IN 1969 MARY HANCE OWEN inherited an 8-acre farm in West Long Branch from her uncle, Dr. Owen Woolley. Mary’s grandparents had bought it in 1903. Vegetables, eggs and milk were sold to local residents and to the rich who summered in Long Branch. Mary’s father, Edward Hance, had left his family farm in East Freehold and moved to Freehold where Mary grew up (and first met Bob in high school). She has fond memories both of visiting her grandparents in West Long Branch and of going with her father as he visited area farms to supervise the raising of vegetables for the Brakeley Canning Company.

During Bob’s early years, his father operated a poultry farm in Marlboro near the hill where YMCA Camp Arrowhead is today. The depression put an end to most poultry farming, but Bob’s childhood was one of roaming woods, fields and farms where developments “flourish” today.

And so this history wove strong ties to the land for Mary and Bob.

The Owens’ world has not been limited to Monmouth County. As WWII had begun before their graduation from Rutgers and Douglass, respectively, in 1941, their lives took a new direction. In mid-1942, Bob left MIT for the Navy and married Mary before additional naval training took them to Boston and San Francisco. Bob then had the opportunity to observe Pacific island ecology. Mary, working at the Army’s Camp Wood, was indoctrinated to wartime rationing and recycling.

In 1946 Bob was inducted into the American Foreign Service, and the Owens began 25 years of working and living abroad with intervals in Washington, DC. They sometimes observed poor conservation practices and environmental ills, as in the USSR and Lebanon. In other countries, as Finland and Germany, they found practices and conditions relatively better than those here at home. Advanced recycling was accepted in much of Europe when it was just beginning to catch on in America.

Thus, it was not surprising that Mary should start helping a Maryland recycling program when the Owens returned from Yugoslavia in 1970, or that they would become active conservationists when they came back to New Jersey a year later to live on, restore and work Mary’s family farm.

Since then the Owens have been active participants in various environmental organizations, including the Pine Barrens Coalition, Committee for a Better Environment, the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions (ANJEC), Monmouth County Friends of Clearwater and Monmouth Conservation Foundation. They have been recipients of many environmental awards, as a corner of their living room covered with plaques and framed certificates attests.

In 1994 the Owens decided they wanted to preserve the farm, one of the last in the Borough, in perpetuity. With their four children’s agreement, they began to take steps to accomplish the preservation of the farm fields as open space forever. The first step was the donation of a conservation easement on 7.5 acres of the farm to the Monmouth Conservation Foundation. This easement restricts any development of the land and assures that its future use is restricted to agricultural purposes. The second step occurred in the year 2000 -- the Owens donated the remaining fee to West Long Branch for its use as a passive recreational area.

Each landowner has his or her own reasons for their affinity to the land. Mary’s and Bob’s are embodied in their very beings. They are lovers and protectors of the environment. They don’t just “talk the talk,” they “walk the walk.”