In Push To 'Save' Holly Ravine Farm, Nostalgia Of Cherry Hill's Bucolic Past Emerges

Update: The hearing for Caddis Healthcare Real Estate's application to develop a senior-living complex on the Holly Ravine Farm property will continue at a special Zoning Board meeting at 6 p.m. May 31. The Zoning Board adjourned Thursday night's hearing after five hours of testimony, which lasted until 11 p.m.

CHERRY HILL, NJ — Residents know that stopping a development plan on the Holly Ravine Farm won't bring back 40-cent ice cream cones at the Cowtail Bar. But the pushback against efforts to build a senior-living complex on the land has centered memories of a greener Cherry Hill — and hopes for that segment of the township to stay that way.

Cherry Hill was once home to about 10 farms, and the Holly Ravine Farm stood as a South Jersey gem that created decades of memories. The Cherry Hill Zoning Board plans to review an application to build a 175-unit senior development on the complex at Thursday's meeting, which is set to virtually convene at 6 p.m.

Read more:

• Cherry Hill Farm's Fate At Stake Thursday: What To Know
• Push To 'Save' Cherry Hill Farm From Development Hits Pivotal Juncture

The farm served as a landmark for Cherry Hill residents and visitors, especially when the Cowtail Bar operated from 1933-87.

Longtime township resident Eric Ascalon recalled the mid-1970s, when his parents informed him they were moving from Queens to "the country" — a more apt description back then for Cherry Hill, which has evolved from an agricultural hub to a busy suburb with a population of roughly 75,000.

"I, like many people, recall the Cowtail Dairy Bar there," Ascalon said at April 24's Township Council meeting. "I remember chomping on bubblegum ice cream. It was ice cream that actually had bubblegum in it. It was very important to me and to a lot of folks in this community."

John Jack Gallagher, who worked at the Cowtail Bar during weekends and summer vacations from 1974-78, applied after seeing an ad that the eatery was looking for fountain boys and dishwashers.

The cash register was "ancient," he told Patch. To ring up a 40-cent ice cream come, workers had to press three buttons — "quarter, dime and nickel," a combination of buttons Gallagher pushed thousands of times, to the point where the phrase would repeat in his head and keep him up at night.

"It was an awesome job for a teenager," Gallagher said. "The money was good. We worked hard but also had a lot of fun. The guys in the dairy and the Gilmour family (the farm's owners) were always around and that was nice, too. There was never a dull moment and being part of something like Cowtail Bar that everyone loved so much felt great. Everyone came through those doors excited and smiling, and we tried to make sure they left the same way."

Gallagher has collected newspaper clippings about the farm. He recalls an article in which he learned the farm's ice cream had higher butterfat content than that of Ben & Jerry's or Häagen-Dazs. Gallagher's collection also includes an Evening Courier newspaper clipping from 1936, which described a mock wedding between a man and a cow named "Madame Bossy."

After the Cowtail Bar closed, the farm remained John and Eva Gilmour's home. John Gilmour — a dairy farmer who served as Cherry Hill's mayor from 1963-71 — died in 1993. When Eva died in 2011, the family decided to try and preserve the property, says Robert Gilmour, their son.

But several obstacles have interfered, with the New Jersey Farm Preservation Committee and the township declining to preserve the land. With two preservation attempts failing, the family put the property on the market. But the township has blocked past potential sales out of concerns about adding traffic to the area, Robert Gilmour said in a letter that his daughter, Bonnie, shared April 25 with the Save The Holly Farm Ravine group on Facebook.

As a result, the future of the property and one of the greenest sections of Cherry Hill lies in the hands of the township zoning board.

"Cherry Hill has changed a tremendous amount, obviously. It’s called progress," Ascalon said. "But it’s changed in ways that, in some respects, it shouldn’t have."