Local and fresh in Cranbury, N.J. is how the Kemper family rolls

Philadelphia, Pa- Jerry Kemper, a retired locksmith and current home gardener in Cranbury, N.J., tried to kill a chicken once. His wife Michele- who became fast friends with my mother in 1968 at Pennsbury High School, and their youngest son Fred-both can attest to ‘The Incident’.

“Fred, don’t go in there, especially not before you’ve had your coffee,” said Michele Kemper, early one morning about the family’s connected two-car garage.

Enter a chicken screeching for its’ life.

“What the hell is Dad doing?” asked Fred.

What Jerry was doing was killing his very own free-range chicken, which he had raised from birth. It was his first time doing such a thing, and it was proving more difficult than expected. After the deed was done, Michele popped the de-feathered bird into a pot of piping hot water-only to have the bird’s legs and wings pop straight up as rigor mortis (which sounded more like rigamortus in her faint but still-there Staten Island accent) set in. She couldn’t fit the bird into the oven properly, and to top everything off the damn thing didn’t even taste that great (free-range chickens have more muscle than fat, which gives them a gamier, tougher taste than a factory raised, hormone induced bird).

The Kemper backyard, with raised beds and a chicken coop.

While his wife was cooking, Kemper, blood-stained from the event, headed off to Home Depot to pick up a few last minute items he had forgotten pre-kill, duct tape and a tarp.

“I couldn’t believe no one stopped him in there (Home Depot), he looked like he had just murdered someone,” Michele recalled.

Meet the Kempers- a loveable baby-boomer duo who raised their two boys in Staten Island, N.Y., and now live on a half-acre of land in Cranbury, N.J., a sleepy historic town surrounded by commercial farms and quaint Victorian residences that neighbors Princeton. As Kemper entered retirement, he decided to use some of his property to start growing a few things. And grow he did. He now has several raised beds for vegetables, several fruit trees, newly planted fruit bushes, grape vines and a chicken coop to boot.

This summer, Kemper will have watermelons, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, lettuce, bok choy, spinach, zucchini, herbs, onions and potatoes all available in his backyard. His fruit tree collection is astounding for a home grower: cherry, pear, peach, apple, plum and figs will all be just an arm length away from his kitchen. I was already dreaming of my next visit to the Kemper homestead when the fruit trees would be ripe-I could imagine the plum juice dribbling down my chin as we chatted into the evening as the chickens pock-pocked in the background.

Kemper whistled to his chickens as we neared their coop, which he built himself, on the day I came to visit. He has nine birds, who he lets forage in the yard when they aren’t in the coop. They are good egg layers and healthy birds, he says.

“Hey baby, what’ve you got there?” Kemper asked as he entered the chicken coop.

He reached under a Rhode Island Red to reveal a warm, freshly laid egg. He placed it in my hand and pulled out two more. I couldn’t believe how warm and wonderful it felt. Kemper’s chickens lay six to seven eggs a day, on average. The older the birds get, the less frequently they lay, but the bigger the eggs are. Kemper is constantly cooing, bickering, loving and shooing his chickens like any parent would. He now uses the birds strictly for eggs, he doesn’t have any desire to eat them after ‘The Incident’.

In the summer, if the Kempers didn’t want to, they wouldn’t have to go to the grocery store at all.

“I only use milk for my creamer, so we could be pretty self sustaining here,” Kemper said.

Using raised beds for most of his produce, Kemper showed me some of the various contraptions he has created for his garden. He has a cold frame, which is a portable, mini green house for his seedlings, which he moves in and out everyday for optimal sunlight and waters individually with a turkey baster each day (he has hundreds and hundreds of seedlings).  He built the chicken coop himself, without any blueprint and made a bendable piping to hold up his tomatoes so they can move with the wind.

With a big, green thumbprint, Kemper claims gardening isn’t even his passion.

“My passion is fishing, this is secondary,” he said.

In the summer, Kemper gets out on his boat every chance he has and uses several fishing rods simultaneously to reel in his catch. He uses fishing nets to capture his own bait, and freezes the excess for the next season. The most ironic part- Jerry and Michele don’t even eat fish, they give it all away. They just started eating fluke (summer flounder) last year. 

So with chickens they don’t kill, fish they won’t eat and an abundance of fruits and vegetables, the Kemper garden seems to truly be a labor of love. What they have created in an ordinary suburban setting proves that there are many more people in our communities who have the resources necessary to become more sustainable citizens. The question is, who will follow the Kempers example?