Ask Aunt V

Visiting the Rockford Garden Club today for a presentation on Organic Gardening at the Rockford Country Club.

🌾 Why Farmland Loss Is Permanent

When a farm disappears in South Jersey, it does not simply “change.”

It is gone.

Farmland is not just open space waiting for development. It is living soil built over millions of years and strengthened by generations of stewardship. It absorbs water. It grows food. It supports local jobs. It weathers storms and slows flood waters

When that land is paved, graded, and compacted, the soil beneath it is sealed. When this hapoens the biology collapses, water no longer infiltrates the same way, and roots cannot return. Even if buildings are removed decades later, productive farmland does not magically reappear.

You can build on farmland.

You cannot rebuild it back into what it was.

In South Jersey, this matters deeply. Our region sits on the Atlantic Coastal Plain (sandy, well-drained soils layered over moisture-holding sediments left behind by ancient oceans). That rare balance is one of the reasons agriculture thrives here. It is also why losing farmland has lasting consequences for flooding, food production, and the strength of our rural economy.

Preservation is not about freezing time.

It is about protecting infrastructure that feeds us and leads our region.

And here is the part we control:

By supporting farmers, buying local, and strengthening agriculture in South Jersey, we make farming viable. When farms are profitable and valued, they stay farms. When agriculture grows, farmland stays productive.

If we want to prevent farmland loss, we cannot just oppose development.

We must grow and support local agriculture.

That is how we protect the land beneath us - not just for today, but for the generations to come.

Thank you Naperville magazine for the nice article.

Good Enough to Eat
Third-generation organic farmer and lifelong Naperville resident Veronica Porter grew up immersed in farm-to-table dining before it became a buzzy catchphrase. “My mother cooked all our food, and my father grew all our food, and their entire philosophy was, how and where your food is grown matters,” she says.

Porter has found her passion in culinary education and has taught cooking classes through her business, Ask Aunt V (askauntv.com) since 2014. She studied at the Culinary Institute of America and earned a master’s degree in organic farming and urban farming through University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “My motto is from the garden to the table, from the classroom to the community,” she says. Her small-group classes at Liam Brex (222 S. Main St., Naperville) are open to the public throughout the year and typically cost $95 per person. “We like to focus on classes of six to eight people so everyone can gather around the island,” she says. Class themes range from comfort food classics to sushi basics, and seasonal offerings might include Irish soda bread for St. Patrick’s Day, grilling skewers for the Fourth of July, and football tailgate food in the fall.

No matter the cuisine, Porter emphasizes how to cook with what’s available seasonally in the Midwest, which reaps the best flavors and prices. “It’s important for me to teach people the importance of how and where your food is grown,” she says. “I talk all about how to pick the perfect produce and…how to cut it, and if they can’t use it all, the proper way to preserve it and how long it’s safe to keep it,” she says. “With the understanding that we’re busy people, just getting anything on the table is hard. I want to help people realize that with the right knowledge, they can do it.”

I cannot wait for this store to open in Naperville. Coming soon to Naperville on Chicago Avenue.