Last week, I missed the opening day of the Montgomery Friends Farmers' Market, but today I stopped in at the market. The Montgomery Friends Farmers' Market, a project of the Montgomery Friends of Open Space, is following the guidelines of the Rutgers Cooperative Extension and Montgomery Township Health Dept. The parking lot at the Village Shoppes at Montgomery was set up as one-way loop to enforce strict social distancing guidelines. All the vendors and volunteers wore protective face masks. The parking space limits the number of vendors, but it was great to see familiar faces.
Later in the day, after I mentioned how much I needed it, Bhavna and I went for a hike in the Sourland Ecosystem Preserve in Hopewell.
Spanning 60,000 acres, the Sourlands region is a reservoir of biodiversity in central New Jersey. D&R Greenway has already facilitated the preservation of more than 3,400 acres in the Sourlands and is a leading partner with state, county and municipal officials, and private landowners, to continue preservation of this region. More than 150 bird species have been recorded in the Sourland forests. Numerous species require the large, unfragmented tracts of closed-canopy forest that remain in the Sourlands in order to breed successfully.
There were no other cars at the trailhead, which meant that we were not sharing our hiking space. This turned out to be a good thing. This preserve has dense sections of plants and trees than most of the other trails we have hiked and appeared to be less well maintained. The trail disappeared beneath our shoes several times during the hike. Thank goodness for the bright orange trail markers. This trail does not loop so Bhavna and I returned to the trailhead parking space via the local roads.
