Charity Robey

Where to cut your own Christmas tree on the North Fork

Ed Dart with his Firs; a Douglas on the left and a Fraser on the right. (Credit: Charity Robey)

Published in the Suffolk Times/ Northforker holiday supplement on November 25, 2015

Does it make sense to drive to a rural area, cut down a seven-foot tree and put it in your living room for several weeks? No, it does not. But Christmas was never about being sensible. Even for people who think nothing of apple- or strawberry-picking, the experience of going out in a field to bring back a freshly cut tree is a peculiar delight.

And speaking of rational acts, who in their right mind would tie up acres of valuable Long Island real estate growing a crop that requires fertilization, pest control, pruning and eight to 10 years of growing before it can be harvested?

On the North Fork of Long Island, there are still a handful of farms, all family-owned, where generations of tree buyers and tree growers have participated in this illogical, magical Christmas tradition and made it an annual part of their holiday.

Riverhead resident Tony Yarusso, who is blessed with a beard as white as snow, has spent the past seven holiday seasons as Santa Claus, including the last three at Santa’s Christmas Tree Farm on Main Road in Cutchogue. He is a close observer of what a visit to a cut-your-own tree farm means to a family with small children.

“These places are truly working farms,” he said. “The experience of cutting your own tree is to learn how the trees grow. The trees are not leaning against a house with a row of lights on them. These are real ones in the ground.”

There are many easier and less expensive ways to get a Christmas tree than to cut one down. The Home Depot typically sells natural trees at prices that can be half the price of a field tree. But Joe Shipman, owner of Shamrock Christmas Tree Farm in Mattituck, said the people who come to the 20 acres he’s been farming since 1989 to pick out one of his beautiful Douglas firs are not just looking for a tree transaction.

“They want to take time at Christmas for a family experience,” he said.

Shipman plants trees in blocks, opening one block every year for cutting. He described this year’s designated block as unusually good, with many “perfect” trees.

“Everybody’s theory of the perfect tree is so different,” he said, “Color, shape, branching and symmetry, those are what I think make the perfect tree.”

Santa’s Christmas Tree Farm has been in the Edson family since the 1960s and has sold Christmas trees since 1988. At 30 acres, it’s one of the larger North Fork Christmas tree farms. Started by Lewis Edson, who passed away in 2013, the farm is now managed by his children, Lisa and Evans Edson. Open year round, Santa’s offers the largest variety of trees of any North Fork farm; concolor firs and blue spruce are planted along with Douglas fir.

Zuhoski’s on Oregon Road in Cutchogue has been a family farm for three generations, but it wasn’t until 1996 that Steven and David Zuhoski began to convert the farm from growing potatoes to Christmas trees. They have established a strong following over the years.

“We get a lot of repeat customers, especially from Massapequa,” Steven Zuhoski said. Like Shipman at Shamrock, the Zuhoskis plant mostly Douglas fir.

The oldest of the North Fork Christmas tree farms is Dart’s, owned and operated by Ed Dart. Dart is the grandson of George Fletcher Downs and the third generation of his family to farm on Main Bayview Road in Southold.

With only about eight acres of Christmas trees, Dart manages his crop differently from the other North Fork farms. Instead of planting trees of the same age in blocks of land, he interplants, putting seedlings in the spaces left by trees that have been cut.

“It takes a long time. A tree seed doesn’t grow like a corn seed,” he said. “So there are trees of different sizes.”

Unlike other farms that grow mainly Douglas fir, Dart grows primarily Fraser firs, which are tricky to grow, but are preferred by many people because they are easier to decorate. He sells all trees on a first come, first served basis, with no pre-tagging allowed.

“If there is a way to do something, the Dart family finds the most expensive, time-consuming and labor intensive way to do it,” said Dart. “But I think people appreciate that.”

Christmas tree buyers often arrive with their own handsaws, but oftentimes, they are not completely successful, so all of the tree farms have staff on hand to help.

If Mattituck were the North Pole, Joe Shipman would have to call the guys who assist customers at Shamrock Christmas Tree Farm elves. Shipman retains this vital staff by providing breakfast, lunch and an after-work “get-together” in the barn for the guys who cut, shake and bale the trees and tie them onto the customers’ cars — essentially the same crew for most of the 19 years he has sold trees.

“They won’t leave,” he said.

Those who come to a farm for a field tree year after year have already decided to get a natural tree with a shape that is not necessarily perfectly conical. For those with that aesthetic, artificial trees were invented.

“Often, the Christmas trees families like the best are the craziest looking ones in the field,” said Dart. “You’ll always remember that Christmas when the tree was too big for the living room, or the one that was all flat on the back.”

Here where to cut your own on the North Fork:

Dart’s Christmas Tree Farm
2355 Main Bayview Road, Southold, NY
631-765-4148.
Open daily after Thanksgiving, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. All field-cut trees are $99.

Santa’s Christmas Tree Farm
30105 Main Road, Cutchogue, NY
631-734-8641
Open daily 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Field-cut trees are $75 up to 6 feet, plus $10 for each additional foot.

Shamrock Christmas Tree Farm
20685 Main Road, Mattituck, NY
631-298-4619
Open daily after Thanksgiving, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. All field-cut trees are $75.

Verderber’s Landscape Nursery & Garden Center
459 Main Road, Mattituck, NY
631-722-4388
Open Tuesday through Saturday,  8 a.m. through 5 p.m., Sundays, 8 a.m. through 4 a.m.

Zuhoski Farms
11825 Oregon Road, Cutchogue, NY
631-734-5036
Open Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m. until dark. All field-cut trees are $65.

Off the fork: Holiday pies, let the games begin | Shelter Island Reporter

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO| Sweet potato pie made by playing with my food.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on November  24, 2015

For years, my pie crusts have been edible but unspectacular. So this fall, I attended a baking conference in Vermont where I discovered that the best way to get a crispy and buttery crust with long flakes is to play with your food.

The Zen master of pie at the baking conference was Joanne Chang, chef and owner of the Flour Café/Bakeries in Boston. Before a rapt audience of obsessive bakers, she demonstrated the technique.

She dumped a barely mixed glob of flour, butter, egg yolks and milk into the middle of a butcher block table, gathered it into a mound that resembled the coarse mulch pile at the Recycling Center and mashed the heel of her hand down through the dough repeatedly.

If you saw a group of toddlers doing this, you’d call it art class. Chang calls it “going down the mountain” and told us the actual French culinary term is fraisage. For the kind of people who enjoy kneading bread and beating egg whites, it’s a lot of fun.

The result of all this fraisage is dough with streaks of smashed butter sandwiched between layers of flour. Once it’s rolled out and baked, the resulting crust is not only crisp, but generally doesn’t allow any filling leaks, since the butter is not in lumps that can melt in the oven, creating a hole.

When crust-making is this entertaining, only the most delightful pie filling will do. This sweet potato filling is made from a classic recipe my mother has used since the 60s when it first appeared in “Princess Pamela’s Soul Food Cookbook.”

To Mom, Princess Pamela and Joanne Chang, thank you, thank you and thank you.

Princess Pamela’s Sweet Potato Pie
with Joanne Chang’s Pie Crust

The crust:
1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (preferably King Arthur)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces
2 egg yolks
3 tablespoons cold milk

The filling:
2 medium sweet potatoes, boiled, peeled and mashed
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs, beaten
1/4 cup melted butter
3/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg
1 tablespoon flour

Mix the flour, sugar and salt in a stand-mixer with the paddle attachment.
Add 12 pieces of butter all at once and paddle slowly until the mixture just holds together when you grab a handful and there are still lumps of butter.

Mix the yolks and milk and add all at once to the butter/flour mixture. Mix very briefly, just until it comes together into a shaggy mess.

Dump the mixture out onto the table and gather it into a tight mound. Using the palm of your hand, smear the dough from the top down the side of the mound to the table, piece by piece, until the butter chunks are smeared into the dough and the whole thing comes together.

Press the dough into a flattened disk about 8 inches in diameter and 1 inch tall and cover it tightly in plastic wrap.

Refrigerate for several hours (or you can freeze it for several weeks).

Roll the dough out into a 10-inch circle to line a 9-inch pie pan.

Refrigerate the crust in the pan for at least 30 minutes.

Line the crust with a coffee filter or parchment, held down with dried beans or pie weights, and blind-bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees, until the edges are very pale brown.

Remove the crust from the oven and increase the oven temperature to 400 degrees.

Remove the pie weights and coffee filter.

Mix all filling ingredients and pour into the uncooled pie shell.

Bake until the crust is well browned and the filling is cooked around the edges and slightly jiggly in the center, about 35 minutes.

Island Profile. Linda Zavatto, angel of the 5K

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | Over the years, Linda Zavatto has been one of the most productive fundraisers for the Shelter Island 5K Run/Walk dedicated to women’s health.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on October 15, 2015

Linda Zavatto has written a letter every fall for the past 13 years and sent it to virtually everyone she knows.

At its heart, the letter is about her mother, Virginia Zavatto, who died of breast cancer 25 years ago when she was only 60.

Unafraid to ask tough questions, over the years Linda has become really good at asking this one: “Will you help me honor my mother and all the other brave women like her with your support?”

Organized, outgoing and resourceful, Linda raises funds for the Shelter Island 5K Run/Walk to benefit the Coalition for Women’s Cancers at Southampton Hospital, the North Fork Breast Health Coalition and Lucia’s Angels, three local organizations that provide services and support for families affected by breast cancer.

She has done this work for 13 years, and for 11 of those years she has been the biggest single 5K fundraiser. One year she was responsible for one-third of the total donations.

This Saturday, the 16th annual running of the race kicks off at 11 a.m. at Crescent Beach. Runners and walkers can register online at shelterislandrun.com/5K or in person on Saturday.

Linda has developed a considerable network for her fundraising efforts over the past two and a half decades on Shelter Island, among customers of her house cleaning and property management business as well as family and friends.

“I’m not afraid to solicit them,” she said. “At the event two years ago, a woman happened to see how much I had raised for the 5K and said, ‘You raised all this money yourself? How come you didn’t ask me?’”

When Linda requested a donation the following year, the woman actually thanked her for remembering to ask.

She was a high school student in Nassau County in 1970 when her father decided to move the family to the Island. He had built a summer home here in 1967 and decided it was a more wholesome place to raise his four daughters than East Rockaway, where she grew up.

Linda’s interests at the time included pizza and shopping; neither was available in their new home and she was not happy to leave her known world behind. “The marks of my fingernails are still embedded in Sunrise Highway,” she said.

Linda’s the oldest of her three sisters. Laura was 13 when they moved, followed by seven-year-old Janet, and the baby, Amy, who was three months old. Shortly after they arrived on the Island, Linda informed their father, “You moved us to where the national pastime is driving around drinking beer.”

Her description of the Island in 1970 is familiar to many who lived here then, a time when every high school student knew the house in Silver Beach where an opportunistic local guy sold beer out of his garage with no questions asked.

“He must have made a small fortune,” she said. “I think he sold cigarettes, too.”

After a few months, she started to settle in, but continued to be amazed by the quirky practices of the rural Island. The father of a friend owned a gas station, along with acres of land in back of the store, laced with trails where kids — licensed or not — could drive around in old cars. “Some of the cars didn’t go into reverse,” she said. “So if you ran into a tree, you couldn’t back up.”

Her father had built a new business on the Island, West Neck Market, and had developed a reputation for high-quality food made on the premises. But after her high school graduation, Linda didn’t want to stay on the Island for long, travelling to San Diego, Key Largo and a three-year stint in Santa Cruz, California, working a variety of waitress and clerical jobs, and occasionally taking college classes.

“I kept trying school,” she said. “I’d take a few classes and say, ‘OK, that was fine.’”
In 1984, she decided to move back East and found an apartment in East Rockaway, about a block from where she grew up. She began working for the Barbizon Agency on a Winston-Salem cigarette promotion that involved wearing a satin jacket, holding trays of cigarettes and giving away samples with a male partner, who was there not only to hand out coupons but also for protection on the mean city streets of the mid-1980s.

“That’s how I learned my way around Manhattan,” she said.

It was during this time that her mother, whose friends called her Ginny, found a lump in her breast just a few months after a normal mammogram. After a mastectomy and therapy, Linda says she and her sisters naively believed their mother would recover.

There was little discussion of her condition or prognosis even in the family, as if her mother’s illness was a shameful secret. It wasn’t until a few months before her mother died that Linda and her sisters realized the cancer had spread and her time was limited.

“I just wasn’t equipped, I was ignorant of what was going on,” she said. “The difficult part was when I realized my mother was going to die.”

Linda and her youngest sister, Amy, who took a leave of absence from New York University, took care of their mother during her final weeks — just 18 months after her initial diagnosis.

Linda went on to work at Kaprielian O’Leary Advertising in the city as an assistant to the media manager, but when the economy went south in the early 1990s, she was laid off and came back to Shelter Island for the summer to tend bar and consider her options.

“I did a total 360,” she remembered. “I thought in my wildest dreams I would never want to move back here, and neither did anyone in my family. My father said, ‘You hated it here. Why are you moving back?’”

Deciding she wanted to establish herself on the Island, Linda started a cleaning business in 1993 and in 2004 segued to a successful property management business.

Seven years ago she was able to build her own vacation place in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina and relaxes there several times a year.

“I’ve never been married,” Linda said “but I’ve been engaged a few times.”

In her late 40s, Linda decided to get a college degree. A part-time student while working full-time, it took her over five years to complete her A.A. degree at Suffolk County Community College. When she was asked what she planned to do once she got her degree, she said, “I’m going to say I did it. And I did it well.”

In 2002, Linda’s friend, Sue Ryan, raised money for the Shelter Island 5K with the help of matching funds from her employer. Sue persuaded Linda to raise money too, in her mother’s memory.

Knowing that the funds would be used to provide services to families dealing with breast cancer — the kind of services Linda knew all too well were not available to her own mother, “I went around asking people and the first year I raised the second-most money of anyone for the 5K.”

Since then, more than one friend has suggested she consider going into fundraising as a career. “I started doing more and more and reaching out to more and more people,” she said. “Timing is important. I used to send the letter out early. Now I send it the third week in the month.”

The first year Linda raised less than $500; last year it was over $5,600.

“It never hurts to ask,” she said.

For veterans it's all in the Telling

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | Alex Mallory, center, directing Bob Rattcliff, left, and Dave Clark at a rehearsal for ‘The Telling Project,’ to be performed on Shelter Island this weekend.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on November 5, 2015

On Saturday, November 7, a group of local veterans and military family members will stand before an audience and share their raw, sometimes funny and often heartbreaking stories of service and sacrifice in the U.S. military.

Called “The Telling Project,” and just in time for Veterans Day, it’s much more than the sum of its seven parts.

Each individual relates a unique experience, but the power of the theatrical event is the way all the stories become part of a bigger narrative — the reality of military service in our time. Performances on Shelter Island, Sag Harbor and Southampton are produced in partnership with the Telling Project, the Joseph J. Theinert Memorial Fund and the Bob Woodruff Foundation.

The performers are not actors; the words they speak are their own. The script is the work of  the Telling Project writer Max Raynerd, who listened to and recorded each veteran and family member’s story. Working from many hours of recordings, Mr. Raynerd created speaking roles for each cast member.

Combined, they form a 90-minute dramatization that packs an emotional wallop.

Melissa Mundy, who has provided fundraising and event management guidance to the Theinert Memorial Fund since its inception, is the moving force behind bringing the Telling Project to Shelter Island. More than one participant said without Ms. Mundy’s vision, the project would not have gone forward.

The Island participants are Dave Clark, who served with the Marines during the Gulf War, and Dr. Frank Kestler, who served in the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dr. Kestler is the stepfather of the Island’s Army 1st Lieutenant Joseph Theinert, killed in action in Afghanistan in 2010.

Four participants come from Sag Harbor: Bob Rattcliff, a Marine in Vietnam; Chris Stone who served with the Navy in Beirut; Katherine Mitchell, a military parent and Sag Harbor-based therapist who works with veterans; and JoAnn Lyles whose son, Marine Corps Lance Corporal Jordan Christian Haerter, was killed in action in Ramadi, Iraq in 2008.

In 2010, Dr. Kestler was in the Army Reserve when Joey Theinert was killed during combat operations in Southern Afghanistan. Frank decided he would try to go to Kandahar, to the place where Joey was killed, but he didn’t tell his family of his plans. He came home with a bit of earth from the place where Joey died and was going to tell his family the story of his journey. But the loss was too recent and they were not all ready to hear it.

Eventually, Dr. Kestler did tell his story and came to see the telling as part of his and his family’s healing. “Through shared experiences, healing takes place,” Dr. Kestler said. “That’s one way we can honor Joey, by continuing his mission of taking care of his men.”

Like any dramatic performance, the Telling Project requires rehearsals. Unlike most rehearsals, these are sometimes halted by overwhelming emotion, especially when JoAnn Lyles summons the strength to tell the story of her son Jordan’s life and service and what it meant to lose him.

Dave Clark, commander of the Island’s American Legion Mitchell Post, was in Beirut at the time of the terrorist bombing of the American barracks and lost his entire chain of command in the attack.
Chris Stone lives in Sag Harbor and has deep ties to Shelter Island. Working for South Ferry, he’s a familiar face to many Islanders. Mr. Stone served in Beirut at about the same time as Mr. Clark.

For some time after coming home, Mr. Stone said he didn’t think of himself as a veteran. “I came home unscathed,” he said. “I considered a veteran someone who had closer contact with combat than I did, someone who was injured or lost their lives.”

Mr. Stone described the day he met a classmate of his son’s in the grocery store and noticed she was wearing dog tags that had belonged to her brother who had been killed in action in Iraq. He vowed to march in his dress whites in an upcoming parade to honor her brother, an act that gave new meaning to his identity as a veteran and led to his involvement with the Telling Project.

Katherine Mitchell was a drug and alcohol counselor when she began working with a veteran who walked into her office. “It took me about two weeks of talking to him to recognize that if I was going to be of any help to him, I had to get myself educated,” Ms. Mitchell said.

Although Ms. Mitchell’s son was in the Navy, she realized she didn’t understand enough about the transition out of the military. She did some research, found out about the value of peer support and joined the Telling Project.

Originally one of the organizers of the event, Ms. Mitchell became a participant when writer Max Raynerd saw her story as an important way to connect service experiences with the transition to civilian life. “The purpose of this is not therapeutic, “ Ms. Mitchell, “and yet it has enormous therapeutic value.”

Director Alex Mallory came to the Telling Project through the Veteran Artist Program, a nonprofit organization that has produced a number of Telling Project performances. “The amazing thing about this process is the community and the shared experience between them,” Ms. Mallory said.

She noted that this production is different from the others she’s worked on because most of the veterans and family members who were chosen to participate knew each other before they got involved. “These are very difficult experiences,” she said. “Even in the first reading of this script, there was a feeling of empathy in the room. We had to pass a box of tissues around the room.”

Ms. Mallory described a second goal of the Telling Project performances. “We are bringing out these stories not just as individual stories or tragedies, but as part of the landscape of the community,” she said. “Especially in a place like this where people know about Joey. To put it into the larger context of the Island and how much beautiful energy is being put toward his memory.”

It’s impossible not to be moved by the Telling Project, even without a direct personal connection to one of the participants or even to someone in the military. “These are our words,” said Mr. Stone. “First-person experiences.”

Performances of the Telling Project are free and open to the public but require an RSVP at JJTMF.org.

The Saturday, November 7 performance at Perlman Music Program’s Shore Road campus is wait-listed, but seats are still available at performances on November 8 at the Southampton Cultural Center and on November 19 at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

Also planned are two high school assemblies at the Shelter Island School on Friday, November 6 and Pierson in Sag Harbor on November 13.

Scallop season opens with optimism

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | John  and Nancy Kotula, 5:20 a.m. Monday, opening day of the scallop season, at Congdon Creek Dock.

On the first Monday in November, New York baymen take their boats out in the dark to carefully considered scalloping spots.

At sunrise, over the side go the first dredges, seemingly empty as they sink, but always full of hope. This year there is cause for optimism.

Fishermen, restaurants, fish markets and home cooks all over the Island and the North and South forks are preparing to do whatever it takes to get more of those comely mollusks with a band of blue eyes adorning the edges of their shells.

Last fall over 100,000 pounds of Atlantic bay scallops were harvested in Peconic Bay, three times as many as the previous year, and comparable to the bountiful harvests of the early 1980s when scallops were a major factor in the economic health of Long Island.

In the 30 years since, bay scallops have struggled to survive in waters polluted by nitrogen run-off and battered by algal blooms. In the 1970s East End baymen brought in 400,000 to 500,000 pounds of scallops every year. Then came brown tides in 1985 and 1987, followed by the coup de grace of pollution in 1995.

The following year, 53 pounds of scallops were harvested.

Commercial scalloping was gone and with it an important source of income during fall and winter for many Islanders when there was no work caring for the lawns, pools and children of wealthy summer residents. And no scallops to eat.

Although her life’s work revolves around restoring a healthy environment for bay scallops to live, Alison Banco, a scientist at the Peconic Estuary Program, is just as eager to eat them. “There is nothing better than a sweet and buttery plate of Peconic bay scallops,” Ms. Banco said.

There is close to a 100 percent consensus in the scientific community, according to Banco, that the numbers and the health of bay scallops relate directly to water quality.

Equally clear is the fact that the conventional septic and cesspool systems owned by 74 percent of Suffolk County homeowners are to blame. Farms and golf courses produce nitrogen run-off as well, but by far the main source of nitrogen pollution in Peconic Bay is home septic systems.

New York State, Suffolk County and local efforts to approve, build and upgrade to sewage systems that remove nitrogen from wastewater are major steps in the right direction and Shelter Island has provided leadership in these efforts. To demonstrate the technology, 19 homes in Suffolk County have been outfitted with one of the new bay-friendly septic systems.

On the Island, new systems at the American Legion Hall and at Sylvester Manor have received financial support and are underway. At Sylvester Manor Educational Farm, year round residents, seasonal farmers and visitors put a heavy load on the facilities. Strategic Director Sara Gordon said the Manor’s new vegetative treatment system is designed to reduce the nitrogen entering the groundwater, and to study the feasibility of this type of system.

Cornell and Long Island universities scallop-reseeding effort, begun in 2006, has boosted scallop numbers dramatically in Peconic Bay. L.I.U. Professor Stephen Tettelbach, who has conducted research on bay scallops for 35 years and is co-leader of the restoration efforts, has documented improvement in the scallop harvests since reseeding began. The data reveals that reseeding has generated $6 million to fishermen and at least $60 million in related revenues to the region as of the 2014 harvest.

Nate Phillips runs Alice’s Fish Market in Greenport. Just 28, he began scalloping during the bleakest days of the 1990s and sees a huge difference in scallop numbers today. “I feel that [reseeding] has done a huge thing,” Phillips said. “Everything that Cornell does for marine life and habitat does help.”

For people who care about ethical seafood, there is no guilt in eating these rare and exquisite bivalves that live only 24 months and can’t be harvested until they are about to die of old age anyway.

A year ago, the main problem for Charlie Manwaring, owner of Southold Fish Market in Southold, was finding people who knew how to open bay scallops fast enough. In 2014 the bivalves were so abundant it was a struggle to keep up with demand. Unlike oyster shucking, separating a lump of scallop meat the size of a grape from its shell requires more finesse than strength; there hadn’t been many to practice on since 1985.

Charlie’s sister, Candice, who works with him at the fish market, recalled her own training as a child, when scallops were so plentiful that their father put her in a room with a pile of scallops and a knife and said, ‘Don’t come out until you’ve opened them all.’”

The result? A bucket of “petite” scallops. If the haul is as good as the Manwaring’s hope, they will train openers in case there aren’t enough old-timers available who remember how.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
Richie Surozenski leaving early Monday morning from the Congdon Creek Dock.

Island Profile: Steve and Pat- wedded to the water and each other

Pat and Steve Lenox on their deck overlooking Congdon Creek and Steve’s boat. CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on October 29, 2015

Steve Lenox has fished, crabbed and scalloped on the waters around Shelter Island all his life; one reason why his affection for the boat docked at his Congdon Creek home is profound.

So when his 23-year-old grandson Daniel asked to take the boat out by himself to fish, everyone in the family knew it was a big deal when Steve said “yes.” “For me to see him going out of the crick, I felt very, very happy,” Steve said. “That boat has never left without me on it.”

In seven decades on Shelter Island, Steve has worked on fishing boats, owned a landscaping business, spent 28 years on the North Ferry and with his wife Pat, ran one of the best-loved local restaurants on the Island for 13 years. A gifted and compelling storyteller, his attachment to the people, the land and the waters of this Island come through in every tale he tells.

Steve is one of an increasingly rare breed — people who grew up on Shelter Island within a tradition of fishing that was small scale and profitable enough to support a family. “I still scallop,” he said. “That’s part of your heritage.”

In the 1950s and 1960s, 30 bushels of scallops a day was a good haul. “It was a family thing,” Steve said. “We spent time together, we listened to the World Series. Our kids all opened.” But algal blooms fueled by nitrogen pollution of bay waters destroyed the scallop harvest in 1985 and they haven’t yet come back to what they were.

As soon as Steve graduated from Shelter Island High School he went to work for the legendary Frank Mundus, a charter boat captain out of Montauk who fished for sharks from his boat, the Cricket II. At the time, Mundus was a rough and flamboyant sport fisherman, whose personality and shark-fishing practices became the model for Captain Quint in Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel, “Jaws.” Steve worked with Mundus for three years, chumming up enormous sharks for clients to land with rod and reel. If that didn’t work, they harpooned the shark.

“I chummed up this 2,500 pounder,” Steve said. “When we pulled him up, he grabbed a corner of the transom, teeth two inches long, and shook it and he broke two teeth off. The teeth were sunk in the wood.”

Pat grew up in Greenport. One of the guys in her high school class had a band called “Jacob’s Ladder.”

The band was playing the night Pat and Steve’s romance — now in its fifth decade — began. At a recent high school reunion, Pat’s classmate performed again and she told him, “You realize, of course, you are the reason Stevie and I got married.” He said, “Yes, and I wondered if you were ever going to thank me for it.”

When Pat and Steve married in 1969, she was 21 and he was 22. Today their oldest child, Tammy, is 46, their son Stevie is almost 42 and Beth is 36. “I wanted three children, she wanted two,” said Steve. “One day she walked in and said ‘well, you got your wish.’”

Tammy was born on a Friday, the day Steve always mowed the property of Granville Carrel in the Heights. The lawn went unmowed that Friday but when Steve got there the next day, he found a bottle of Seagram’s 7 in the middle of the yard, a gift from Carrel who, when he heard the good news, had gotten over his annoyance at the unruly lawn.

The oldest of their six grandchildren are Tammy’s boys, Daniel Rose and Shane Rose. Stevie’s children are Alex and Matthew, and Beth’s are Nicholas and McKenna. Since the family believed that Steve’s father’s middle name was Alexander, Tammy named her first born Daniel Alexander and Stevie named his son, Alexander. When his father passed away, Steve discovered that the “A” of his father’s middle name stood for Anthony, but the kids’ names were working well and no one felt the need to change them.

Steve’s years working for the North Ferry generated a Grimm’s-worth of ferry tales, many involving Ed Clark. “I worked with Eddie for 28 years,” Steve said. “He knew what I was going to do and I knew what he was going to do.”

Steve told of one winter crossing he and Ed made to Greenport that was so rough the vessel took on over a foot of icy, green water, washing through the gates and onto the deck. Ed had to open the rear gate to allow the water to drain and was nearly washed overboard in the waist-high water rushing off the deck.

Two friends on the Greenport side informed Steve upon landing that both propellers — bow and stern — were clearly visible as the boat rode one wave after another on the crossing. A week later, Steve saw one of the passengers, an elderly woman who lived on the Island and had made the trip six days a week for many years.

“Mrs. Wallace, how was that trip last Saturday?” he asked.

“Last Saturday?” she said. “It wasn’t bad.”

Steve said, “Have you had any other trips that bad?”

“Might have had one,” she said.

For years Pat worked in the Shelter Island School cafeteria and Steve on the ferry, but they both had a second act in mind. “Patty and I knew that Shelter Island needed a breakfast and lunch place,” he said. “We both knew it would work and we did it together.”

Pat had learned the art of the short-order cooking at Drossos in Greenport and Steve had some cooking chops from a stint as second mate on a fishing boat. On land bought from Fred and Dorothy Ogar, they designed and built a new spot with a name that said it all. Pat and Steve’s became a beloved Island institution.

Side by side they worked seven days a week for over a decade, until one day, their daughter Tammy walked in and said,“Hey guys, which day are you going to take off? Because you’re not doing seven days a week anymore.”

They admitted that Tammy had a point. In 2011, they turned the spatula (and Pat’s recipe trove) over to Chris Chobor and Ashley Knight who renamed it The Islander.

“Me and my family,” said Steve. “We’ve had a great life, we are blessed.”

Today, Steve and Pat live on the lovely and peaceful Congdon Creek property that Steve’s father bought in 1956 from a relative. Steve said, “One night when I was about 10, my dad and mom and I were in this crick crabbing and he looked up here and said, ‘Flo, we’re going to buy that piece of property.’” At the time, the property was a cow pasture, Steve said. “So Dad went to see Uncle Harold, and brought him some clams and they bought it.”