Lipmans’ agreement preserves natural wetlands for the future
Archived article from Dec 15, 2003
By Richard Gorman
Ned Lipman’s two passions in life are the Cook College Office of Continuing Professional Education, which he’s served for 25 years, and the cranberry farm that has been in his family for 53 years. You might call it a marriage of vocation and avocation.
Ned’s father, Edward V. Lipman, recognized the potential of the Ocean County bogs 53 years ago when he bought 465 acres of land in Berkeley Township and founded the Jeffrey’s Branch Cranberry Company. He took the name from one of several tributaries that merge on the property to form the Toms River. Lipman, a field representative for Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc., an international marketing cooperative, believed he would be more successful at encouraging growers to join the cooperative if he was also a grower.
After a half century as one of South Jersey’s leading cranberry growers, the Lipman family and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection reached agreement this fall on a plan to deed 465 acres of cranberry bogs to the state and lease back 50 acres to farm. Both sides benefit from the agreement: Valuable wetlands will be preserved as part of the Double Trouble State Park, and the Lipman family will continue to farm the 50 acres while demonstrating the art of cranberry farming to park visitors.
“One of the true joys of the agreement is that we are supporting farmland preservation in a proactive way,” says Ned’s brother, Jeffrey. “This land will now remain open space in perpetuity.”
Jeffrey and Ned Lipman will continue to work Jeffrey’s Branch as well as a second tract of cranberry bogs in Lakehurst, but they’ll tend to their day jobs as well. Jeffrey owns the Red Barn Antique Company in New Egypt in Ocean County. And Ned, as director of Cook’s Office of Continuing Professional Education, will continue to oversee programs like turf-grass management education for golf course superintendents and recycling certification activities for New Jersey’s solid waste recycling coordinators, among others.
Ned Lipman’s ties to Rutgers extend back to his grandfather, Jacob Goodale Lipman, the first dean of agriculture at Rutgers and the third director of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. Ned’s father, Edward V. Lipman, was a three-term member of the Rutgers Board of Trustees.
Jacob Lipman graduated with honors from the Rutgers Scientific School in 1898. After earning his Ph.D. at Cornell University in 1903, he returned to Rutgers, established a department of soil chemistry and bacteriology, and taught agricultural chemistry. In 1911, Jacob was named director of the experiment station. Four years later, he was appointed Rutgers’ first dean of agriculture. He held both posts until his death in 1939.
Edward V. Lipman, Ned and Jeffrey’s father, graduated from Rutgers College in 1933 and earned his master’s degree from the Graduate School–New Brunswick in 1939. During World War II, he served as the New Jersey administrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Adjustment Agency. In 1972, while serving as president of the state board of agriculture, Edward was appointed to an unexpired term on the Rutgers Board of Trustees. He was reappointed three more times during his career.
Today, Ned Lipman’s office off Ryders Lane overlooks the land his grandfather acquired for the college many years ago. “Jacob started the office in 1906 that I now direct,” Ned Lipman says. “It feels good to have been able to further the dreams of my father and grandfather.”
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