Outstanding in his field
Photos courtesy of Len, Nedda and Katie Grasso April 03, 2024
When a tornado devastated his New Jersey farm and home, Len Grasso leaned on his UD degree to build it all back
The growl of a beast.
That’s how Len Grasso describes the sound of the tornado that blew through — and blew up — his world. On Sept. 1, 2021, he emerged from his basement in Mullica Hill, New Jersey, to find that a neighbor’s roof had crashed through his family room. Outside, his commercial vegetable farm looked like a war zone. When he glanced beyond his line of 70-foot spruce trees — or beyond where the trees had stood that morning — he could see what remained of the twister, a category EF-3, rolling in the distance. It looked to him like a mushroom cloud.
Fast forward two and a half years. After a lengthy period of rebuilding, Grasso and Son Farms is once again thriving. And the University of Delaware alumnus has been named Vegetable Grower of the Year by the Vegetable Growers Association of New Jersey, an honor he accepted at the state’s Agricultural Convention and Trade Show in Atlantic City in February. The accolade speaks to a passion not even 160 mile-per-hour winds can extinguish.
“I knew deep down in my soul I couldn’t give up this business,” said 66-year-old Grasso, who credits his 1980 UD degree in agricultural business management with helping him bounce back. “I didn’t want this storm to define me.”
Farming is in Grasso’s blood. His paternal grandparents were sharecroppers who worked in area fields until they were able to save up and buy their own land in Bridgeport, New Jersey. Grasso’s father, Angelo, followed suit, purchasing the Mullica Hill farm shortly before starting his own family. Grasso and his younger brother, Angelo, Jr., grew up on this land. They played in a large dairy barn and tended to a slew of chores, including — groan — peach duty.
“There’s a lot of fuzz on a peach, and we had a machine that would brush it off,” Grasso said. “We had to clean the machine that cleaned the peaches, and the fuzz would get all over you and make you itch.”
After high school, Grasso enrolled at UD, thinking higher education would help him forge his own path in the agricultural sector. But — even though he traveled back on weekends to work — he missed home. Rather than search for greener pastures, he decided to apply the technical knowledge gleaned during his academic career to his father’s land. Shortly after graduation, Grasso married fellow Blue Hen Nedda Sorbello, an accounting graduate from the Class of 1981, and they committed themselves to the Mullica Hill farm, which totals 300 acres. He managed the crops (squash, eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers, tomatoes); she managed the books. Their three children, including Blue Hen Katie Grasso, now a director of communications for (fellow Blue Hen) Sen. Tom Carper, grew up playing in the same farm buildings as their dad.
Then, disaster.
That fateful, late summer day in 2021 had been windy and rainy — remnants of Hurricane Ida, a category 4 storm which had touched down in Louisiana the day before. Despite the weather, Grasso had been hard at work in his fields and packing plant since sunrise — this was the height of harvest season. Typically, at such a time, he’d power through until just before nightfall, around 8 p.m. But on this day, for no discernable reason, he felt exceptionally tired. For the first time all season, he decided to call it early, around 5:30 p.m.
“If I hadn’t done that, I’m not sure I’d be alive to talk to you today,” Grasso said.
Less than an hour later, just a couple hundred yards away on the same property, the farmer turned on the television in his living room. A news report warned of a possible tornado in the area, and this registered as odd. The Garden State, which boasts an average of two weak, short-lived twisters per year, is not exactly tornado alley. The news also registered as scary: “I thought to myself: This is terrible; someone could get hurt. I hope people are prepared,” Grasso said. “It didn’t occur that this thing could be headed for me.”
When the warnings intensified on his TV and phone — the storm had touched down in the neighboring town — Grasso and Nedda took shelter in their basement, where the sound of an approaching growl grew louder. During a 30-second span, they listened as the storm devastated their life’s work, then they emerged from the basement to find an exterior wall of their two-story colonial missing. Sheetrock was everywhere. Shards of glass from busted windows in the family room had collected in a coffee pot in the kitchen, 40 feet away.
In the distance, the Grassos could see what remained of their seven farm buildings, used for packing, processing and storing. One corrugated steel structure, 50-by-50 feet, had vanished entirely. The others — made of steel, cinderblock and wood — were reduced to rubble. No one had been hurt or killed. This damage, amounting to $750,000, was entirely financial — and emotional.
“We were in shock,” Grasso said. “Everything got blown up. They put a sticker on my home that read ‘uninhabitable,’ but I wasn’t going anywhere. When the fire marshall turned up, I told him: ‘Unless you come back with a loaded pistol, I’m not leaving.’”
Indeed, Grasso committed to finishing out the last two months of his harvest season. (Fortunately, the tornado had left most of the crops still in need of harvest, growing on plots of land down the road, untouched). He was able to accomplish this goal, he said, only because of area friends and farmers who lent him their equipment, their packing facilities, their manpower and their solidarity. These friends also helped in the cleanup process so that Grasso could work with carpenters on rebuilding his home and other farm structures.
“This is a real community,” he said. “The outpouring of support was overwhelming, and I am eternally grateful. My wife and I were raised by people who taught us to be kind, helpful and charitable, because if you live like that, it comes back to you when you need it most — you’re rewarded for it. And we were, 100 times over.”
By March of the following year, Grasso was sewing seeds from his rebuilt greenhouses. And, within two years, despite supply chain issues caused by Covid (think 18 weeks for a delivery of new windows), his farm was completely rejuvenated. For this ability to push through challenges, Grasso points largely to his time at UD.
“Further education is not just about facts and figures,” he said. “It’s about developing the right confidence. UD taught me how to approach problems — how to carry myself, even when things get hard.”
In February, at the convention where he received the New Jersey Vegetable Grower of the Year award, Grasso gave a speech relaying his story and thanking the agricultural community for its unwavering support. When he finished, two teenage boys from the Future Farmers of America organization approached the stage. They wanted to tell the speaker how inspired they felt by his resilience, how much they hoped to follow in his footsteps and contribute to such a proud agricultural tradition. But it was Grasso who felt truly moved.
“Once I heard from these kids, I knew the reason this whole thing happened,” he said. “It was all worthwhile.”
Contact Us
Have a UDaily story idea?
Contact us at ocm@udel.edu
Members of the press
Contact us at 302-831-NEWS or visit the Media Relations website
ADVERTISEMENT
Resources
Office of Communications & Marketing 105 E. Main St. Newark, DE 19716 ocm@udel.edu Phone: 302-831-2792