ANGELIC AGRICULTURE

By Daniel Israel

Lizbeth Angel, 30, lives in Bayonne, but from April to November, she’s a farmer at the 16-acre Angel Family Farm in Goshen, New York. The farm offers a community supported agriculture (CSA) program to Bayonne residents.

The family began farming in 2006, starting when Lizbeth was 14, returning to Brooklyn for the winter to work “regular” jobs. Her dad Fily works with specialty cheeses. Her mom Ana works as a nanny. Lizbeth was a nanny before becoming a substitute teacher.

Lizbeth moved to Bayonne in 2017. The rest of the family lives in Park Slope. The family ran a taco stand at Red Hook Park.

The Angels began farming after seeing a commercial for the New Farmers Development Project, part of Grow NYC, calling for immigrants who had a farming background. Fifteen years ago, unused land was available in upstate New York, but there was a shortage of farmers.

Fily, from Mexico City, didn’t have a farming background. Ana was from the small Mexican town of Progreso in the state of Puebla, where people lived off the land.

“My mom had been away from home for so long, it was something that was attainable to her like her home,” Lizbeth said. “So she convinced my dad to do it, and they invested every last penny on the farm.”

The Goshen area boasts fertile and wet soil that’s good for growing, unlike New Jersey’s clay soil.

“Clay soil is good for growing some things but not most things,” Lizbeth, said. “That’s what makes the black dirt region valuable. It’s perfect for growing a large variety of vegetables.”

The Angel family includes Ana, Fily, Lizbeth, her brother Henry, and sisters Jennifer and Maria.

It wasn’t easy at first.

“We were sleeping in our car,” Lizbeth said. “We were using the bathroom at gas stations. It was horrible.”

But things got better.

“My family was able to purchase their own land and agricultural equipment,” Lizbeth said. “Two years ago, we paid off our last tractor.”

Now the farm is expanding to include a greenhouse and walk-in cooler. But a lot of the crops go bad.

“It’s really sad,” Lizbeth said. “A lot of it goes bad because we don’t have proper storage. So we’re in the middle of that right now.”

The family is working to get electricity to power the cooler.

They try to sell as many vegetables as possible, lowering the prices so they won’t go to waste. They’ve developed lifelong relationships with customers and markets.

“We consider our customers family,” Lizbeth said. “When the pandemic hit last year, we didn’t know if we were going to be considered essential or nonessential.”

“A lot of our customers moved out of the city, so we went from having a hundred members to having zero members sign up for community supported agriculture,” Lizbeth said of the Brooklyn program. “But we were lucky enough to find some nonprofit organizations that wanted to work with us, so they ended up buying vegetables from us and distributing to immigrant families and lowincome families.”

Lizbeth said they tried to join the farmers market in Bayonne but that the city already has a farmer for that. But residents can join the Angel Family Farm’s CSA for farm-to-table vegetables.

“In New York the farm-to-table idea is what people are looking for,” Lizbeth said. “People self-educate. I don’t feel like it’s part of the Bayonne culture yet. It’s been a little tough explaining the concept, but I feel like people are starting to sort of get into it. In New York, if I post something on Facebook, people will just email me and my dad. But here in Bayonne, it’s more like I’ve had people send me a message asking to call me about it.”

Lizbeth sets aside time to phone Bayonne residents. The CSA has many Bayonne members, with a goal of 50.

“We go to the farm at the beginning of the season,” Lizbeth said. “We start planting all the seeds, and we start our seedlings. Once the bounty is here, we deliver the vegetables weekly.”

The CSA season runs 18 weeks. Residents can choose to get a delivery for all 18 weeks or receive a delivery every other week, totaling nine weeks. To sign up or for more information, call Lizbeth Angel at 917-690-4033 or visit angelfamilyfarmcsa.com.

They grow beats, beans, mini broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, eggplants, and more. They just expanded to include eggs.

“We have chickens and ducks this year,” Lizbeth said. “So we’ll be having eggs. More information on that will be available once we get a sense of how many eggs we’re getting per week.”

They also collaborate with an orchard down the road from the farm.

“If you want to add on fruit, they grow peaches, apples, nectarines, and they make cider that will be available as an add on,” Lizbeth said.

Deliveries run to October 21. Depending on surplus, the farm can do wholesale. But the farm gives preference to CSA members and those who shop at farmers markets.

The farm doesn’t use pesticides or chemicals on their plants, doing “bug control manually.”

“I’ve always felt strongly about the disparity between good quality food and the people who have access to it,” Lizbeth said. “So a lot of times, my mom will only take markets with lowincome families, not the more affluent neighborhoods. Good food can be very easily available, and they just may not know about it.”

Bayonne is catching up.

“But I do still feel like Bayonne is not like Jersey City or Hoboken,” Lizbeth said. “So that’s why it’s important to me to bring this here. Some people are not willing to listen.”

Lizbeth hopes to expand the business further in Bayonne.

“In the future I would love to have a storefront in Bayonne where we could sell added-value products like maybegranola,” Lizbeth said. “Maybe we’ll evenhave a juice bar where we’ll use our own vegetables that we grow. Maybe people can pick up their vegetables there. We could also have vegetables available throughout the week versus just once a week. That’s my dream.”—BLP