Charity Robey

Off the fork: A dessert and a cocktail

Basil leaves steeping in beach plum sorbet, just before it goes into the freezer.

Although I did not pull a 10-hour shift waiting tables even once, or mow and trim overgrown lawns all day, all summer, I’m still ready to raise a glass to the end of the season. It’s called a Shelter Island Sunset, so called because Terry Lucas (library director and gifted cocktail-namer) commented via Facebook that it reminded her of the gorgeous sunsets Shelter Island has enjoyed this summer.

 

In honor of those red displays of nature, I concocted two vivid red treats; the aforementioned cocktail, and a sorbet with local beach plums, tiny, tart plums about the size of grapes that when cooked, cooled and mixed with sugar, basil and lemon juice make an intensely fruity and sweet sorbet.

The red drink is flavored with Campari, an Italian aperitif that’s been around since 1860, and is the primary ingredient in the Negroni — a cocktail guaranteed to make you feel like you’re lingering in a piazza, even if you are actually in a lawn chair adjacent to your driveway.

Until 2007 or so, Campari derived its red color from dyes derived from a crushed insect that was widely used to color food red before manufacturers switched to “artificial” colorings.

Beach plums, which are actually red — without crushed insects or artificial ingredients — are sold at Briermere Fruit Farm in Riverhead and are also available from the Goodale Farms stand at the Havens Farmers Market.

Beach plum sorbet

Makes about five one-scoop servings

1 pint of beach plums

1/2 cup, and 2/3 cup super-fine sugar

Juice of five lemons, strained.

1 cup water 

The grated zest of a lemon

½ cup packed fresh basil leaves

Pinch of salt 

1. Combine the beach plums (including pits), ½ cup sugar and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice in a heavy pot, heat to a simmer, and cook stirring until the plum flesh softens and the pits emerge.

2. Strain the plum mixture into a measuring cup and press the solids. Add additional lemon juice to make one cup. Set aside to cool.

3. Mix 1 cup water, 2/3 cup super-fine sugar and the grated lemon zest. Heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved. 

4. Add the basil leaves and salt and let the leaves steep for 30 minutes.

5. Add the beach plum juice. Chill for at least two hours in the refrigerator.

6. Pour the mixture through a strainer (to remove the basil leaves) into the bucket of an ice cream freezer. 

7. Churn the sorbet until it is smooth and firm, and transfer it to a freezer storage container. If it’s still a little too soft, temper it in the freezer for an hour before serving.

The finished product.

 

Shelter Island Sunset

Makes one 5-ounce drink

1-ounce lemon juice

1-ounce simple syrup

1.5-ounce Campari

1.5-ounce seltzer

Lemon zest

1. Combine and stir the first three ingredients.

2. Add the seltzer and lemon zest and serve.

A Shelter Island Sunset.

 

Edible Long Island Summer 2019

edible long island TELLING THE STORY OF HOW LONG ISLAND EATS • NO. 27 SUMMER 2019 INNO VATION the MAD SCIENTIST MICROGREENS THE NEW FACE OF FARMING AYAHUASCA-ASSISTED HEALING THE TRUTH ABOUT CBD COCKTAILS LET THEM EAT FOOD WASTE Member of Edible Communities issue

via digitaleditions.sheridan.com

My story about how North Fork farmers make food out of each other‘s food waste- the best kind of recycling - is inside, ‘Will the Carbon Cycle be Unbroken?’

Poultry in motion. The history and future of poultry farming on Long Island

Indian Runner ducklings stand adorably upright, aligning their heads, wings and webbed feet in a way that would make them the stars of any yoga class. Fifty of them race in a tight pack around the barn of Abra Morawiec and Chris Pinto, co-owners of Feisty Acres in Southold. Morawiec and Pinto will soon turn these sturdy and comical heritage egg layers out to pasture to do what ducks have been doing on Long Island since the late 19th century: eating and making food.

Left: Indian Runner ducks run about the grass at Feisty Acres in Southold. Top: Feisty Acres co-owner Abra Morawiec feeds the ducks and chickens at her farm in Southold. Bottom: Two-week-old fawn and white Indian Runner ducklings keep warm under heating lamps at Feisty Acres in Southold. Photo credit: Raychel Brightman

Morawiec and Pinto are the new face of East End poultry farming. They raise their ducks, quail, partridge and chickens on pasture, contributing to the sustainable future of a business that has been as central to the culture and economy of Long Island as commercial fishing. But, like fishing, the poultry industry has seen its share of environmental and regulatory challenges and faced periods of boom and bust.

In 1899, Long Island was the growing center of duck farming in the United States, and Eastport was its capital. An advertisement placed in an industry journal that year by duck breeders R.B. and O.H. Dayton in the nearby hamlet of Remsenburg read: “Indian Runner Ducks, wonderfully prolific. Are rapid and easy growers. Handsome in appearance.”

The duck industry on Long Island had taken off after James Palmer, Esq., of Stonington, Connecticut, imported a flock of Chinese ducks known as Pekin in 1872. Soon local farmers started buying breeding stock from him, and the East End of Long Island, blessed with plenty of water for ducks to paddle around in and plenty of fish to feed them, became a paradise for poultry. When customers began to notice a fishy taste in the Long Island eggs and duck meat, growers responded by changing up the feed and charging more for the premium product long before “value-added” became a common marketing term.

In the early part of the 20th century, Hallock’s Atlantic Farm on the Speonk River was the largest duck farm in the world, producing a quarter of a million ducks in one year. Their tag line, “Hallock’s Celery Fed,” was a boast about the flavor and quality that was an important part of their brand until the farm was destroyed in the 1938 hurricane.

By the 1950s, Crescent Duck Farm had become one of the largest duck farms on the East End. This was a time when Long Island provided seven million birds annually, about two-thirds of U.S. duck production overall. Crescent Duck Farm’s owner, 60-year-old Douglas Corwin, comes from a family that first settled in Southold in the 1640s, farming and working mainly as carpenters for a couple of centuries before Corwin’s grandfather decided to raise Pekin ducks in 1908.

The series of federal reforms that culminated in the Clean Water Act began affecting the Long Island poultry business in the late ’50s, and, by 1972, presented significant challenges to the duck industry. Managing the excreta of ducks raised outdoors (ducks generate more waste than most other poultry) became virtually impossible for medium- or small-sized operations. Responding to these changes, the Corwins invested in waste treatment systems to comply with the federal and state regulations, buying up the local feed supplier to ensure their stock of high-quality feed.

“I make a million ducks a year in an industry that makes 80 million,” said Corwin. “I’m a pure niche player in an international business.” He and his sons, Blake and Pierce, both in their 30s, produce duck that is known for its flavor and meatiness. It is a mainstay at high-end restaurants such as the Four Seasons, in Manhattan. “I was at a food show once when David Bouley put his arm around me and said, ‘Thank you.’ ”

When the Long Island Duck Farmers Cooperative in Eastport was voted out of existence in 1987, almost two dozen Long Island duck farms closed, some relocating to Pennsylvania and midwestern states. It was two decades before second-career farmer Chris Browder and his wife, Holly, used land and a barn leased from the Peconic Land Trust to begin raising certified organic chickens for meat and eggs. Influenced by the innovative techniques of Joel Salatin at Polyface Farm in Virginia, Chris had raised a few chickens for meat while working as a farm apprentice at Garden of Eve in Riverhead, and when his chicken meat was snapped up immediately he had an “aha” moment: “I realized that there was no one doing pastured poultry on Long Island.”

In 2010, the Browders began to raise white and red broilers, birds bred to be superior foragers. In order to increase production from 1,000 birds a year to as many as 5,000, the Browders moved the farm to their own land in Mattituck and purchased a processing unit.

Chris Browder continued to research the East End poultry scene, returning repeatedly to Iacono Farm on Long Lane in East Hampton, where Anthony Iacono, the second generation of a chicken-farming family in operation since 1948, has reduced the distance from farm to table to a matter of yards. The Iaconos raise and process 10,000 chickens a year, employing knife skills that would be the envy of any Lower East Side butcher. In the family’s retail store, Anthony’s daughter Amanda, who works alongside her father, recently pointed out to a customer that it is possible to buy a bird too fresh to cook immediately. She advised the customer to wait 24 hours, since a chicken that was walking around earlier in the day is better to eat once the meat has relaxed.

Inspired by the Iacono family’s processing expertise, last year Chris Browder was able to boost his business, increasing his offerings of packaged legs, breasts and wings to include prepared foods such as stock, quiche and chicken potpie.

Browder’s Birds helped establish a new way forward for the East End poultry business by showing that pastured poultry can be the basis of a viable enterprise. “The stories you hear about the conventional chicken business [tens of thousands of birds raised in a single house] ... well, we need an alternative,” said Browder. “I realize it’s not for everyone because our price point is higher. But it turns out there are lots of people who want to eat chicken, but don’t want to eat that chicken. They want a chicken that is raised well, that is raised humanely.”

Abra Morawiec and Chris Pinto met as farm apprentices at Garden of Eve in 2012. Pinto was a farmhand at Fort Hill Farm in Connecticut, a well-respected, diversified operation with a large community-supported agriculture (CSA) system. Afterward, he worked in Alabama with a family of Messianic Jews in a tiny community near the Tennessee border, raising vegetables and livestock. Morawiec had tended 40 chickens and ducks and an acre of vegetables on her father’s farm in Warwick, New York, before serving in the Peace Corps in rural Mali.

Co-owners Abra Morawiec and Chris Pinto tend to a white Indian Runner duckling at Feisty Acres in Southold. Photo Credit: Raychel Brightman

For this pair of farmers, the path to love did not run straight. Morawiec and Pinto’s relationship got off to a rocky start when Pinto intervened in a dogfight on the farm and ended up with stitches in his thumb. As Morawiec later recalled, at the time she thought, “Who’s this jerk who got involved in a dogfight?” Then, the farmer at Garden of Eve asked them to compete for speed in picking crops. Pinto threw down the garden glove: “I bet I can pick my greenhouse faster than you can pick your greenhouse.” Morawiec, who had never worked on a commercial farm before, embraced the challenge and lost, but not by much.

Morawiec spent the next few seasons at Browder’s Birds. Every time she worked a farmers market, she had people asking for quail, guinea hens and heritage chickens—that is, hardy traditional breeds that enjoy a life on pasture. “There was obviously a need for this in the market,” she noted. “High-quality game birds and eggs just aren’t available.” By the summer of 2015, Pinto was building enclosures for the 100 pastured quail Morawiec intended to raise. Pinto readily admits that he had his doubts, but by then they were partners. “I have the vision, and Chris can take my vision and build it, give it realness,” Morawiec said.

Left: Abra Morawiec, Co-Owner at Feisty Acres in Southold, holds one of her quails. Top: Quail eggs at Feisty Acres in Southold. Bottom: House-made pickled quail eggs at Feisty Acres in Southold. Photo credit: Raychel Brightman

The quail sold out immediately.

“We started from nothing,” Morawiec continued. “We had to rely on our relationships with other farmers.” In the beginning, they leased two acres from Phil Barbato at Biophilia Organic Farm in Jamesport, and once they had built their business over three years, the Peconic Land Trust offered them an 8.2- acre property and barn on County Road 48.

A major break for Feisty Acres came when GrowNYC assigned them a spot at the two largest Greenmarkets in the city, the one on Sundays at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, and the one on Wednesdays at Union Square in Manhattan. These heavily attended, year-round markets virtually guarantee a steady supply of customers during the colder months, when selling quail eggs on the East End can leave you lonely. “We are producing 2,000 quail eggs a week for Union Square and Grand Army Plaza, and we are having a problem keeping up with demand,” said Morawiec.

The city Greenmarkets have put Morawiec in touch with some of her most discerning and demanding customers, and they have spread the word about how much more delicious her pastured birds are than game birds raised indoors. “Lena, my very first customer at Union Square, bought guinea hens from us. Originally from Eastern Europe, she told her entire neighborhood and they all started coming. Joy, from Koreatown in Manhattan, started buying quail, and then turkeys, and she told everyone in her apartment building,” said Morawiec.

A handful of restaurants offer Feisty Acres birds, but they have to come visit the farm first, Morawiec added. “If not, they won’t understand why our birds cost what they cost.” One of the chefs who made the trek to Southold was Antoine Westermann, who was so impressed with the operation that his restaurant, Le Coq Rico (“the bistro of beautiful birds”) in Manhattan’s Flatiron District, started buying quail from Feisty Acres.

Co-owner Abra Morawiec collects quail eggs at dusk at Feisty Acres in Southold. Photo Credit: Raychel Brightman

The day chef Westermann, a connoisseur of poultry, visited the farm was important for Morawiec and Pinto, but restaurants are not their primary customers. “Never have I had someone come up to me and say, ‘I had your bird in a restaurant,’ but I have had hundreds of people come up to me and say ‘I bought your bird at the market and it was absolutely delicious,’ ” said Morawiec. “One restaurant wanted hearts and livers for free, and I said absolutely not, there’s about a dozen Ukrainian women who will have my head. I will not be upsetting my Ukrainian customers; they’re paying $12 a pound for hearts and livers.”

This year, Feisty Acres will drop its USDA certified organic status. Morawiec cited price competition from industrial chicken farms that severely limit outside access for their birds but are still certified organic, while Feisty Acres protocols surpass them in all the ways that count for humanely producing wholesome and sustainable eggs and meat. Meanwhile, organic status would bar Feisty Acres from feeding their birds scraps and gleanings from local conventional farms, driving up costs and hindering their connection to the rest of the agricultural community.

Chris Browder didn’t think too much about the local history of poultry farming until his customers started telling him about it: “A number of times at different farmers markets, people have come up to me and said, my grandfather had a poultry farm out here.” In the decade since he and Holly have been in the business, he’s seen change. “I see what has transpired just since we started, the proliferation of people who are doing chicken in some form—Deep Roots, 8 Hands. Feisty, Catapano. It went from zero to seven or eight just on the North Fork.”

Doug Corwin welcomes the relative newcomers to Long Island poultry farming. “I dare any of them to grow a duck better than I do. They’re never going to have my breeding stock. Still, they have a phenomenal product, and they add to the food culture that we have. I give them a lot of credit. It makes me smile that someone is doing something with the land. We are a Long Island agricultural community and we all want to see the same thing. I’m hoping this new generation will do well and push forward with us.”

Information

BROWDER'S BIRDS: 4050 Soundview Ave., Mattituck; 631-477-6523, browdersbirds.com

Chris and Holly Browder sell pastured chicken at Long Island farm stands and specialty stores, through their CSA and at the farm.

CRESCENT DUCK FARM: 10 Edgar Ave., Aquebogue; 631-722-8000, crescentduck.com

The Corwins have owned and operated a duck farm since 1908, and produce one million proprietary-breed ducks indoors annually. They’re found at some restaurants and grocery and specialty stores.

IACONO FARM: 100 Long Lane, East Hampton; 631-324-1107, iaconofarm.com

The Iacono family’s chicken farm (est. 1948) sells 10,000 freshly killed, indoor-raised chickens annually, year- round. Birds are butchered to order at the retail store on the farm.

MILOSKI'S POULTERY FARM: 4418 Middle Country Rd., Calverton; 631-727-0239, miloskispoultryfarm.com

The Milowskis have raised poultry since 1946. Five thousand pasture-raised turkeys are sold annually, mostly the week before Thanksgiving, out of the family’s retail store. Other offerings include rotisserie ducks and kielbasa. Cash only.

FEISTY ACRES: 45375 County Rd. 48, Southold; feistyacres.com

Abra Morawiec and Chris Pinto sell pasture-raised game birds, ducks and chickens at the Greenmarkets at Union Square and Grand Army Plaza in New York City, and through their CSA. They also sell at some of the larger East End markets, including Sag Harbor, during the summer.

 

Gooseberries, and a crumble for any berry

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO

Published in The Shelter Island Reporter on July 27, 2019

It’s a bear market. By which I mean when I go to the market, I behave like a bear; gathering berries with my paws, bringing them home to my den, and consuming them quickly and voraciously. 

Gooseberries make me especially bearish, for they are my favorite. A fruit with a long heritage, and a complex flavor that is sweet, tart and tannic at the same time, this berry thickens as it cooks, so my pie will not get runny, and my cake will never sog. You can find the best ones at Briermere Farm, on Sound Avenue in Riverhead, and at Wickham’s Fruit Farm in Cutchogue.

This crumble recipe is based on one in “Fruit Book,” by the great Jane Grigson, an English food writer whose books are still the best reference for someone who, for example, comes into possession of a carambola and wants to know what to do with it. 

Grigson pointed out the natural affinity between gooseberries and elderflower, a flavor match made in heaven, so I added two spoons of St. Germain, an elderberry cordial, to the crumble batter and reached for the clouds. And if the gooseberries run out, you can substitute cherries or blueberries in this recipe.

Gooseberry Crumble
based on a recipe by Jane Grigson

1 quart of gooseberries, topped and tailed (pinch off the stem and flower ends of each berry with your fingers, a scissors, or a knife)

4 tablespoons of Demerara sugar

2 tablespoons of butter

The cake:

1 and ¼ cup flour

½ cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

¾ teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons butter

1 egg, lightly beaten

8 pecans, shelled and chopped fine

2 tablespoons St. Germain (elderflower liqueur) or gin.

Melt the butter and sugar in an 8-inch diameter soufflé or an oven-safe serving dish.

Add the berries in an even layer to completely cover the bottom of the dish, packed tightly.

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. 

Cut in the butter until it is the size of small peas

Add the pecans, egg, and liqueur and stir just until moistened. 

Spread the cake mixture over the fruit, and cook at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, or until the top is brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. 

Sara Mundy, the bravest shy person you'll meet.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on July 26, 2019

Sara Mundy grew up on Shelter Island, graduated in the Class of 2009, and spent the next decade studying and living in New York. She traveled around the world for work, including a European tour with a pop band playing keyboard and vocals.

But when older sister Melissa went into labor at their parents’ home on the Island and gave birth to a son, Marshall, a day later on August 6, 2016, Sara was right there.

Having worked as a nanny for many years, Sara knew about taking care of infants. Experience with the process that connects gestation with a fully-diapered baby — that was another thing. “At first I thought it was the scariest thing I’d even seen, and then that it was amazing, Melissa is so strong,” Sara said. “I love babies, but I don’t know if that’s for me.”

She was born during Hurricane Bob, on August 20, 1991. Her father, Mike Mundy, is a captain on the South Ferry where he’s worked for almost 30 years, including on the August day when Sara’s mother, Rebecca, urgently needed to get to Southampton with the hurricane bearing down.

“She was very happy that the ferries were running,” Sara said.

The Mundys are a large, close family geographically and emotionally. Sara and Melissa were the first two of five, followed by Michael (Zack), Megan and Nathan. Rebecca has three sisters, and two of them live on Shelter Island. Mike has two brothers, one who lives here full time.

There are many cousins, and all are regarded as first in a family where no one is second or once-removed. When the clan gathers on Crescent Beach every year for the fireworks, a festivity that involves weeks of planning, at least 30 people come to a party that starts at sunrise, involves grills, and ends with the fireworks.

Sara graduated in a senior class with 21 others, at least three of whom are still on the Island, and all are expected to return for the 10-year reunion in August. “As a group we all really got along and loved each other,” Sara said. “Not too cliquey. A good size.”

Musical training started around 5th grade and included alto sax and piano lessons. She persuaded her parents to give her piano lessons by listening in on her older sister’s lessons with Uncle Pee Wee, (Alexander Mitchell) and obsessively reproducing every note until they had no choice but to arrange lessons for her, too.

Band teacher Keith Brace and chorus teacher Phyllis Power were important influences and helped Sara develop a lovely and versatile alto voice. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a music teacher, work in choral/band or if I wanted to perform,” she said. “I always loved to sing.”

She participated in the school musicals, including “Les Miserables” in the 10th grade, playing Fantine. “I loved all the songs I got to sing,” she said. “That production was really special.”

She went to The American Musical and Dramatic Academy, a two-year conservatory program in Manhattan, in October 2009 and graduated in 2011. Working as a nanny, and auditioning in New York for roles in musical theater, put Sara in an endless cycle of hope and rejection that could not be sustained. One day her roommate told her she thought Sara had the talent and temperament to perform in a band, and soon Sara was on Craigslist looking for a band that needed a new member.

“That’s how I found Starlight Girls,” she said. “It was one of the first ads I saw for a female keyboardist and back-up musician.”

She sent the band a video of herself singing “Over the Rainbow,” and soon was on Morgan Avenue in Bushwick for an audition, where everyone walking down the street seemed to be carrying a guitar. The band members came from a variety of musical backgrounds, their sound defined by the unique and specific voice of the lead singer. Sara, who loves working musically in a group, wrote and performed harmonies and played keyboard.

While continuing to work as a nanny for a supportive and flexible family, Sara toured with Starlight Girls, including to Texas for South by Southwest and a show in Budapest before an audience of 7,000 people. But Starlight Girls’ lead singer was ready to move on, and the band stopped performing together in 2016.

“I don’t regret any of that time,” said Sara. “It was mine to do whatever I wanted to do.”
She’s been back on the Island for over a year now, and began working at the Senior Center as assistant to the director a few months ago, determined to raise awareness of the many services they provide.

“The Senior Center is a special place that goes unrecognized,” she said. “Out here, if you need help, you will get help. We try to take care of everybody.”

This summer, Sara’s been singing three nights a week, mainly solo gigs at Isola and at the Halyard and Brix & Rye in Greenport. She teaches six piano students a week, in addition to working at the Senior Center five days a week.

Sara’s solo gigs show off her beautiful voice and the breadth of her repertoire — the Sara Songbook — but she has a strong preference for singing with other people. In March 2018 she and Southold native Isabel Alvarez formed the Island Bells, singing together as they have since they were kids. They’re performing on August 2 at the Winetasting fundraiser for the Senior Center, and on August 19 at Brix & Rye in Greenport.

“There is something about this place. I wanted to be here,” she said, and gestured to the mature trees that tower over the entrance to the Senior Center. “We’re sitting in a parking lot and … this is just beautiful. I felt like I needed to move to the city to have a performing career. Once I realized I could make it work and be home it all clicked for me.”

Lightning Round

What do you always have with you? A guitar pick.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? Crescent Beach.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? Paris.

When was the last time you were elated? When Marshall was born.

What exasperates you? Rude people.

When was the last time you were afraid? I was on a flight with really bad turbulence. I was O.K. until I heard the flight attendant – who was about to retire after 30 years – say it was the worst they’d ever seen.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island? The day of the fireworks.

Favorite movie? ‘Arrival,’ with Amy Adams.

Favorite food? Roast chicken.

Most respected elected official? My grandfather, Alfred Kilb

Jean Dickerson-You can go home again

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO

Published in The Shelter Island Reporter on July 7, 2019

Sometimes heaven is called “a better place” and by that definition, Jean Dickerson is in heaven.

She was born on Shelter Island in the house on Midway Road that she lives in today. “I sleep in the same bed,” Jean said. But she left as soon as she graduated from high school in 1959, and was a visitor until 1998, when she moved back for good.

She and her twin sister Jane were born, one before and one after midnight on December 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. There was a lot going on that day, and Jean says no one is sure who arrived before, and who was born after, midnight.

Her parents were H. Otis Dickerson and Nina Louise, known as Lou. In addition to Jane, Jean grew up with an older brother, Ted, and three older half siblings from her father’s first marriage.

A framed document in the Dickerson home attested to their mother’s membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, and their father traced his ancestors back to the Revolution.

Jean remembers the hard times that came to Shelter Island with the end of World War II. The shipyard in Greenport, which had held up the local economy, shrank in peacetime, and many Islanders, including Jean’s family, moved into temporary quarters in the summer to rent out their homes, to make ends meet.

The land all around the Dickersons’ home on Midway Road was planted in lima beans in the 1950s. With so few trees, she could look out over the fields and see Bridgehampton.

Jean and Jane were much in demand as babysitters, and used to take care of their cousin, Steven Dickerson, as a baby, and his two sisters. “We didn’t have a problem with them. We were a team,” she remembered. “Steve later told me that another babysitter had to call her mother and help her, Steven was so bad. We didn’t have to call our mother.”

The neighborhood was an easy walk to school, and the kids who lived in the houses along Midway played together, and went to school together. Jean was always a strong athlete; better than any of the other girls, and even some of the boys. When teams were chosen for dodge ball, or basketball, she was picked early if not first.

But these were the days before Title IX, and once she got to school, intramural sports were the only way for her to develop her abilities. Not only were there no teams for girls’ sports, there was no gym teacher for girls.

A band teacher named Scott Hamer was an important influence on her in high school. “He just got the best out of us,” she said.

Jean was one of three students Mr. Hamer chose to play the French horn, a notoriously difficult instrument that she grew to love, and continued to play in college.

“I heard another band leader ask Mr. Hamer how he picked the French horn players, and he said, ‘You pick the smartest ones,’” she proudly remembers.

Jean’s senior year was marked by an incident that would change her life, but contribute to her resolve not to return to live here for many years. Salutatorian of the class of 1959, Jean and Jane had been admitted to Lincoln Memorial University, a small liberal arts college, when they learned that the principal of the Shelter Island School wrote to the school and gave a bad report of their behavior.

“He said we were juvenile delinquents,” Jean said. “He did it because we wouldn’t sit on his lap.”

Their offer of admission was rescinded. According to Jean, she and her sister weren’t the only high school girls asked to sit in his lap, but when Jean and Jane refused, he punished them.

Jean’s parents stood up for their twins, and eventually the principal left. Jean and Jane went to SUNY Geneseo, to study library science. They were both recruited by the Queens library system, where Jean worked for 33 years, eventually completing a Masters in Library Science at Queens College.

Jean and Jane looked alike, and dressed alike well into adulthood. Jane was working at a branch of the Queens library at North Hills and Jean was at a branch on the other side of the expressway in Douglaston, when a group of young women came in to Jane’s library, looked at her with fear in their eyes and asked, “How did you get here?”

Jean had thrown them out of the Douglaston branch minutes before, and when they saw Jane, they were convinced she had employed dark arts to get to North Hills so fast.

Jean loved being a reference librarian, and rose to regional manager, where part of her job was visiting struggling branch libraries. Savvy librarians learned to read their manager’s mood in her earrings.

“I loved scaring the living daylights out of them,” Jean said. “They’d say, ‘What earrings does Miss Dickerson have on today?” If she planned to transfer the branch manager, she might wear the shark earrings with a body hanging down, a gift from one of the senior clerks. When she wore her rat earrings, it meant she was annoyed at administration.

“Every branch I went into, I doubled their circulation,” she said.

Jean and her partner Flo Hosp met when Flo was a UPS driver in Freeport, Long Island. Flo had been making regular deliveries of wine and cigarettes to Jean (who was rarely home) for years, but since someone else always had to sign for them, this mysterious customer was a pain in the neck. One day Jean was finally home to sign for her package, they met and have been together for over 20 years.

In 1997, she retired from the Queens library, and came back to live on Shelter Island in her childhood home. “I came back not expecting to be as happy as I am,” she said. “I’m gay, and at that time I wasn’t sure what the Island was like.”

It turns out Shelter Island had changed in the four decades since Jean and her sister left for college. She was accepted immediately, getting involved with the Historical Society, reconnecting with classmates and getting to know new people.

Shortly after moving back to the Island, Peggy Dickerson, who was then the head of the archives at the Historical Society, sought Jean out and asked for help. The archive and vault — located in a tiny back room of the Havens House — needed a volunteer to document and catalog an ever-expanding collection of papers and objects. Jean went to work filling out forms and making reference cards.

The Society’s collection had outgrown the archive at the Havens House. Visiting researchers had to wedge a chair between a bookcase and a filing cabinet to work.

The house lacked modern safety devices and the risk of a fire was a constant worry.

“The house needed to expand and we needed to help the house,” Jean said.

She joined the Society’s board in 2001, and has participated in the enormous fundraising and logistical undertaking that has resulted in the recently-opened renovation of Havens House and creation of a large and secure archival space.

Five years ago, Flo joined Jean in the house on Midway Road, where they spend the warmer months and then head for Florida before the cold sets in.

In 2015, Jean was inducted into the Shelter Island School Athletic Hall of Fame for her participation in intramural basketball, volleyball, bowling, cheerleading and golf.

She learned at the induction ceremony that she had inspired some of Shelter Island’s female athletes to compete and excel many years later.

Lightning Round- Jean Dickerson

What do you always have with you? Chapstick.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? My backyard.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? The Resort on Carefree Boulevard in North Fort Myers, Florida.

What exasperates you? Bad grammar.

Favorite movie or book?  “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.”

Favorite food? Blue claw crab.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family?  Elizabeth Pederson —tenacious and optimistic.

Most respected elected official? Otis Pike, a Democratic Congressman from Riverhead.

Ancient Egyptian Yeast Is This Bread’s Secret Ingredient - The New York Times

Dr. Bowman brews beer, and he got in touch with Mr. Blackley to talk about yeast. It was Dr. Bowman who devised a way for Mr. Blackley to extract yeast strains from ancient artifacts without damaging them.

via www.nytimes.com

This is really interesting and will get more interesting once he compares the genome with modern yeast.