmer, my dad said, ‘There is something wrong with you,’ ” she said.

The business is so difficult, for so many reasons, that there are fewer than 100 dairy farms in the Garden State. Most of the milk consumed by New Jersey residents is shipped in from other states.

Peter Furey, executive director of New Jersey Farm Bureau, is impressed with the Hoefele’s decision and Cooper’s assistance.

“I tip my hat to this couple,” he said, explaining that by avoiding hired help, “doing all the work, if you’re that dedicated,” it’s possible to make a living in dairy farming here.

Phil Alampi, longtime state secretary of agriculture, “used to say ‘womb, groom or the tomb,’ ” Furey noted, meaning that because of the expense involved, most people become dairy farmers because they are born on a farm, marry into one or inherit it.

Growing up, Hoefele and his family always had animals, such as pigs and chickens. His first paying job came after his parents, Pam, an accountant, and Peter, a lumber salesman, suggested he earn the money he wanted to buy something. It was about a decade ago when he worked for Margaret Case at her fruit tree nursery in Ringoes.

“It was the hardest work I ever did,” he said of pulling weeds from around the young trees. But he’s kept working ever since, most of the jobs in farming “or some kind of agriculture, like landscaping, mechanic work.”

“I knew I wanted to be in production agriculture” he said.

After graduating from Hunterdon Central High School in 2007, Hoefele went off to Delaware Valley College in Doylestown, Pa., graduating with a degree in dairy science.

During his college career, he worked for three dairy farms (Crooked Acres, Lahaska, Pa.; and Fulper Farms and Hun-Val Dairy, both in Hunterdon) and grain and hay farmer Greg Manners in East Amwell Township (Hunterdon). After graduating from DVC last year, he continued to work for Manners while attempting to find an empty dairy facility to rent.

Through a friend he heard that Tranquillity Farms in Allamuchy, owned by Larry Freeborn, had a barn for rent, and they worked out a deal. Hoefele borrowed close to $100,000 in a low-interest Beginning Farmer and Rancher operating loan from the federal USDA Farm Service Agency. He used much of the money to buy a herd of cattle from a farm in Pennsylvania, which he added to the cows he’d bought one-by-one while in school to create Hope Hill Dairy.

“He’s doing a great job,” said Megan Everswick, his farm loan officer at the FSA office in Hackettstown.

“I haven’t seen too many with the drive and initiative that he has. He wants to breed quality stock and produce quality milk.”

“We want to make sure as a government agency that we’re secure when we are making a loan,” because it’s the taxpayers’ money they using. Applicants needs at least a year of experience, which can be obtained through studying ag in college or working, and Hoefele has both.

That Freeborn owns the farm is very helpful to Hoefele. “I’m relying a lot on Larry’s capital, his land and equipment,” he said.

The Freeborns milk about 90 cows, while Hoefele’s barn next to it holds 49. He does the majority of the work himself with no employees. “I assist on night and weekends,” said Cooper, who also attended DVC and has a degree in large animal science. She works for DSM Nutritional Products, selling vitamins and feed additives to feed mills on the East Coast.

Hoefele buys the forages his cows eat from the Freeborns, and assists with field work in-between milkings, which saves him from having to buy his own equipment.

His milk sells through the Dairylea Co-op, and it’s currently shipped to the Farmland Dairies processing plant in Wallington, Bergen County.

Freeborn “is a progressive farmer that wants to see the younger generation in agriculture succeed,” Cooper said. “Larry and other folks at Tranquillity Farms are very supportive by offering mentoring and always being available when a problem such as a lose cow or broken equipment arises.

New Jersey is a very expensive area to be in, especially for farming, Cooper observed. “Once the cows are settled, and things become more routine, we want to start venturing into retail dairy products, and agri-tourism."

Stephen Bienko College Hunks Hauling Junk

College Hunks Hauling Junk founder Stephen Bienko (Photo Courtesy of College Hunks Hauling Junk)

ALLAMUCHY—Allamuchy resident and College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving franchise owner Stephen Bienko was recently selected by NJBIZ Magazine as one of its 2014 "40 under 40" top business people in the state, according to a press release.

"40 Under 40" celebrates 40 of the state's "most accomplished young business men and women who have been making news in their fields and who share a commitment to business growth, professional excellence and the community," according to NJBIZ.

An independent panel of judges scored each nominee on four criteria: professional accomplishments, leadership, vision and community service, according to its website.

College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving specializes in moving, storage, manual labor, donation pickup and junk removal, and employs college students, as per its name, paying them above minimum wage.

In addition to 12 franchise territories in the state and eight in Tennessee, Ohio and Florida, the company is a partner in Bin-It.com, an environmentally conscious company that supplies customers with heavy-duty plastic bins as an alternative to cardboard boxes when moving, then picks them up after the move.

“This is a list I’ve been trying to get on for 13 years,” said Bienko in a press release.

“I’m thankful for the amazing employees I’ve had during my career, who really shaped me as a business leader and who have gone on to great success. And I’m thrilled because it validates two important values of my company – empowering and training our young employees for future professional growth, and giving back to the community."

Bienko, 37, attended the United States Air Force Academy and earned a bachelor's degree from Villanova University.

A former New Jersey State Trooper, he has been honored as Man of the Year by Habitat for Humanity and Franchisee of the Year by the International Franchise Association, the release states.

Bienko and his co-honorees will be recognized at an awards banquet Sept. 29 at The Palace at Somerset Park, in Somerset.

For more information on College Hunks Moving Junk and Moving, visit collegehunkshaulingjunk.com.

Emily Cummins may be reached at [email protected] Follow her on Twitter @EmilyACummins Find The Warren Reporter on Facebook.