On a Sunday morning in late summer, the gravel lot behind the stone farmhouse at 111 Mine Street fills up early. People come for tomatoes, grass-fed beef, sourdough, honey. Some come every week and could recite the vendor lineup without looking. Almost none of them think of the ground under their feet as a trailhead.
But it is. That 1798 farmhouse, listed on the National and State Registers of Historic Places, sits at the center of a 40-acre property called Dvoor Farm, the headquarters of Hunterdon Land Trust since the organization took ownership in 1999. The trail that starts near the old wagon house doesn't stop at the meadow behind the market stalls. It runs alongside Walnut Brook and connects, on foot, to Mine Brook Park, the Bernadette Morales Nature Preserve, and the Uplands Reserve. Most people buying peaches on a Sunday have no idea they're standing at one end of a public trail network that keeps getting longer, in pieces small enough that no single announcement ever feels like news on its own.
This year alone, Raritan Township and its partners have announced 61 acres of new preservation. That's a real number worth sitting with, because not all 61 acres mean the same thing for someone who actually wants to go for a walk.
The Fine Print Behind "Preserved"
In January, Hunterdon Land Trust announced the preservation of the 32-acre Hidden Spring Farm, owned by Lynn Becker, secretary of HLT's board of trustees. It went through the New Jersey State Agriculture Development Committee, the state's farmland preservation program. That's an important distinction. SADC preservation buys the development rights off a working farm so it can never become a subdivision, but it doesn't turn the land into public parkland. Hidden Spring Farm stays a farm, privately owned and worked, protected on paper rather than opened by a gate.
Then in May, HLT and the township preserved 16 acres at 81 Dayton Road, running along Walnut Brook. In July, another 13 acres came off the market at 73-77 Oak Grove Road, this time along a tributary of the Wickecheoke Creek. Both went through a different channel: Green Acres funding matched by county and township open space dollars, with the land acquired directly by Raritan Township and folded into its public park system.
That's the difference that matters if you're deciding where to spend a Saturday morning. Farmland preservation keeps a view intact. Park acquisition eventually gives you somewhere to stand in it.
344 Acres Along One Brook
The May acquisition wasn't really about one 16-acre parcel. HLT describes it as the latest addition to a corridor that now totals more than 344 acres protected along Walnut Brook, assembled since 1999 in pieces that radiate out from Dvoor Farm itself. Amy Greene, who chairs Raritan Township's Open Space Advisory Committee, explained the logic behind the pattern when the acquisition was announced: expanding preservation along the Walnut Brook strengthens wildlife habitat, protects water quality and supply, helps reduce flooding, and expands recreational opportunities like hiking and wildlife viewing.
That's not abstract for anyone who's walked the loop from Dvoor Farm after a heavy week of rain. HLT has been doing restoration work on the property alongside the acquisitions, rebuilding streambanks and vernal pools and planting more than 1,000 native trees and shrubs to widen the buffer that slows floodwater before it reaches anyone's basement downstream.
A Second Corridor, a Different Creek
The July parcel sits in a different watershed entirely. The 13 acres at Oak Grove Road protect a tributary of the Wickecheoke Creek, a state-designated Category One stream, not Walnut Brook. The property is mostly forested wetland, red maple and pin oak overhead, highbush blueberry and arrowwood viburnum below, with narrow-leaf mountain mint and goldenrod along the meadow edges. It belongs to a separate, longer-running effort. The township says it has now helped protect nearly 400 acres along the Wickecheoke Creek and its tributaries with help from partners including HLT.
The Oak Grove Road parcel is new enough that it hasn't been folded into a marked trail yet. It's been added to the township's public park system, which means it's protected permanently and will, in time, be a place to walk rather than just a shaded parcel on an open space map. For now, the walkable inventory along that corridor is thinner than the one along Walnut Brook, a reminder that preserved and open aren't quite the same word yet, even for land the public already owns.
For a sense of how many separate pieces the township has assembled this way, its own trail map lists Brownstein Preserve, Lenape Park, Lone Cedar Park and Nature Preserve, Mine Brook Park, Micek Farm, the Morales Nature Preserve, and Raritan Estates, each with its own acreage and its own access point. Dvoor Farm isn't on that list because it belongs to the land trust rather than the township, but it functions as the hub the others tie into.
The Barn Is Becoming a Second Front Door
Dvoor Farm itself is mid-renovation. HLT is working through an $8.5 million project to convert the farm's historic Bank Barn into a year-round event and community space, large enough to hold 250 to 300 guests once finished, among the bigger indoor venues in the area. Phase I, the structural and exterior work, wrapped in the summer of 2024. As of last fall, Phase II, which adds bathrooms, an elevator, and a kitchen, was getting underway, with Phase III, covering a new entrance, parking, sidewalks, lighting, and landscaping, expected to start later this year and wrap in early 2027, funding permitting. At last public count, in September 2025, HLT had raised $6.9 million of the $8.5 million total.
What that means in practice: the farmers market that already draws a Sunday crowd is about to have a companion building that keeps the property useful past market season, for weddings, forums, and the kind of indoor gathering space a rural township this size doesn't have much of yet.
The Easiest Weekend to See It for Yourself
If you want to see more of this than a headline, Raritan Township's Community Day is scheduled for Saturday, September 19, at Lenape Park, 115 Sergeantsville Road, running from noon to 4 p.m. with free admission and parking. Past years have drawn crowds as large as 3,000 people for food trucks, live music, and local vendors and crafters. It's a different property than Dvoor Farm, but it sits on the same public land inventory the township has spent the past year quietly expanding.
The Dvoor Farm market itself runs Sundays from May through November, with an indoor winter market picking up after that. Between the two, there's a standing weekly reason to end up on Mine Street, whether or not you already know that the trail behind the wagon house goes somewhere.
A Note From Connie
I've watched Raritan Township add these pieces one at a time for years, long enough to notice that most residents only ever hear about the one nearest their own street. The value in stitching the announcements together is the same reason I pay attention to them for clients. Land protected along a stream corridor stays protected regardless of who buys the house next door, and that kind of stability shows up in how a neighborhood feels ten years after you move in, not just on closing day.
If you're weighing a move in Hunterdon County and want someone who tracks this kind of detail block by block, not just listing by listing, Connie Manailovich would be glad to help.
