Charity Robey

A true, funny, inspiring story of 1950s Shelter Island. It all comes down to a hill of beans

On July 23, 24 and 25, the Shelter Island Historical Society will present “A Hill of Beans,” a musical that tells the story of a farming cooperative that sprouted on Shelter Island in 1950, employed upwards of 70 people, and died on the vine in 1954 after mildew, two hurricanes and a plague of beetles brought financial catastrophe.

If you think this sounds like perfect fodder for a musical comedy, so do more than 40 people; old timers and youngsters, Islanders who go back generations and folks who found shelter here quite recently. They all volunteered to memorize lines, don unflattering costumes, and transport themselves and you back to a semi-mythical time when men ran things, and women cleaned up afterward. Whether inspired by a longing for the old days, or a feeling of how far we’ve come, the cast and crew are pouring their joy into the show written by Lisa Shaw and Tom Hashagen.

Remembrance of things past

Lisa’s own distinct inspiration is honoring her grandparents and passing along their Shelter Island history. She discovered it when Rachel Lucas, archivist at the Historical Society, shared a folder of Farmer’s Cooperative documents that included a story about Ben Spitoza, the town barber who preceded Louis “The Clip” Cicero. Ben was Lisa’s grandfather. Soon Lisa realized that her grandmother, Mildred Spitoza, worked on the line in the lima bean factory. “They practically raised me, and I immediately thought this was a story I had to tell,” Lisa said. 

The story opens after World War II when most of the land here was farmed, and the trees and shady woods we know today were so sparse you could see across the Island from bay to sea. The year-round population was fewer than 1,100 people, and the small hotels and rooming houses didn’t attract enough people to support the year-round economy. Erich von Karp lived on the Island in those years, in a home owned by his mother’s family, where he still lives. “Nobody had any money,” he remembered. People think because you have 100 acres of farmland you’re rich. But it was usually owned by four or five kids, so you couldn’t sell it.”

In 1950, 10 local farmers — Anton Blados, Albert Dickerson, Dan Dickerson, Elliot Dickerson, John Garr, Evans Griffing, Frank Mysliborski, Sylvester Prime and Everett Tuthill — led by Richard Moser, formed a cooperative to grow, harvest and process Shelter Island’s lima beans. The idea was to deliver them frozen to companies like Birds Eye and Libby’s, which specialized in an emerging new business — frozen food.

Shelter Island became one of the premier lima bean producers in the Northeast, and one of the first to employ the new flash-freezing technology for fresh vegetables, years before freezers became ubiquitous appliances in American kitchens.

In addition to local men hired to drive the trucks and run the viners and freezers, the Shelter Island Farmer’s Cooperative employed as many as 40 women to sort and package beans and 15 migrant workers brought in for a few months every summer.

No chapter of Shelter Island history is closed as long as memory abides, and there are still quite a few Islanders with memories of “the beanery,” as it’s come to be known. They touched Shelter Island’s industrial past, either through the experiences of their parents and grandparents, or in some cases, because they worked at the beanery themselves.

Coming and going … and staying

For two or three months each summer, migrant workers from Alabama, the Carolinas and Puerto Rico came to work harvesting crops and in the beanery, but they rarely stayed. Jim Hayward was the exception. He grew up in Ridgeland, S.C. “I met some guys from Shelter Island who were farming down in Ridgeland and came up to work for them for three years, growing tomatoes, potatoes and string beans,” Jim said. “I used to drive a truck and then I used to haul lima beans — but I never worked in the factory. Starting in the 50’s I stayed here and farmed for a couple of years and then I went out on my own. Landscaping, a chauffeuring job in the 60s, and as a caretaker.”

Jim now owns Commander Cody’s Restaurant and Seafood Market, where his daughter Amanda is chef.

Gordon Edwards is 94, retired and living in Texas now, but he grew up spending every summer on Shelter Island fishing, crabbing, playing golf, and very briefly working at the beanery. “I pulled bad beans off the conveyor belt for two days,” he said.  “At the end of the war, virtually every piece of farmland on the Island grew lima beans.”

His younger brother, Richard Edwards, drove a truck, hauling beans to Southold for processing and was known for a lead foot on the accelerator. “He was a wild man, a speed demon,” Gordon said about his brother, who later owned The Dory.

Foundations

Frozen food for consumers was just starting; the TV dinner was not introduced until the early 1950s. “We’d harvest the beans and all the women on the Island worked on the picking table,” said Erich von Karp. “They wrapped the boxes with cellophane, and one machine put Libby on the box and Birds Eye on the other. All the same beans. We’d haul them over to the train over in Greenport by truck and they parked the train and we filled it up with frozen beans. We were one of the early freezer plants in the county. Most people still just had iceboxes.”

Lisa Shaw took the people and events on Shelter Island in the late 1940s and early 1950s as the foundation of her story, and her imagination provided the rest. Still, her characters are based on actual people, and the show lovingly depicts them as they were, right down to their hairnets, old-fashioned attitudes toward social equality, corncob pipes and fear of anyone who didn’t come from here.

Hoot Sherman’s father, Herbert, was in charge of keeping the equipment running at the beanery and Hoot worked there himself at the age of 13 alongside his brother Herb. An infamous workplace injury described in the show actually took place according to Hoot.

Going to work in farming as a teenager was completely unremarkable in the 1950s. A permit to operate farm equipment, including tractors and trucks could be had by any qualified 13-year-old, and Erich von Karp was still a teenager when he remembers spraying the bean crop with DDT, thought to be a perfectly reasonable and wholesome way to farm in 1954.

Up to 40 Island women found work on the line, sorting beans and packing them for freezing. On the left is Florence Olinski wearing a stylish and practical 1950’s headwrap called a ‘snood.’ (Credit: Shelter Island Historical Society)

Other characters in “A Hill of Beans” based on actual people include “Mrs. Jackim, a seamstress who lived across the street from Sylvester Manor.” Lisa said. “Phoebe Johnson was Williette Piccozzi’s grandmother, and Frank Mysliborski was Tommy Mysliborski’s grandfather.”  Ernest Shepherd, a mechanic at the beanery, married Edith Shepherd, who worked on the line.  Their children and grandchildren, including Paul and Gene Shepherd, live on the Island today. Donna Cass’s grandmother, Eleanor Scheibel, worked on the line, and Joy Bascom’s maternal grandmother, Phoebe Simons Johnston, was in charge of the shifts.

The success of the lima bean enterprise on Shelter Island was short-lived. By 1955, reeling from insect infestation, damaged by hurricanes, and saddled with debt, the Cooperative folded. The workers lost their jobs, the 10 farmers who formed the cooperative lost the money they invested, and the Island’s economy began a shift from agriculture to tourism that would continue for the rest of the 20th Century.

The physical and spiritual remains of the beanery are with us still. At the intersection of Cobbetts Lane and Manhanset Road is an entrance to a public property called “Old Lima Bean Fields,” marked by a piece of aging farm equipment.

“We built that viner on cement,” Erich von Karp remembered. “You may still find the foundations.”

Gnocchi quest

The struggle to acquire a skill can be a powerful motivation, and when it comes to gnocchi, the pillowy Italian dumplings made with potato, flour, eggs and cheese, my struggle is real.

When they are good, they are ethereal puffs. When they are bad they can’t be chewed, or they disintegrate. Often, I’ve fallen short making gnocchi. And I can’t even pronounce the word.

Fortunately, I’m located in a gnocchi neighborhood. You know how ads for summer rentals always say the place is “steps away” from the beach? My place is steps away from good homemade gnocchi, and in Shelter Island’s vacation rental market that could be worth something. Sixto Coronel is the chef at Isola, our neighborhood joint, and he makes tender gnocchi, including a fantastic version with mushrooms in brown butter and sage. House-made gnocchi also appears regularly on the menu at 18 Bay, and other fine-dining establishments on the Island. But not mine.

Gnocchi turns out to be easy to make if you know how to do it, and almost impossible if you don’t. I’m firmly in the second category, mounting an occasional attempt to make it, retreating in ignominy when it doesn’t work.

I started by trying a recipe in a newspaper. It was short, easy to follow, but I had no idea how the dough was supposed to look. The gnocchi were edible, but they didn’t look right — more like pillowcases than fluffy pillows.

Then I tried a recipe in one of my cookbooks. It was five pages long, with luscious photos and expensive ingredients that required access to a sheep. The dumplings dissolved in the boiling water like egg drop soup.

I started asking friends who were expert Italian cooks, and realized it’s a sign of trouble when you hear the words “just like my mother’s,” a phrase that is shorthand for “you will never be able to make this properly because you are not my mother.”

I heard that Cristina Cosentino makes great gnocchi, and when I asked her how, she described the techniques she acquired watching her Italian grandmother. “The area that my nonna is from is Avelino, so it’s not light fluffy gnocchi, it’s a dense kind and you roll it with your thumb like an orecchiette. It’s not flat, but indented and very rustic. It holds the sauce. They are really good.”  Of course, they are. Just like your grandmother’s.

My husband is not even sure he likes gnocchi. He’s never eaten the kind of magical dumplings that fall from the fingers of Italian grannies. Most of the gnocchi he’s eaten are my feeble attempts.

Unable to get myself adopted by an Italian granny, I decided to rent one by signing up for a class. My husband said he heard me on the phone trying to convince a friend that we should take a class together “to learn to make nookie.”

She didn’t understand what I was talking about either. Subsequently I’ve learned that the correct pronunciation is “nyow-kee” an Italian word that means a knot in the wood or a knuckle. The word refers to the size and shape of the dumplings, but is misleading on the consistency, which is closer to marshmallow than wood or bone. 

Last week, after months of planning, I took a 12-hour round trip with a friend who shared my determination to learn how to turn a baked potato into a platter of puffy pasta in an intensive gnocchi lesson.

If you’re wondering who could possibly care enough about learning to make tiny dumplings to drive halfway to Canada, I can say that the class was completely full and there were four people on the waiting list. Two students came from California.

The instructors were patient and kind. They showed us how to make the dough for several kinds of gnocchi. I had not previously been aware that there was more than one kind. They watched me make the dough and they showed me when I needed to add more flour. I made scores of dumplings using forks, my hands and a wooden device that looked like a washboard for a Barbie doll. They didn’t say anything about my apparent lack of an Italian mother.

I returned from gnocchi class with new recipes heavily annotated, a revived spirit and much better at the pronunciation of Italian nouns. I ate an enormous number of gnocchi while learning, so I’ll need a few days to digest before I try again, but I will try.

Dave Daly and Ben Gonzalez, holding on to a sense of place

Ben Gonzalez,left, and Dave Daly with Paco at their Shelter Island home. (Credit: Charity Robey)

WHEN BEN GONZALEZ and Dave Daly decided to start an oyster farm, Dave knew exactly where he wanted to raise bivalves.

His great-grandfather, Thomas Daly, bought a large Southold property in 1919 to get his family away from the flu pandemic sweeping through New York. He put down roots, and over the decades the family extended and built houses all around him. Dave grew up sailing in Southold Bay, and riding the ferry across to Shelter Island for ice cream.

Dave and Ben picked out an underwater lease site in Southold Bay for their new farm in 2013, one of the 10 leases granted by Suffolk County for aquaculture that year.

“It seemed like such a reach to be starting an oyster farm, but the Bay feels like my back yard,” said Dave.

Now six years into the business, they have raised half a million oysters, and a few weeks ago moved to a new home on Shelter Island, up the hill from Chase Creek, and downhill from the golf course with the 7th hole out back, another great location.

Ben’s family is originally from Galicia in Northern Spain, but he grew up in the Dominican Republic and has lived in Buenos Aires and Texas for extended periods. After a 25-year career in marketing with Verizon, he retired. Not yet 50, Ben was ready to start a new business. “My family was extremely concerned when I told them we were going to be oyster farmers,” Ben said.

Dave had no experience raising shellfish either, but he did grow up around boats.

“Motor boats were a four-letter word in our house,” Dave said. “That classic postcard from the 1960’s you sometimes see of two men sailing in Southold Bay — it’s actually my dad and a friend.”

Even before they bought a house in Southold, Dave and Ben bought a 25-foot motorboat, a Maxum. “It’s very top-heavy, my dad calls it the floating Clorox bottle,” Dave said.

Ben told of the time they invited Dave’s dad to cruise with them. “He used to sail to Block Island every year, so we invited him to come with us on our motorboat. He showed up with all these charts and rulers, and when I said, ‘Mr. Daly, we have GPS,’ he said, ‘I don’t trust those things.’” 

Dave added, “If our GPS ever failed, I don’t know how we’d get back.”

Ben was working for Verizon in New York and Dave was in the business school at NYU when they met at the Star Lounge in the Chelsea Hotel, where Dave had gone with group of NYU friends. They married in April of 2011 in Vermont, and it must have been a great wedding because, when same-sex marriage became legal in New York a few months later, they started getting requests from friends and family to do it again.

They adopted Paco, a snaggle-tooth chihuahua mix a few years later. He was a rescue. “A couple of families rejected him because he does bite a little bit,” Dave said. “I had a very ugly dog growing up named Squiggy who looked a lot like Paco.”

Ben said, “I had been hearing stories about Squiggy for years, and I finally saw a picture. He’s the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen.”

They only agreed to foster Paco for a weekend, but when they brought him in the adoption papers were ready, and they wouldn’t give him up.

Dave introduced Ben to the life aquatic when they started coming out to Southold on weekends, and once they found out about oyster growing, Ben went all in. With an education in oyster-raising courtesy of the SPAT (Southold Project in Aquaculture Training) program at the Cornell extension in Southold, “we got 1,000 oysters the size of a pinkie nail to grow or to kill,” Ben said.

They grew.

In the third year of the SPAT program, they learned that Suffolk County had leases for commercial oyster farming. They got into the lottery, were picked to lease a spot in Southold Bay, and joined the nearby Shellfisher Preserve, owned by the Peconic Land Trust, where they operate the land-based part of the farm operation, including tumbling and sorting the oysters.

Once they invested in the lease, they needed equipment, including a boat with a crane to lift 1,000 pounds. They found a bayman selling a scalloping boat, and named the 19-foot Mako “El Pulpo,” or, “The Octopus.”

“The boat has been working these waters for much longer than we have,” Ben said.

In the first six years of production their company, which they named Southold Bay Oysters, had annual growth of between 20% and 40%. They’ve just launched a skincare product derived from nacre, the mother of pearl coating inside an oyster’s shell.

In spite of impressive growth in their first years of farming, sales during the pandemic have been down, as they have been for all oyster farms who depend on restaurants, special events, private parties and tours. Fortunately, the oysters, unperturbed by pandemic, are patiently growing in Southold Bay.

Dave and Ben, with their combined experience in finance and marketing, considered the craft brewing and winery businesses before latching onto oyster farming. Ben was dazzled by the eco-friendly nature of this form of aquaculture, and how it bodes well for the future of the business. “The more I learn about it, the more impressed I am with how powerful oysters are — how they clean the water and establish protective reefs,” he said.

For Dave, it’s more about a sense of place. “The draw for oysters for me was a love for the North Fork and a desire to be here,” he said. “My family used to be here through Thanksgiving and then close the house until Easter. Now there’s pumpkin season and Christmas tree season. The draw for oysters for me was a love for the place and a desire to be here.”

Ben and Dave — Lightning Round

What do you always have with you?  Ben: My wedding ring. Dave: My wedding ring, and Paco.

Favorite place on Shelter Island?  Ben & Dave: The Ram’s Head Inn.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island?  Dave: Southold Bay, the beach. Ben:Orient Point.

What exasperates you?  Ben & Dave: When people come out here to visit and bring a bottle of California wine.

When was the last time you were afraid?  Ben & Dave: Coming back from Fishers Island on our boat, we got caught in fog, and had to try to get out of the way of a massive tanker coming through The Race.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island?  Ben & Dave: Labor Day in West Neck Bay. We go to enjoy the beach and spend the night on the boat. 

Favorite movie or book?  Dave: “Jaws.” Ben: “The Others.” 

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family?   Ben & Dave: Kim Tetrault, director of the SPAT program.

Most respected elected official?  Ben & Dave: Steve Bellone, Suffolk County Executive. He represents government that really works.

Mabel's very good day

(Credit: Charity Robey)

Mabel is a 40-pound beagle/coonhound mix who has been top dog (and the only dog) in our two-human household since we adopted her five years ago. She is a beautiful and queenly creature, used to being admired, and more comfortable giving orders than obeying them. Here is Mabel’s account of a good day, because she knew you were wondering.

7 a.m. Good morning. I’m curled on the couch in a loose ball of black and tan, my long legs folded, my feet pressed against either side of my muzzle and my fluffy white tail wrapped around the folded legs from stern to stem, looking more like a tiger skin rug than a stuffed animal. When I hear one of my people enter the kitchen, I lift one eyelid. Is it time to rise?

7:25 a.m. I don’t hear the food dish, so my eyelid goes back down, and I return to REM sleep, flexing my toenails, and twitching my legs in pursuit of the rabbit who lives under the porch.

8 a.m. Breakfast. At last I hear the ring of kibble hitting the bowl. I stretch elegantly (a yoga pose called “downward dog”) and enter the kitchen offering my person the opportunity to scratch my ear, before I tuck into my breakfast. Since she insists on heating food before she lets anyone eat it, she mixes warm water into my kibble to “make gravy.” This is strange, since when she makes actual gravy I’m not allowed to have any.

8:15 a.m. A good walk spoiled. After I’ve eaten breakfast, she connects herself to my collar with a piece of leather (which she won’t let me eat) so I can take her out to smell things. She has a lot to learn about smelling things.

Maintaining good hygiene is a constant battle. I have learned to act nonchalant when I spot deer, raccoon or best of all, goose droppings in the grass. I sniff aimlessly, unenthusiastically until she loosens the leash and I can roll in ear-first, executing a twisting dive that lays down an even coating on the fur from my neck to my ribs.

9 a.m. Ablutions and a sun bath. A successful roll in something smelly is often followed by a warm sponge bath (with chicken treats) and then a few hours lying in the sun on the porch.  So that happens, and it’s very nice.

10 a.m. Working girl, job #1. As soon as I hear the garbage truck approaching, I start barking. What are they thinking!? How can they allow a week’s worth of garbage to be taken away forever? I am heartbroken and ashamed.

Noon. Nap.

1 p.m. Working girl, job #2. Our next-door neighbor pulls up in his truck, and it’s my job to bark at him. I continue barking as he chats with my kennelmate about the state of bicycling on Shelter Island including the shortage of parts (he can’t find a tube to fix a flat) and the hazards of off-Island biking. By the time they get around to the question of whether there is still a bike shop in Mattituck, I stop barking and assume a very intimidating guard-dog position – still as the Sphinx of Giza, ears erect, ready to sound the alarm again if the situation deteriorates. This is called community policing, and it is my vocation.

2 p.m. Massage. I awaken from the second of my three afternoon naps, sidle up to one of my kennel-mates, and place my front paw on the keyboard of her laptop, signaling to her that it is time for my massage. She seems to be in the middle of something, so she tries to type around my paw but after I’ve gently replaced it in the middle of the keyboard, she realizes delay is futile and scratches all around my neck and shoulders, under the harness and collar and rubbing my very itchy ears. Heaven!

4:45 p.m. Kibble and a long walk. After my evening bowl of chicken, lamb and rice kibble, my human clips herself to me again, and I take her out for another long walk. My other kennelmate, (man-who-often-smells-like-roasted chicken) joins us. Every day we find treasures! I lead them on an important mission to see what the tide has washed up and look for half-eaten fish that the osprey has dropped. Today my most exciting find was a porgy dropped in Father Peter’s yard. She allowed me to eat most of it! She said I could “clean up the yard” in atonement for past sins, but I deny all wrongdoing.

7 p.m. Helping with dinner. It’s my responsibility to provide companionship and moral support when there is serious cooking going on. I sit quietly, composed and ladylike, except when there is butter or cheese on the kitchen counter. Then I lunge for it, and take it into the living room where I can eat it without upsetting them.

8:30 p.m. Clean up, and a bone of my own. Most nights there is enough chicken, or spaghetti sauce, clinging to the plates for me to have a nice snack while helping load the dishwasher. On this night, due to an obvious lack of planning, the pickings are slim, so I am offered (and accept) an enormous raw marrow bone to keep me busy while they watch the baseball game.  The Yankees win!

Three decades of passages: Capt. Roni King makes final voyage on South Ferry

Capt. Roni King and South Ferry President Cliff Clark.(Credit: Charity Robey photos)




On Friday, April 30, Capt. Roni King walked off the ferry at the end of her last shift to congratulations from family, friends and a crew of current and former captains.

 

 

 

 

The ride was short and sweet from North Haven to Shelter Island, but the sight of Mabel’s Creek coming in to the dock was as glorious as ever, with a strong wind blowing, and the water all whitecaps and rolling waves.

It was the last crossing for a veteran captain after 31 years on the water.

Friday, April 30, South Ferry Capt. Roni King walked off the boat at the end of her last shift to congratulations from family, friends and a crew of current and former captains, retiring from the company.

Capt. King reported that her last day on the job was pretty typical. On one crossing a man holding a camera stepped onto the deck as the boat heaved.  Capt. King, who was at the wheel, asked him to please stand to the side.

Although she asked three times and used the loudspeaker, he ignored the request, protesting that he had never had to follow such a rule in the 10 years he’d been taking the ferry. The captain, trying to prevent an accident, said afterward, “It’s great that people have this sense of safety on the ferry, but really, I asked three times.”

Three decades of rain, cold, and the occasional obstinate passenger was always more than balanced out by the pleasure of working in the natural world. Capt. King said she will never forget, “that first blush of autumn in the trees and the first green of early spring in the marsh around Mabel’s Creek.”

Glenn Waddington was one of the retired captains standing by on Friday to congratulate her as she stepped off the ferry, and into retirement. With 42 years of service to South Ferry, Capt. Waddington worked with Capt. King from the very beginning. “I trained her, and she learned quickly,” he said. “When she was on your team, you knew she was going to do it right.”

Phil Dunne, a 40-year veteran of the ferry and Joe Clark, retired chief engineer, joined the line-up of nautical excellence on hand to thank Capt. King for her service. Jason Green, with 40 years on South Ferry was there with his wife, Louise Tuthill Green. “Roni was a pleasure to work with,” he said, while Louise added by way of clarification, “she was fun to work with.” 

The captain first came to Shelter Island from Brooklyn with her partner, Pat King, who had been visiting Shelter Island for years. Her work as a caterer and chef meant she spent a lot of time in windowless kitchens. “She had been working in restaurant kitchens, like caves,” Pat said. “I said how would you like to work outdoors instead?  Maybe on the ferry?  That made sense to her.”

Shortly after she got the job, Capt. King noticed that a man came down almost every day to get the clams, oysters and mussels he gathered in a basket and left hanging off the dock in the water so they would be fresh for dinner. It was Bill Clark, Cliff Clark’s elderly father, and the idea of a lifetime of seafood gathered in your backyard impressed her deeply.

She called Pat to tell her about it and said, “I think I’m going to work here for a while.” 

Oyster growers face a new challenge

 

 

Ben Gonzalez of Southold Bay Oysters holds a cage of farmed oysters. (Credit: Charity Robey)

FOR SOME PEOPLE on the East End, speaking out against oyster farming is like opposing the adoption of rescue puppies. But at a series of public hearings before the Suffolk County Legislature this winter, yacht clubs, boaters and owners of waterfront property did just that. 

On March 2, the Suffolk County Legislature approved the continuation of the county’s 10-year-old aquaculture lease program (known as SCALP) with a boatload of amendments, including a 43% reduction in the underwater acreage that can be leased and new fees for growers. Legislator Bridget Fleming (D-Southampton) called it a good compromise that both sides were unhappy.

SCALP allows small aquaculture growers to lease public underwater land under a program administered by the county.

 

Although stakeholders for and against the changes say they are glad the program will continue, some boaters are still concerned about future navigational markers for underwater farms, such as buoys, and oyster growers and environmentalists fear the chilling effects of changes to a 10-year old program with an unblemished record of safety.

At public hearings in December and February this year, Matt Ketcham, owner of Peconic Gold Oysters, spoke in defense of the program that helped him establish his farm. “If you say you support aquaculture but you’re opposed to buoys, opposed to gear? Well, you are not a supporter.”

Mr. Ketcham has a growing oyster farm and a growing family. Already an experienced bayman when he started Peconic Gold Oysters on county-leased bay bottom in 2013, he built it from a one-man operation into a business of 1 million oysters annually with several employees. In 2020 the pandemic limited his restaurant business, but he said increased farm stand sales and shucking events made up for it. The birth of his son has him thinking of the future. “Maybe one day he’ll have the option of taking this business over,” Mr. Ketcham said.

Boat owners, however, say the markers that go with underwater farming do pose a hazard. 

Commodore Lisa Reich said on behalf of 300 members of the Shelter Island Yacht club that although some lease sites had been removed from the program, it was not enough. 

“Our concerns are not being taken seriously,” she said. “Floating gear creates navigational conflicts, and so much potential for damage.” 

And although she voiced support for the oyster aquaculture program, Mary Dorman of Orient said, “The oyster farms do present a navigational hazard. Both sides should work together to decide where the farms should be and what gear can be utilized.”

Dave Daly grew up sailing in Southold Bay, the same waters where he now farms oysters. “It was frustrating to see oyster farms under attack from a small group of recreational sailors who do not want to share the bays,” he said.

Eight years ago, Mr. Daly and his partner, Ben Gonzalez, were looking to start a new business, something that would allow them to make a living on the North Fork they both love. They considered the wine business, but after taking the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Suffolk Project in Aquaculture Training, known as SPAT — through which most North Fork oyster farmers were trained — they applied for a lease on a parcel of underwater property.

An oyster farm requires seed (fingernail-sized oysters) and underwater bay bottom to get started. It takes a few years to grow an oyster big enough to sell, and as they grow they are aquatic Roombas, filtering 50 gallons of bay water per oyster per day, enough to clean the entire water column of a farm site and removing nitrates from bay water more effectively than state-of-the-art sanitation systems.

When Stefanie Bassett and her partner, Elizabeth Peeples, decided to go into oyster farming, they initially thought they would farm in Rhode Island, where aquaculture is a more common and accepted part of coastal living. But when an existing farm in Gardiners Bay near Shelter Island became available, they bought it and now grow their Little Ram Oysters within sight of two Shelter Island beaches. “We are grateful to be in Southold, and we love living on the North Fork,” said Ms. Bassett. “We just didn’t expect to be a state that was so far behind.”

The attack on the lease program was tough to take, especially in a year that brought them reduced sales due to the pandemic and a new baby, Finn. “We love the water just as much as they do. The attack is on us trying to make a living,” she said.

Until the 1950s, New York was the biggest oyster-growing state in the country, producing some of the finest oysters in the world. In 1950, 1.2 million bushels of oysters were taken from New York waters, but by 2012 the harvest was around 34,000 bushels. The Long Island Sound Study conducted by the federal Environmental Protection Agency with New York and Connecticut found that New York oyster landings increased in the first years of Suffolk County’s lease program, in part due to increased aquaculture production.

Since Karen Rivara at the Peconic Land Trust’s Shellfisher Preserve raises most of the seed oysters used by local growers, she knows the status of oyster farming in New York relative to neighboring states.

“My average order per grower in Rhode Island, New Jersey and Connecticut is a million seed oysters; in New York, it’s 200,0000.” Ms. Rivara worries that reductions to the leasing program will keep New York aquaculture from reaching its potential. 

She knew of no boater or homeowner complaint about the SCALP program until 2019, when a yacht club in Amagansett sued the county for granting a lease to an oyster farm they felt was too close. The suit was later dropped, but representatives of the yacht club continued to speak against the program at SCALP public hearings.

“It created this atmosphere of contention, put a cloud over the 10-year review process,” said Ms. Rivara. “I don’t think you are going to see the number of new growers that you saw in the first 10 years. It was hard before; it’s even harder now.”

Arthur Skelskie is both a recreational boater and oyster farmer, who got his training in the SPAT program and cultivates oysters off the dock in back of his waterfront home in Cutch-ogue. He’s seen an increase in buoys from oyster farms over the past decade.

“I understand why it has become an issue,” he said. “There hasn’t been anything that has ever challenged boaters’ primacy on the waters. People don’t like change, don’t like to think, ‘I’ve got to be careful, there’s an oyster farm ahead.’ Homeowners are nervous about a pristine view of the water, but if people want sustainable seafood there have to be accommodations.”

41 Years at the Ram's Head Inn

The Ram’s Head Inn in the 1980s, the first decade under Ekland ownership. (Courtesy Photo)

IN 1979, SIX weeks after buying the Ram’s Head Inn, James and Linda Eklund opened for the season, welcoming a wave of guests eager to see what the new owners had done with the place.  

The dining room was spruced up. Elegant Bentwood chairs with cane seats, hand-me-downs from the Pridwin, had been freshly re-caned. 

“Guests started to fall through them,” Linda Eklund remembered. “When the first chair went, I was horrified. On the second, I started to wonder.”  

By the sixth or seventh chair, everyone in the dining room applauded as yet another diner held up a busted chair. “We just kept giving them new chairs,” James Eklund said. “The pile of chairs behind the front desk was pretty high.”

From the very beginning, making the Ram’s Head Inn work wasn’t easy. When Joan Covey built it in 1929, she chose a site on a remote island that was only accessible by driving across another island, and the one road to the Inn was sometimes claimed by the sea. By the time she opened the doors for guests, the U.S. economy was in shambles. But her bet paid off, and by the time the Bennett family bought the Inn in the 1940s, the Ram’s Head had a permanent place in the life of Shelter Island and a firm-enough financial footing to keep operating as an Inn.

First impressions

Linda Eklund first visited the Ram’s Head with her grandparents in the 1960s, and later rented one of the third-floor rooms for five dollars a week while working summers at the country club. James’ family had a long history on Shelter Island as well. She and James met in their Silver Beach neighborhood, married in 1975, and opened a wine and cheese shop in the Heights. In 1979, (before Facebook and email) Linda heard the Ram’s Head might be on the market, and immediately wrote to John Bennett, who wrote right back. A week later, they had a deal. With no prior hotel experience, Linda and James Eklund purchased a 50-year-old inn with 17 rooms on 4.37 acres six weeks before the start of the season. 

The building was beginning to need some work, and although James wouldn’t start his construction company until 1984, he knew what to do. They called in their families. “The kitchen was a disaster,” James recalled. “My father, who started cleaning in there, found a tray of baked potatoes still in the oven.”

The Eklund’s give some of the credit for their successful relaunch of the Inn to their outstanding chefs, especially Ray Bradley, who came in 1981 and then returned in 1985.

The food Chef Bradley created at the Ram’s Head was spectacular by all accounts. He developed a number of “Harvest Menus” that relied on local ingredients and listed the sources at a time when most diners never gave a thought to where their scallops came from. The Ram’s Head began to develop a reputation for fine dining that extended beyond Long Island.

The word gets out

Linda and James were on a flight from England to Italy in 1985 when James, who was wearing a Ram’s Head Inn sweatshirt, was approached by a passenger who asked if he worked there, and declared it his favorite place. In 1986, when the phone rang at 3 a.m. on a February morning with a person on the other end inquiring about a reservation, Linda found out that New York Magazine had just done a cover story featuring the Inn, and its “impressive kitchen.” Reservations surged again. 

In the nine years that John Barton, an instructor at the Culinary Institute of New England, was chef at the Ram’s Head, he proved himself to be an organizational wiz, redesigning the kitchen procedures and layouts, and putting in place systems that are still functioning at the Inn today. Bill Yosses, who later served as pastry chef for the Obamas, worked at the Ram’s Head first. The Inn’s current chef, Joe Smith, started in the kitchen as a teenager working with John Barton. He came back as sous chef, and returned six years ago as head chef.

All in the family

From the beginning, the Eklund’s have made family a part of the Inn. In the first years, they lived on the third floor with the chef and their baby, Jonathan. Later Elizabeth and Andrew came along and over the years began working as waiters and busing tables. Elizabeth answered phones and handed out flowers on Mother’s Day. James’s sister Jenifer Maxson greeted and seated dinner guests, and her daughter Karina worked alongside nieces and nephews from both sides of the family as well as a staff of unrelated but dedicated workers who came back every year, some for decades. All family events, including christenings, weddings and holidays were celebrated at the Inn.

The rest of the Island celebrated their events at the Ram’s Head too. A frequent location for the prom, annual site of the school’s Honor Society luncheon, the Gift of Life benefit, State of the Town luncheon, as well as birthdays, anniversaries, and weddings. “The Ram’s Head is part of Shelter Island,” Linda said. “We always wanted it to be responsive to the needs of the community.”

Changing with the times

Over the years the Eklunds brought the old Inn into the modern age. Guest rooms on the second floor featured louvered doors to improve air circulation in the days before air conditioning. Linda said, “They were charming except you could sometimes hear sounds from the rooms in the hallway, and the Health Department made us seal them since they were in violation of the Fire Code.”  

Once, before the doors were sealed, Linda heard a guest’s dog barking from one of the upstairs rooms, accompanied by what sounded like yelling. “I ran up the stairs, but as soon as I heard the ‘yelling’ was rhythmic, I ran back down.”  

It turned out that the lusty couple had been enjoying each other’s company so enthusiastically, that their dog started barking and alerted the whole Inn.

Like all old houses, the Inn needed consistent and continual repair and renovation over the years. “Water has been our nemesis,” James said. One year after they had replaced the plumbing on the third floor, they were getting ready for a 150-person wedding, when water began pouring from the ceiling on the main floor from a leak in the newly-installed third floor plumbing. Then the ceiling fell in.

On another occasion, a large wedding took place as the weather got worse and worse. The causeway flooded, and when the wedding was over, no one could leave. The Inn didn’t have enough rooms for most of the drunken party, who also needed to be fed and entertained. The staff struggled to keep order. At one-point James found a group of unattended kids drawing on the furniture with magic markers.

History made at the Ram’s Head

In 1947, 25 of the best minds in physics met at the Ram’s Head over three days in June, in an historic conference attended by Linus Pauling, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Richard Feynman, among others. According the American Physics Society, discussions at the conference provided vital stimulus to the field of quantum mechanics theory. A second conference held in 1983 at the Ram’s Head brought physics luminaries together again, this time including Steven Hawking.

Ray Williamson, science teacher at the Shelter Island School brought the physics students to the Inn meet the scientists. Linda asked the spouses of some of the participants if they usually came along for conferences. “They said they had to,” she said. “These scientists think on such a level that operating a toaster oven is difficult for them.”

Passing the torch

Last year, as the pandemic worsened, the Eklunds prepared themselves for a terrible season, but as it turned out, they were one of the few places on Shelter Island that didn’t have to shut down. 

“Last summer we went from thinking this was the worst thing that could happen to us to the best thing,” Linda said.  

The Adirondack chairs on the lawn became an enormous dining room, where people took takeout food and drinks from the Inn. “We had the whole family here, including our son from Brooklyn,” she said. “All of our kids, all of our grandkids.” 

The couple said they didn’t know it would end this way. After several attempts to sell over the past 20 years, this winter, James and Linda were approached by a buyer, Aandrea Carter, who wanted to run the Ram’s Head as an inn.  

“This buyer had lots of great ideas and the wherewithal to make them happen,” James said. “And we want to spend time with our grandkids at the Rams Head without the responsibility for what’s going on there.”  

They both feel good about Ms. Carter, and about passing the torch. “We’ve been very lucky,” said James. “There have been ups and downs but the only things I remember are the good things.” 

A houseplant destined for greatness

My 50-year old dracaena on May 13, 2020, and one year later. (Credit: Charity Robey

ON MARCH 13, 2020, I left a much-loved 50-year old houseplant standing near the bedroom window of my New York apartment and didn’t return for two months.

I left in a hurry, and my plant, which was used to a weekly watering, went dry because I was unwilling to go back into the city during the first months of the pandemic.

As I was leaving, I remember thinking panicky thoughts; that the five-foot tall dracaena wouldn’t fit in the car, that this houseplant had been in my life much longer than my husband, that I should have repotted it a year ago.

Over the next few weeks I imagined my old friend wasting away because of my carelessness. I sent thoughts and prayers. None of it helped, but the plant didn’t hold anything against me.

Instead, a year after this near-death experience, it bloomed for the first time ever.

I was in elementary school when I assembled enough allowance money to buy the plant for my first bedroom-of-my-own. The store called it a corn plant, and since I had already developed a serious mania for popcorn, the name sounded promising to me.

My family had just moved to Chapel Hill, N.C., and our new home had a slightly damp, partially-finished basement with indoor/outdoor carpet in an unfortunate pattern of burnt sienna, orange and yellow squares guaranteed not to show soil.

My sister Ellen and I were assigned the two basement bedrooms, adjacent to the room with a roaring furnace and a hot water heater.  These were the carefree times before smoke and CO detectors, and we were just thrilled not to have to share a room anymore.

In those days, the plant was only about a foot tall, so I put it near the window on a bookcase (painted purple to match my floral bedspread) and in low light it started putting out long strappy leaves with a light, variegated stripe down the middle of every one. It seemed happy.

The oldest potted plant alive is a palm-tree-like Eastern Cape cycad that has been growing at Kew Gardens in England for over 240 years, roughly the same age as the United States. According to industry data, houseplants live an average of 2-5 years, but like the cycad of Kew, my plant was destined for greatness, and would preside over a declaration of independence — mine.

Independence was declared when the dracaena accompanied me to my freshman dorm, then to the dim basement of an off-campus apartment complex, and then, at 10-years-old, to a “garden apartment” along I-395 in Alexandria, Va. None of these places had enough sunlight to sprout a radish seed, but the plant didn’t seem to mind, adding leaves and growing steadily taller on the same spindly trunk.

In May 1986 I went to China and my dracaena spent an entire month on its own. Before leaving, I inserted one end of cotton string into the earth surrounding the plant, and the other end in a large container of water, thereby allowing the water to pass slowly through the string and moisten the soil. This, I later learned, is called “wicking,” and it worked.

When I got back from China, the plant was the only thing in the apartment in good shape, since there had been some kind of electrical malfunction in the bedroom wall, resulting in a burned smell, a large hole, broken glass and general mayhem.

After that, I used the wicking technique to keep my plant alive anytime I was away for more than a week, especially after I moved the corn plant into my first office, a former ante-room to a corner office, just large enough for a desk and a bookcase, but facing south with a view of the Empire State Building.

I told my plant that we had hit the big time, and it responded by getting sunburned from the sudden exposure to light.

By then, I was so fond of my almost-20-year old dracaena that I didn’t judge its looks, until a senior editor stuck her head in my office and remarked that my plant, “looked like something out of Dr. Seuss.”

A few days later, I took it home in a cab.

And home was where it stayed for the next 30 years, requiring a new pot occasionally and a pitcher of water every week, growing a little every year, and looking increasingly shaggy, until the day last March when I abandoned it. 

Two months later, I walked into the apartment and saw what I had done. The soil around the roots was hard as brick. The leaves that remained made crackling sounds.

I lugged it to the bathtub, soaked it, and over the next few weeks kept it moist using the wicking method until I got it into the car on its side with the rear seats folded down and drove it to Shelter Island like I was transporting a rocket on a flatbed to Cape Canaveral for lift off.

Which it did.

The blossoms burst in mid-March from a spike that grew suddenly out of the plant’s crown. Sticky drops of nectar dotted the floor around my gangly dracaena. When the white flowers opened at night they were so fragrant I could smell them in the other end of the house.

Now the floor around the plant is littered with spent blossoms, and there is no more fragrance. I read somewhere that dracaenas typically branch, forming parallel stems after they bloom.

It’s a wonder to me that a plant old enough to avoid early withdrawal penalties on its 401(k) not only survived the upheaval of this awful past year, but thrives, blooms and could soon grow in new directions.

Island Profile: Cristina Cosentino, a farmer looking to put down roots.

Outstanding in her field: Cristina Cosentino at Sylvester Manor Farm. (Credit: Charity Robey)

 

 

Cristina Cosentino is a farm manager who works with her hands as well as her independent heart, so when she found herself mired in Sylvester Manor’s Windmill Field without enough weight over the rear wheels of the truck to get out, she was determined not to call for help.

“Usually when something like this happens, I call Gunnar [Wissemann, Grounds Manager], and he does one thing and then it’s fixed,” she said. “This time, I decided I’m going to get myself out of this.”

Hirotsugu Aoki and his dog Finnegan were a few miles into their usual 7-mile walk when they came upon her and offered a hand. But Cristina wouldn’t let Aoki push, so he had to stand by as she struggled. Finally Tristan Wissemann and Stewart Mackie came and pushed her out of her misery.

“I always have plenty of help in my life, and I struggle with accepting it,” she said. “My mom always says, ‘Just say thank you. Let people help you.’”

To gracefully accept help was one of many lessons Cristina learned growing up on Long Island in a large Italian family. Her father’s grandparents were from Sicily, and her mother immigrated from Italy when she was 13. “They were farmers in Italy, raising hazelnuts, walnuts and grapes,” she said. “We always had a garden. My nonno [grandfather] still makes wine.”

Another lesson was the importance of good food. “My grandmother is an incredible cook. I know everyone says that about Italian women, but she is extraordinary,” Cristina said. From her grandmother she learned her signature dish, a potato gnocchi that always gets requests. “My nonna is from Avellino, so it’s not light fluffy gnocchi, it’s the dense kind and you roll it with your thumb. It holds the sauce.” 

Almost every member of Cristina’s family works with their hands, from her grandmother’s gnocchi-making, to her father, who is a carpenter, and her brother, a successful heavy metal drummer. Cristina started piano in 1st grade, by 4th grade she was playing the cello, and later dabbled with the accordion and percussion instruments. She graduated from Smithtown High School, and went to the University of Delaware to study cello.

In 2012 she completed a masters in Italian Studies from NYU in a program based in Florence, where she lived in the San Frediano neighborhood and studied the Slow Food movement that began in Italy. Her roommates and friends taught her about Italian food and wine, and it was a life-changing experience.

Back in the States, she worked for a year as a wine representative, selling a portfolio of Italian wines to restaurants, but quickly concluded she was not cut out for it. “I like connecting with people, she said. “It energizes me. But the basis of the wine job was, ‘I’m going to try to sell you some wine, and that’s why we’re talking.’”

While working at a farmer’s market, Cristina asked Teddy Bolkas, from Thera Farms in Ronkonkoma, for a job, but based on her size, he was skeptical. “I think the moment when I impressed him was when I found a hookworm in the soil,” she said. “I asked him what it was, and he said it’s bad, and I started pounding it.”

She was hired.

From there she worked with a beekeeper who managed 50 hives across the North Fork, and in 2015 went to farm at Sylvester Manor, laying eyes on Shelter Island for the first time on the day she moved into the Manor house. At the end of the season she was riding a bike down Cobbetts Lane as the maples were turning red and realized she didn’t want to leave. 

She was living on the North Fork when she had dinner with a friend at a restaurant in the city called Wildair. Her friend knew one of the line cooks, and after the meal introduced Cristina to Armond Joseph when he met them at a bar. 

“I thought he was kind of a jerk,” Cristina remembered. “He probably would not have talked to me if he hadn’t made the connection with my vegetables, but he heard me say something about Italy, and being a farmer.”

When they said goodbye, they hugged each other a little too long. “I thought — ‘That’s a nice hug,’” she said. 

Cristina invited Armond to visit her on the North Fork and the next weekend he came out.  They met again in the city, and a month later moved together to Providence, R.I. where Armond had a job. He’s now the chef at Achilles Hill in Brooklyn and commutes between New York and Shelter Island, since Cristina moved back in January of 2020 to become the director of farm operations at the Manor. 

They agreed to get married in the middle of a day in November that didn’t start out well. Cristina was still recovering from an emergency appendectomy at Eastern Long Island Hospital earlier that month. It was the day before Thanksgiving, and there was frenzied activity at the farmstand.

“I was actually having a mental breakdown,” she said. “I was thinking about everything that I had to do and how was I going to get it done. That’s when he asked me, in the middle of my worst behavior. And I said ‘Yes,’ because he must love me to ask in that moment when I was behaving completely unacceptably.”

Her plans for the future center on starting a family, and making the Sylvester Manor farm the best it can be. “I love it here,” she said. “I like the fact that you can only get on and off by boat and that you have to go to the supermarket by a certain time, and if you drive around after 8 p.m. you will be the only car on the road. I want this to be my forever home.”

Lightning round

What do you always have with you? Nothing! Well, now I guess it’s my engagement ring.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? The road to Ram Island, between Big Ram and Little Ram.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island?
Florence, Italy.

What exasperates you? When people don’t empty the sink drain. I like a clean sink.

When was the last time you were afraid? On the operating table before my appendectomy.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island? When the maple trees on
Cobbetts Lane turn red.

Favorite book? ‘The Neapolitan Novels,’
by Elena Ferrante.

Favorite food? Mozzarella di Bufala.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? Anthony Bourdain.

Most respected elected official? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

A jab in the gym

 

IF IT TAKES a village to raise a child, it certainly takes one to raise an immune response in the herd of seniors, school-teachers, front-line workers and other COVID-vulnerable Shelter Islanders.

And boy, am I grateful I got to join the herd last Friday.

On an island with one doctor, one pharmacy, and no urgent care, let alone a hospital, the swift and efficient immunization of about 20% of the population in one day was a miracle.

Persistent and effective town leaders, three days of round-the-clock efforts from Town employees and community volunteers, followed by the crackerjack nursing team from Stonybrook Southampton and Eastern Long Island hospitals pulled it off.

The largest mass-vaccination in Shelter Island history gave 503 Islanders the right to bare their arms to protect the community and themselves.

When the good word came down on Wednesday, the entire community mobilized. Laurie Fanelli and her team at the Senior Center recruited volunteers to help them contact the hundreds of seniors who had been waiting on a list for months, like 94-year old Ann Brunswick.

“It’s about time,” Ms. Brunswick said, “I had an appointment off-Island, but not until late March. I have a friend whose off-Island appointment is not until April. I’m so glad to be vaccinated without a ferry ride and a long drive.”

Ed Shillingburg showed up for his 9:30 a.m. appointment and was met with a public-health-and-safety show of force. “I think there were more uniformed people in one spot on Shelter Island than I’ve even seen before,” he said. “It reminded me of a general election in the days before mail-in ballots, where everyone in town had to show up in person. By the end of the day, everyone must have been wiped out, but when I was there, everyone was bright, and it was a lovely morning.”

Kiki Boucher told me she had been trying since January. “I have friends who went to Plattsburgh. They drove six hours. I tried Walgreens, CVS, my doctors in the city. I tried at 5 a.m., at midnight, I could not get close to it.” 

She sprained her right wrist slipping on the snow a couple of weeks ago, and asked the nurse who vaccinated her in the gym on Friday to use the same arm since it hurts anyway. On Saturday she was still feeling a warm glow of community, and the sore arm was no problem.

When I got the call late Friday afternoon informing me that my number was up, my cheer was so loud it scared the dog. As one of the co-morbidity lottery-winners, there was a shot for me, provided I got over to the school fast.

I stepped into the gym as the last rounds of shots was being administered, and Peggy had the serum in my shoulder before I knew she was holding a needle.

The 15-minute waiting area was a beehive of joyous activity with Althea Mills, chief nursing officer at Stonybrook Southampton Hospital in the center of it. Her close-cropped salt and pepper hair and precise way of expressing herself let me know she was a wartime leader, but the way she sized me up — “Hmm, will this be the one to faint on us?” — was warm and reassuring. The woman was saving lives, so I thanked her for her service.

“We consider ourselves your hospital, and if we can prevent you coming in very sick, then we will do it,” she said. “We see the other side of this, when people come in and they can’t breathe, they are dying, and our hands are up in the air because we’ve tried everything.”

Ms. Mills was quick to point out that the Stonybrook Southampton and Eastern Long Island Hospital team was asked to deploy on Shelter Island by the state, and 500 doses of vaccine were directed here because, “Someone in your community was very active in calling the state and saying, we have a high population of a vulnerable group.’”

She said Shelter Island is the biggest one-day event they have done so far on the East End.

The post-injection waiting area that took up most of the gym floor felt like prom right before the band starts up and they turn down the lights. Relieved and jubilant people chatted and laughed, and I wasn’t surprised to hear somebody say, “Let’s get this party started!”

Supervisor Gerry Siller was all eye smiles (like everyone, he wore a mask) as he described the case that he and his team, including Police Chief Jim Read and Deputy Supervisor Amber Brach-Williams made to state officials that Shelter Island qualified for this extraordinary aid due to the size of our elderly population (a third of us are over 65) and our thin medical infrastructure.

Although we may hate thinking of ourselves as living in a “medical wasteland,” that’s the term state officials use to characterize communities that can’t vaccinate their residents without a point of delivery (POD) event like the one we got.

The morning after her vaccination in the school gym, Ann Brunswick told me she woke up with a song in her heart and the lyrics of an old Rodgers and Hammerstein musical number from Carousel in her head,

“This was a real nice clambake, And we all had a real good time.”

Apparently one of the lesser-known side-effects of the vaccination is a joyful feeling of community, because a lot of other Shelter Islanders who got the jab on Friday felt it, too.

A 19th C Shelter Island gristmill is coming alive

A team assembling at Sylvester Manor’s Dominy windmill Feb. 13 to install the fourth sail. (Credit: Charity Robey)

On Saturday, Feb. 13, a team of 10 people led by a millwright from Saugerties, N.Y. maneuvered an enormous handmade wooden lattice high on a windy hill across a sheet of ice, to install the fourth and final sail on Sylvester Manor’s historic 1810 Dominy windmill.

Onlookers in hats and very sensible footwear took pictures and provided moral support. It was a modern-day barn-raising, a community bringing muscle and craftsmanship together to erect something tall and proud that works for all of us.

Times are tough for windmills. In Texas last week lawmakers blamed frozen ones for the power grid collapse that left millions without heat or light.

South Fork residents are objecting to a cable carrying wind-generated electricity, and the wind turbines that will produce that power. Homeowners fear the towers and blades will be visible from oceanfront homes, and people who fish worry the enormous windmills may pose a navigation risk.

But the reconstruction of the Island’s windmill is a cause for celebration for many residents. 

The leader of the rope-pulling, ladder-climbing, sail-heaving folks working to install the last sail on Shelter Island’s mill was Jim Kricker, a man who has been making a living restoring old mills for 40 years.

He didn’t think birds had much to worry about from this antique gristmill — which will likely operate more infrequently — with much bigger sails, operating at slower speeds and being closer to the ground than the modern wind turbines that produce electricity.

Mills were important community spaces in the 19th Century. If you wanted to make bread, eat hoecakes or feed your livestock, you needed the services of a gristmill.

Wheat was a locally-grown product in the days before preservatives and shelf-stable commodities, and since it would go rancid or be eaten by pests if stored too long, every community needed a local gristmill in the pre-IGA era.

The Dominy mill originally twirled in Southold, but when a fire destroyed Shelter Island’s only mill, the Southold mill was moved and installed in the Center. In 1860, it ground 900 bushels of grain in a year when the population of the Island was about 500.

TEAMWORK

Mr. Kricker brought along a team of fellow millwrights and people with good upper body strength, several of whom were close relations: Amy Boyce, Michael Chrobot, Peter Kricker, Matthew Kricker and Jim Whelan. Gunnar Wisseman, Cristina Cosentino and Steve Searl worked alongside Mr. Kricker’s team to raise the last sail, paying particular attention to the installation procedure, since they may have to take down a sail themselves in the event of a catastrophic wind event.

The mill at Sylvester Manor is a type known as a smock mill because the flaring shapes of the tower and cap resemble a loose dress. Eleven smock mills are still standing on the East End of Long Island, the largest concentration of windmills in the country. The best of them were built by Nathanael Dominy.

Although Mr. Kricker does his restoration work with an eye to local materials, when the Shelter Island mill needed to be replaced, he knew he’d never find a piece of White Oak or Black Locust of the kind that would have been used in the 19th Century.

“Trees straight enough, tall enough and free of knots just don’t exist here anymore,” he said. 

The wood replacement for the shaft is greenheart from Guyana, a durable substitute. Mr. Kricker’s wife, Jean Whelan, will use a sewing machine as well as hand work to make the cloths: cotton canvas covers, similar to traditional boat sails, that cover each sail when the mill is operating. 

The Sylvester Manor mill has a number of features that enhance its functionality. Atop the tower is a rotating cap with the sails attached, which allows the miller to rotate the sails to take advantage of the direction of the wind. There are doors on two sides of the tower so it’s possible to enter and exit through one door if the other is blocked by the turning sails.

The mill stands on high ground, with few trees and no wind-blocking structures nearby. Its location sets it apart from the 10 or so remaining windmills on the East End, most of which still have the internal gears and wheels to transfer power from the sails to the millstones, but are not operational.

HISTORY ALIVE AND TURNING

Records of the building of the mill in Southold in 1810 list the names of craftsmen who were paid to work on it, including Asa Miller, Merry Parsons and Lewis Parsons. “It’s a window onto someone’s personality,” Mr. Kricker said. “How skilled they were, how concerned about the fairness of a curve or a surface finish.”

He estimates he worked on upwards of 50 mills over the years, and it’s no exaggeration to say he’s seen it all when it comes to gristmills. Some of the antique mills are now someone’s home. While restoring a mill that was being lived in, Mr. Kricker saw hand-washables hung to dry from the large wooden gears.

Mills designed by Nathanael Dominy are distinctive in their craftsmanship, he said. “One of the things that endears me to these mills,” he added, “is to see the hand of the people who made them, the fine work that was done over 200 years ago.”

Shelter Island’s Dominy windmill is a link to our past, and its context is food and community, not power. The installation of the sails is an important and visible step in the restoration of the mill.

The next stages include a “tune-up” of the internal system of gears and wheels, sharpening the millstones, and installing the cloths.

This writer is not going to plant wheat yet, but the wheels are turning.