Sussex County History Today: Pochuck Pumpkins

We all recall here some good times that we had in our youth. Living in Sussex County my whole life, I have many such experiences.

In years past, we would go out on our own to trick or treat on Halloween night. Neighborhoods were safe and most people knew those nearby for many years, perhaps generations, and they worked with them and trusted their neighbors. This is sort of true these days, although it is more monitored by adults, or done during the day with a trunk or treat.

One thing that has held true for me since the mid-1960s is our family’s trip up to Vernon to go to Pochuck Valley Farms. I recall going into the building to get cider and seeing the apple press through an open door. It was very wet and sticky in there and it surely smelled of apples. We’ pick up the mandatory small gourds for the table and windows and, of course, a nice pumpkin for carving. The Vances owned it, good people who knew my family from the 1940s and high school back when Vernon would go to Franklin High School. The township had one room schools until the consolidation in the 1950s with Walnut Ridge. Some of those older schools still exist, reminders of that rural farmland and community.

Fast forward to today and the Vance family is still there, in the old brick church building from the 1850s. Now we can also smell the inviting aroma of their fresh donuts, covered in sweet brown sugar.

We stopped in this last weekend to do our obligatory tour and to enjoy a chat while we got our usual October assortment of “bushels and pecks” of dry goods. And a look across the street of their stately apple trees, tried and true, on the embankment that goes uphill toward the Vernon High School. The pumpkin patch in the back holds many orange balls growing on the flat ground as it recedes back toward the river wetlands.

Few today would consider that this part of New Jersey was known nationwide as a producer of apples, and the products of apple cider. And of apple jack (hard liquor) that General Washington was thought to have enjoyed at Wallings or Morris’ home. Someday we will talk about the several apple jack producers in our county.

Times change a lot of what we know, but there are still many vestiges of yesteryear and the good ole’ days of the more rural nature of our Sussex County.

This small community is Glenwood. It has stood here for a long time, at the foot of the vale where a stream flows down, big enough for a grist mill. In another article we will discuss about the Bailey family who lived here for almost 200 years, and talk with a descendent who still wears his ancestor’s Civil War uniform.

Make sure to get out and about our county to observe the colorful change of scenery as the foliage leaves us for another year and winter beckons to call.