Walk into Bardy Farms on Washington Valley Road in Warren Township, and you are entering one of New Jersey’s increasingly rare family farm businesses. Fresh produce still fills the market, plants crowd the greenhouses in Spring, pumpkins arrive in autumn, and Christmas trees and wreaths mark the holiday season. It feels like a familiar neighborhood farm stand, but its history extends far beyond this single Warren property.
Bardy Farms began in 1904, when a Russian immigrant named Abraham Bardy started growing vegetables in Union, New Jersey. Over the following decades, the Bardy family transformed a small farming operation into a network of farms, roadside markets, supermarkets, and commercial properties stretching into Somerset County.
1930 view, and then again in 2020. The dot (lower left) is their home on Spruce Street.
At one time, the Bardys farmed land in Basking Ridge, Millington, North Plainfield, and Warren Township. The family’s Basking Ridge farm stand became a familiar stop for generations of residents before the property was developed as The Barons. Another Bardy farm became protected land within the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.
| # | Location | Use and later disposition | Approximate Acreage |
| 1 | Morris Avenue, Union | Roadside stand, grocery store, and 1952 Bardy Farms Supermarket; located opposite 2626 Morris Avenue. | 0.47 acres |
| 2 | Spruce Street, Union | Approximately 40-acre vegetable farm supplying the nearby supermarket. | 40 acres |
| 3 | Route 22 East, North Plainfield | Approximately 30 acres intended for another supermarket; leased to Great Eastern; now the Costco area. | 28.9 acres |
| 4 | Washington Valley Road, Warren | Present Bardy Farms market and greenhouses, 149 Washington Valley Road. | 8.25 acres |
| 5 | Mountain Boulevard, Warren | Bardy Farms Country Square and supermarket, developed in the early 1961 near Warrenville Road. | 8.39 acres |
| 6 | South Maple Avenue, Basking Ridge | Farm and roadside stand; 30 acres sold around 1982 and now occupied by The Barons. | 29.9 acres |
| 7 | Millington–Great Swamp area | Large farm holding; family history reports approximately 130 acres. Federal records identify two 65-acre tracts sold in the 1990s for refuge acquisition to the Great Swamp. | 127.1 acres |
| 243 acres |
More than 120 years after Abraham Bardy planted his first crops, the family name remains on the market in Warren. Operated by Abraham’s grandson Rob Bardy and his wife, Donna, it is the last surviving agricultural branch of a remarkable Central Jersey farm business.
Bardy Family Early Years
The Bardy family’s American story began in 1904 with Abraham Bardy, a Russian immigrant who arrived with little money but considerable farming experience. He settled in Union, New Jersey, where he began growing vegetables and laying the foundation for a family enterprise that would survive for more than a century.
In 1905, after establishing himself, Abraham sent for his wife, Gussie, and their five-year-old son, Jack. The couple eventually raised eight children, and Bardy Farms became a true family operation. Farming was not simply Abraham’s occupation; it became the work around which the entire family organized its life.
From Farm Fields to Farm Stand
Like many early New Jersey farm families, the Bardys initially brought what they produced to an established city market. They sold their vegetables, eggs, and butter at the Elizabeth Market on High Street. As their customer base grew, the family opened a roadside stand on Morris Avenue in Union.
That modest stand marked an important turning point. The Bardys were no longer only farmers; they were becoming retailers. The stand eventually developed into a small grocery store, creating the farm-to-market business model that would define Bardy Farms for decades.
Building a Modern Supermarket
In 1952, the Bardy brothers made their most ambitious move yet, constructing the first Bardy Farms Supermarket in Union. The store was considered unusually modern for its time, combining frozen foods, a bakery, a delicatessen, a butcher shop, a seafood counter, and a produce department under one roof.
Unlike most emerging supermarkets, however, Bardy Farms remained directly connected to the soil. Much of its produce was grown only two blocks away on the family’s 40-acre vegetable farm on Spruce Street. The Bardys had successfully joined two rapidly changing worlds: the traditional family farm and the modern American supermarket.
Bardy’s Expand into Somerset County
The success of the Union supermarket allowed the Bardys to look westward. During the late 1950s, the family acquired farmland in Basking Ridge, Millington, North Plainfield, and Warren Township, communities that were then beginning their transformation from rural countryside into suburban towns.
This Somerset County play was more than a simple expansion of acreage. The Bardys were assembling a network that combined productive farmland, neighborhood farm stands, supermarkets, and commercial properties. Their growth mirrored the changing landscape of Central Jersey, where old farms increasingly stood beside new highways, housing developments, and shopping centers.
Farmland Consolidation
As suburban development accelerated, the Bardy family’s scattered farm properties followed very different paths. The Basking Ridge farm became a residential community, while the North Plainfield property became part of the Route 22 commercial corridor. In Millington, however, the result was preservation.
The store later became Valley Fair and Kmart before the property was redeveloped after 2014 for Costco.
Bardy Farms Sells Basking Ridge Farm
For Basking Ridge residents, Bardy Farms was not an abstract piece of family real estate. It was a working farm and roadside market remembered by customers who stopped for produce and watched the Bardy children grow up behind the stand. The farm sat off South Maple Avenue near Lyons, on land that would eventually become The Barons residential development. Philip Bardy worked at the stand, often accompanied by his young son Rob, the same Rob Bardy who would later carry the family farming tradition forward in Warren.
In the early 1980s, the Bardy family’s Basking Ridge farm on South Maple Avenue was acquired for residential development. The property became The Barons, a 132-unit condominium community developed by CHT Associates, the New Jersey real estate firm founded by Joseph G. Berardo. Model homes opened in 1983, with construction continuing through the mid-1980s.
By approximately 1982, the Basking Ridge farm was giving way to residential development. The following year, the first model homes opened at The Barons. Today, little about the 132-home community reveals that crops once grew there or that residents once stopped along South Maple Avenue to buy produce from the Bardy family.
From Bardy Farmland to the Great Swamp
Bardy family history describes the family’s approximately 130-acre Millington farm as having been donated to the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in 1998. Recorded deeds reveal a different story: between 1990 and 1998, the federal government purchased four Bardy tracts totaling 126.56 acres for $1,124,600.
The acquisition began in 1990–1991, when family members transferred 62.1 acres between White Bridge Road, Carlton Road, and the Passaic River for $247,600—another 35.17 acres followed in 1995 for $247,000.
Before the remaining property could be transferred, pesticide contamination in a former farm dump area had to be contained beneath a protective soil cap. Investigators also documented a prehistoric Paleo-Indian site dating from approximately 10,000 to 8,000 B.C.
In October 1998, the Bardys sold the final 29.29 acres to the United States for $630,000, completing the farm’s incorporation into the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. Thus, the family’s memory of approximately 130 acres entering the refuge in 1998 was substantially correct—but 1998 marked the end of an eight-year series of paid purchases, not a single donation.
Unlike Bardy land in Basking Ridge and North Plainfield that became residential and commercial developments, the Millington farm disappeared into the protected landscape of the Great Swamp.
Warren: The Last Bardy Farm
Of all the Bardy properties acquired during the family’s great expansion, Warren is where the agricultural tradition survived. At 149 Washington Valley Road, Rob and Donna Bardy continue operating Bardy Farms & Greenhouses, combining the old roadside-market tradition with a year-round garden center and specialty food store.
Rob represents the third generation of the family’s American farming story: grandson of Abraham and Gussie, and son of Philip Bardy. The scale and merchandise have changed since Abraham first carried produce to the Elizabeth Market. Still, the family name remains connected to fresh produce, plants, seasonal goods, and direct service to local customers.
What Comes Next?
Bardy Farms has already survived changes that ended hundreds of other New Jersey farm businesses: immigration, two world wars, the rise of supermarkets, suburban development, disappearing farmland, and the replacement of locally owned stores by national chains.
Its future now rests in Warren, where the family’s last agricultural branch continues under Rob and Donna Bardy. Whether another generation will carry the Bardy name forward remains an unanswered question. What is certain is that the family has already left its mark across Central Jersey—in a surviving Warren farm market, beneath a Basking Ridge residential community, along the Route 22 commercial corridor, and within the protected landscape of the Great Swamp.
The Bardy story is therefore about more than one farm stand. It is the story of how a New Jersey immigrant farm family adapted, expanded, and survived as the surrounding countryside was transformed.
I remember Bardy Farms in Union, on Morris Ave. I lived between his farm and the store; it is where we shopped. I still remember him driving his tractor up our road to the store, and he used to go to Spruce Street and pet his ponies. (From FB)
I lived in the house on South Maple across the street from what is now the entrance to the Barrons. Mr Bardy let us pick vegetables to our hearts’ content. A neighborhood perk! (Facebook)
I worked there for 2 years, and over the years Rob and I became very good friends!
I guess the friendship started when I was a little kid, and Mr Bardy used to ride by our house with the hay wagon full of corn and tomatoes it always stopped and said, ” Here, take these; these are for your mom. There was nothing better than fresh tomatoes, nice and warm, with a little salt; don’t need anything else. He was such a kind, loving man; everybody loved him!
I swear when you go to Warren Bardy Farms, you can still see the spirit of Mr Bardy there. Everything is perfect, just like he left it. (FB share)
I worked for Phil Bardy, the family patriarch, at the South Maple Ave farm stand in 1965. To this day, he is still the nicest, kindest, most generous employer I’ve ever had. And the fruits and vegetables he raised and sold were among the best anywhere. I have great memories of living in BR, when farms were valued over subdivisions. (FB Share)