The Hamilton Farms sign has been taken down. The four greenhouses will soon be empty and Tom and Doreen Deckenbach are ready to retire.

The farm, which stood on the Denville border with Boonton Township for three generations, has shut its doors for good

The couple sold Hamilton Farms Greenhouses and Farm Market Tuesday after 20 years of making a living as farmers. It’s been a family-run venture ever since Tom Deckenbach's grandfather, Henry Hamilton, bought 53 acres in the Rockaway Valley in 1928.

Hamilton was known for the romaine lettuce that he grew and sold in Newark. The second generation added the greenhouses that became the farm's biggest money maker.

It was the 5 acres of greenhouses where they grew plants for wholesale and retail that kept them in the black and allowed the couple to sell the business Tuesday for “a lot of money.”

The couple would not say who bought the farm or for how much, but did say they "will be comfortable."

The farm was much more than just plants. If the plants were the totality of the business, it wouldn’t have been as fun because it was the variety in their ever-changing landscape that made farming fun.

In summer they held a farmers market and sold fruits and vegetables like corn, tomatoes and lettuce, stuff they grew as well as the harvests of other local farms. In fall they offered mums, pumpkins, hayrides and donuts, lots of donuts.

“Everybody loved our apple cider donuts,” said Doreen Deckenbach.

Tom Deckenbach estimated that they sold “five or 6,000 apple cider donuts a weekend.”

Each year they sold over 15,000 pumpkins and 500 Christmas trees.

Some families came back throughout the year, but for most it was more like an annual ritual. Some come for poinsettias and Christmas trees and others for the hayrides and pumpkins.



Robin Kiefer said buying annuals and vegetables for Mother’s Day was a tradition in her family.

But the Deckenbachs worked hard year-round — including the winter months when they were closed — to keep the farm going, and typically about six month in advance. They would be getting ready for Christmas while customers werestill buying tomatoes.

“I don’t think people realized how hard we worked all year,” said Doreen Deckenbach.

It was demanding to keep the snow off the greenhouse roofs, keep the equipment running, and still things broke. From boilers to generators Tom Deckenbach had to handle it all. Being a farmer meant he was also a plumber, an electrician and chef — he made all those donuts!

But it was work that Tom Deckenbach always knew he wanted to do, ever since he was a boy watching his grandfather work on the farm.

“There were different crops. It was always changing. I never liked repetition,” Tom Deckenbach said.

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He couldn’t stand the idea of being cooped up, confined to an office, doing the same thing over and over. By the time he graduated from high school in 1980 his uncle, Henry Hamilton was running the farm and Tom Deckenbach started to work for him that year.

Tom met Doreen when he was 21.

“He used to bring tomatoes to the market and I was working in a sandwich shop,” said Doreen Deckenbach. “He would stop on the way and I would send him off with a nice sandwich.”

He showed her the farm and told her, “someday this place is going to be mine.”

She said she just laughed and sang the theme song of the show “Greenacres.”

“I never pictured myself on a farm,” Doreen Deckenbach said.

They have three adult children: Courtney, 26, Thomas Joseph or “TJ”, 24, and Taylor, 21.

“It is bittersweet, but it is time to move on,” Doreen Deckenbach said. “It has been in the family a very long time. We put our blood, sweat and tears into it.”

They said the business was a profitable one, but physically, it is a lot of work. Doreen Deckenbach is 56 and Tom Deckenbach is 58. The “24/7 business” in their back yard is getting harder.

“I moved to Boonton Township in 1968 and grew up on Old Denville Road. The farm was a permanent fixture in the community, and I always felt like it would be there forever,” said Nancy D'Alessandro Ginder. “I still drive by Hamilton Farms every day, and I will be sad to know I won’t be able to stop in any longer.”

The property is zoned for active farmland, said Municipal Clerk Barbara Shepard.

“It will have to stay as a farm,” Tom Deckenbach said. “Boonton Township is very much into its open space. It’s going to stay exactly as it is.”

Tom Deckenbach said he doesn’t know what the business will be, but it will stay “a greenhouse facility.”

Email: myers@northjersey.com

