You don’t have to decide what you want to do with your life when you are still in your teens. That’s the message Ruthie Perretti, the owner of Marksboro Mills in Frelinghuysen had for students recently at Blair Academy Society of Skeptics in Blairstown.
Perretti shared how her unconventional career—from Ralph Lauren designer to agricultural—has led to meaningful work, restoring local food systems and finding purpose through unexpected paths.
Marksboro Mills is the only commercial stone milling in New Jersey, Perretti told the Skeptics. It produces and sells whole grain and stone milled flour, both wholesale and retail, with a focus on local heritage grains.
“How did I get here? Why does the story matter today? This is a story about rebuilding something that quietly disappeared,” she said.
She grew up in Montclair, but by the 1970s her parents bought a small, abandoned farmhouse in the Marksboro section of Frelinghuysen Township.
“They discovered this area and fell in love with it,” Perretti said. “The open land, the small village, the sense of space.”
Set on 48 acres, the pre-revolutionary house was in terrible shape. For reasons she didn’t fully understand at the time, they decided to restore it.
“People thought they were a little crazy. I did, too,” she said. “But they embedded themselves here. They built relationships, became part of the community, and shared this place generously with friends. For me, Marksboro felt like a secret, a wild, beautiful part of New Jersey, that few people seem to know.”
But before she would return to open Marksboro Mills in 2023, Perretti had a different career path that wound through the fashion world and the culinary arts. In high school she didn’t quite know what she was going to do with her life while many of her classmates were already focused on an occupation in adulthood. Even after graduating college, she was still not sure what she wanted to do.
Her main interests were literature, writing, sports and history, all of which would not “lead me to a life where I could support myself.”
But she also had a budding interest for offbeat fashion.
“Clothes and style. I’d always had a knack for putting looks together from unexpected places,” Perretti said. “Church basements, Army Navy stores, rag shops.”
She landed a job in 1983 with design shop Ralph Lauren during what she considers the company’s most visionary years, even working closely with Lauren himself.
“The company was growing fast, and Ralph was overflowing with ideas about new markets and opportunities,” she said. “I sensed a hunger for fresh thinking, and I leaned into what came naturally to me, hunting for ideas.”
After rising through the ranks to become one of the top designers, she set out on her own as a consultant and freelance designer. She and her husband moved back to her hometown of Montclair where they opened a restaurant, but at the same time, her parents were spending less time at the house in Marksboro, and she realized care of the farm would fall to her. They grew their own vegetables for their eatery, aptly named Ruthie’s Barbecue and Pizza.
While examining the fields, Perretti’s husband Eric, a professional chef, recognized rye, wheat, and other grains growing wild, and suggested that they cultivate it and make their own flour.
“That changed everything,” she said.
She quickly learned, however, that there were no active flour mills in New Jersey. So with guidance and inspiration from community-supported agriculture Genisis Farm in Blairstown, Ruthie and Eric purchased a vacant farm equipment store and warehouse on Route 94 in Marksboro, where local grains are now stone milled by River Valley Community Grains.
The fashion designer-turned-miller and farmer had come full circle, back to her childhood retreat. And that’s the message she hoped the students at Blair would take away.
“I really wanted them to know that at this age, it is perfectly fine to not know what you will do,” Perretti said. “Trust your intuition. Listen to that inner voice, stay with what matters to you,” she advised.
Joe brings decades of journalism experience to the Ridge View Echo, covering everything from local school boards to the U.S. Supreme Court. A former National Law Journal editor and Columbia Law School press officer, he now enjoys telling community stories in Blairstown, where he lives with his wife, Rose, and their two dachshunds.
- Joe Phalon, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/joe-phalon-contributing-writer/
- Joe Phalon, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/joe-phalon-contributing-writer/
- Joe Phalon, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/joe-phalon-contributing-writer/
- Joe Phalon, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/joe-phalon-contributing-writer/
