WEST CAPE MAY – Carol Rea Flynn and her husband, Kelly Keppel, found themselves at a crossroads that would decide the fate of their 100-year-old farm: bring in more guests, or close shop. With the voice of her father Leslie Charles Rea in her head, the man who dedicated his life to farming this land, they decided to double down.
But man, it’s a lot of work.
Rea’s grows a wildly popular harvest and sells almost every delicious fruit & veggie they farm, but climbing costs meant that something would have to change.
“Farming is really hard, and it’s getting more expensive,” Kelly told Do the Shore during a record-breaking heat. For one, the cost of diesel has tripled in ten years, he said. That’s a painful statistic when every farm vehicle relies on the stuff like it’s blood.
“Agritourism is the future of small farms,” Kelly said. Agritourism introduces guests to the sweaty work of farm labor through casual markets, live music, ready-to-eat produce, and a pastoral setting. Guests can come and see for themselves the hard work that goes into keeping their farms alive: they see the tractors, can smell the fresh cut grass in the air, feel the heat on their skin.
Across America, small farms like Rea’s Farm are closing. USDA data reports that between 2017 and 2024, the number of small farms in the U.S. declined by 8 percent. That’s a huge tumble in just seven years. But Kelly and Carol have taken careful steps to avoid that fate, including the construction of a big red barn. It’s unmistakable from the road, and can host weddings, events, market days, and community gatherings.
Carol’s great grandfather, George C Rea, started the farm in 1922. He passed it to Leslie H Rea, then to Leslie C Rea, who worked the farm his whole life until he passed in 2022. In everything Carol does, she thinks of her dad and how much he loved this place.
The new farm events are great opportunities for the public to experience her father’s farm, a 103-year-old slice of land recognized by the New Jersey Society of Agricultural History for staying in the same family for more than a century.
Still, all the extra public-facing activity has been a lot of extra work for farmers who already work all day long. Before the sun rises over Rea’s Farm, Carol is already at work. With a full-time job and a century-old family farm to manage, her days begin at 4 a.m. and stretch well into the evening.
“I do the farm early in the morning, lunchtime, at night, and on weekends,” said Carol, who also manages a full-time engineering job somewhere in the mix. It’s a labor of love.
“I always knew I’d have to take over the farm someday,” Flynn said. “But I thought I’d share it with my siblings. Now, I’m the only one left.”
The farm has diversified and evolved thanks to all the steady effort. Today, they grow: strawberries, zucchini, summer squash, bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, artichoke, watermelon, cantaloupe, lima beans, pole beans, pumpkins, winter squash, blackberries, beach plums, basil, dill, thyme, rhubarb, cilantro, zinnias, field corn, soybeans, potatoes, and 16 hives managed by Golden Boy Honey. It’s all spread across 50 acres of tillable land, with much of the rest of the property set aside for preservation and bird watching.
Produce is staggered to ensure a steady harvest, and nearly everything grown is sold directly on-site at stalls Kelly recently helped build in the new barn.
“He did all the trim, the staining, even built the furniture that holds the produce,” Carol said.
Kelly retired from a career as a hydraulic engineer last August and now works 12-hour days on the farm. He said he gets a half-day off once a week, which he spends racing J-70 sailboats at the Corinthian Yacht Club with Carol as part of the team “Another White Lie.”
He loves to build new things for the farm and repair what’s broken. He rebuilt a 90-year-old potato planting machine and led construction on the new barn. He also tends to the farm’s dozen tractors. The oldest still in use is a 1949 International Farmall.
Kelly prefers older machines because of their simplicity. The potato planter he rebuilt doesn’t have a single electronic element, but can easily plant potatoes quickly and at scale.
For most new farm equipment, “they make it too hard for the farmer to fix it himself,” Kelly said.
They raise chickens too, specifically Cinnamon Queens, a hybrid that lays high-yield brown eggs. One special chicken frequently produces a double-yolk egg each morning going on two years now. They call it the “daily double.”
The farm once operated primarily as a commercial lima bean grower. At its peak, Carol’s father grew 2,200 acres of beans under a national contract with Hanover Foods. Lima beans were extremely popular during WWII because it was a cheap, protein-rich meat substitute during a time of national rationing efforts. Today, lima beans remain a nostalgic favorite for locals, Kelly said.
“Picking lima beans by hand makes picking strawberries seem like a joy,” Kelly joked. “But people come in asking for them because that’s what they grew up eating. We always sell out.”
Rea’s Farm also boasts 350 beach plum trees, which Kelly now harvests to make jelly, a skill he took over after longtime jelly-maker Terri Hislop retired.
Other favorites include fruit pies baked by “the pie lady,” Norma, and the newly introduced Friday night dinners and weekend breakfasts.
Attendance has been strong at the new farm events. It’s all working out.
“We were at a crossroads before we built the new barn,” Carol said. “Do we stop or do we commit? My dad would have said: build the barn. So we did. It’s for him.”
Contact the author, Collin Hall, at chall@cmcherald.com or by phone at 609-886-8600 ext. 156
