The short version: it takes more than most people would expect. Our property sits in a part of New Jersey that is heavily regulated from an environmental standpoint — surrounded by tidal marsh, near the Delaware Bay, in a state that takes its coastal land use seriously. We knew going in that the permitting process would be thorough. We want to document it here because we think it’s worth understanding, and because it’s part of the story of what this facility represents.

Hancocks Bridge sits in Salem County, bordered by the Delaware Bay and surrounded by some of the most significant tidal marsh systems on the East Coast. It’s one of the reasons we love this land — the wildlife, the water, the landscape. It’s also why building anything new here requires careful environmental review.

Before we could submit a single permit application, we brought in an environmental engineer to conduct a full site assessment. That assessment covered three areas: wetlands, flood hazard, and CAFRA. Each one had to be evaluated independently before we could understand what we were actually dealing with.

Most people associate CAFRA with the Jersey Shore. In reality it covers a much larger area. The Coastal Area Facility Review Act was enacted by New Jersey in 1973 to protect the state’s coastal regions from overdevelopment. The CAFRA zone extends through eight counties — from Middlesex County south to Cape May and west along the Delaware River to Salem County. Our farm falls within that zone because of our proximity to the Delaware Bay and the surrounding tidal marsh.

What that means in practice is that any new commercial construction on our property requires review and approval from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. It’s not a rubber stamp — the process includes an Environmental Impact Statement, public notice requirements, and a formal review period that we expect will take several months.

We want to be clear: we think this process is appropriate. We chose this land because of what surrounds it. We’re not interested in cutting corners on environmental review for a facility that will operate steps away from tidal marsh. The permitting process exists for good reasons and we’re working through it the right way.

Two pieces of good news came out of the environmental assessment. First, despite being surrounded by wetlands, our proposed building site does not require a wetlands permit — the footprint avoids regulated wetland areas. Second, the site does not fall within a flood hazard area requiring a separate permit. Those determinations simplified the path considerably.

We also conducted test pit excavations across the site to assess soil conditions and ground percolation rates. This is a standard part of planning any facility with wastewater management needs. The results informed our site design and confirmed the location is suitable for the facility we’re planning.

At the local level, the process was more straightforward. We presented our plans to the township and received approval without significant obstacles. The project is supported under the New Jersey Right to Farm Act, which protects agricultural operations — including on-farm processing facilities — from certain municipal restrictions that might otherwise apply to commercial construction. That protection matters for farms like ours that are trying to build sustainable, vertically integrated operations on agricultural land.

We’re grateful for the township’s recognition that this facility serves not just our farm but the broader agricultural community in the region.

The planned facility is approximately 6,000 square feet and will include an indoor kill floor, walk-in coolers and freezers, a cut-and-wrap room, and a small retail space open during limited hours. All of our own beef, lamb, chicken, and pork will be processed here once it’s operational.

We also plan to offer custom processing for other local farms. USDA-inspected processing capacity in New Jersey is genuinely scarce — most small farms in the state haul their animals out of state. We want this facility to be a resource for the agricultural community around us, not just for Mad Horse Meats.

We’ll keep documenting this process as it unfolds — the permit decision, contractor selection, groundbreaking, and the build itself. If you want to follow along, the best way is our email list. We’ll send updates as meaningful milestones happen. Sign up at madhorsemeats.com.

And if you want to see the farm before the facility is built, we welcome visits by appointment. Come meet the animals, see the land, and ask us anything. That’s an offer we mean genuinely.