By Karen Keene
It was 1983. During a trip to the now famous Delicious Orchards, Mike and Eileen Stivala stumbled across Hidden Valley, a new “farmette community” being developed in Colts Neck, New Jersey.  That same day, with their two young kids in tow, the couple signed on and were the first to buy a lot – six-and-a-half acres with plans for a white Connecticut farmhouse.

Eileen’s teenage dream of living on a farm was in motion.  In an October 1983 New York Times feature on the growing suburban farmette trend, where farmland was being subdivided into rural homesteads, Eileen was quoted – “To buy a real farm is practically impossible now. This is the closest we could come to it”.

At the time, Mike and Eileen thought they may continue to have their land farmed by a local farmer growing soybeans, or they might give it a try themselves. They opted to go it on their own and started farming the property while continuing to build their family. Mike and Eileen added two more children and additional land for a total of approximately 19 acres.

Nearly four decades later, Mike and Eileen’s love of and appreciation for farming and nature are evident in every corner of their farm. They work and maintain the land using organic practices and ingenuity. Every tree growing on the farm has a story, many rescued from the local plant nursery’s “infirmary” and nursed back to health as seedlings. Fruit trees dot the pastures around the barn. Blueberries and blackberries thrive under protective netting deterring hungry birds. Fields of Japanese eggplant, tomatoes, jalapenos peppers, and pumpkins are guarded by a whimsical, old owl statue. Colorful bluebird boxes are scattered throughout pastures home to spirited alpacas with delightful names such as Darth Vader and Mochaccino.

Eileen, who has a self-taught green thumb, grew plants in her windowsills as a child and today has two greenhouses full of flowers and herbs. She creates custom planters for a small cohort of clients, and Mike helps make rounds to deliver and maintain her colorful masterpieces.

The couple has crafted their farm with sustainable features and a genuine respect for its natural attributes, choosing to live life differently as true stewards of their land. Beyond farming, the Stivalas are resourceful and mindful of sustainable practices, choosing to install a geothermal field for heating and cooling their home and solar panels to provide energy. The farm has also remained a haven for wildlife, offering habitat for a range of birds, deer, small mammals, turtles, and other critters. 

Mike and Eileen’s lifestyle is driven by their desire to maintain the natural, rural appeal of their property – the attributes that arguably attract people to Colts Neck. They opted to make their corner of the earth better and ultimately go on to preserve it for future generations. “Our vision for life on a farm is what motivated us to live in Colts Neck. This area is very special, and we didn’t want to see development change that.”

Thanks to the efforts of Monmouth Conservation Foundation (MCF), the State Agriculture Development Committee, Monmouth County, and Colts Neck Township, the land that Mike and Eileen have been caring for, a quintessential example of rural farm life in Colts Neck, will now be protected forever from encroaching development.

The Stivala farm is contiguous to the roughly 63-acre DeGroot Farm, which was also preserved through the State’s Farmland Preservation Program. To read about this and other farmland preservation in Colts Neck, click HERE.

Photos: J. Cosimo