Charity Robey

All the best ways to each local peaches on the North Fork

Peach season on the North Fork is now. The glorious local orbs are ripe, juicy and ready to ruin your favorite blouse.  (That’s what you get for wearing a blouse in August.)

If you’re all in for peaches, Wickham’s Fruit Farm has them by the bushel, $25 for enough fruit to keep you busy all weekend. Smaller quantities are available at farm stands everywhere.

Local chefs are taking advantage of the all-too-brief bounty.

At Noah’s in Greenport, peach puree is the key component of Peach Jalapeno a vodka-based summer cocktail that pairs peach with a punch.

Briermere Farms, voted one of the best places for pie in Northforkers 2021 Best of competition is celebrating this month’s peachalanche with a stunning array of possibilities:  Peach Pie, Peach-Cherry, Raspberry-Peach and Peach Cream Pie.

Lisa Murphy, a pastry chef who now owns Vine Street Café on Shelter Island with partner and husband Terry Harwood is making a Peach Blueberry Croustade w/ Pistachio Nut Crumble and Buttermilk Ice Cream. It’s a rustic layer of tender buttery crust filled with sliced peaches, and enough blueberries to peek out the top, adorned with a scoop of ice cream, and a scattering of toasted nuts.  

 

PEACH BLUEBERRY CROUSTADE W/ PISTACHIO NUT CRUMBLE AND BUTTERMILK ICE CREAM FROM VINE STREET CAFÉ. (PHOTO CREDIT: CHARITY ROBEY)

Amanda Hayward at Commander Cody’s on Shelter Island is partial to grilling her peaches. “I halve them, brush them with clarified butter and grill-not long, 4-5 minutes. It helps if the peach is just perfectly ripe and tender, so you get nice grill marks Then I serve with homemade ice cream and whipped cream flavored with bourbon.”

Grilled peaches are also favorite of Marie Eiffel, of Shelter Island’s Marie Eiffel Market. She likes to serve them alongside a nice grilled filet of local fish.

You should eat a peach, but that’s not the only way to get that sweet summer flavor in your mouth. Recently a customer came into Hook & Net in Greenport — where chef Gayle Scarberry has been cooking calamari and salmon burgers and smoking fish — and offered her a literal windfall: a tree’s worth of peach wood that was felled by a storm over the winter. “Now I’m curing peach wood out back,” said Scarberry. “For scallops, and a lot of sweeter seafood that I smoke, fruitwood is amazing.”

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.”

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.

Peter Miedema, teacher, coach, and the guy who will give you the coat off his back, if he’s wearing one.

When Peter Miedema was a high school student in Accord, N.Y. (population 562) he worked at an IGA owned by a local family and over the years became part of their clan.
But when they invited Peter to travel with them to India to celebrate their daughter’s arranged marriage, he hesitated.

“I had barely been out of New York state. I couldn’t handle it,” he said. “If someone today said, free trip to India, I’d say ‘Yes’ in a second.”

Peter, who has taught history for 11 years at the Shelter Island School, draws on his own fear of the unknown when he talks with his students. “I work very hard to say, ‘You have opportunities here. Go on the trips. I know you might feel scared or intimidated, but go.’”

Peter’s father, Harm Miedema, came to New York from Holland in the 1950s. In the company of his best friend, they settled near New Paltz, N.Y., and married sisters. “My dad was a dairy farmer,” Peter said. “Farming is what I was going to do.”

His mother’s father was a laborer, who loved to take his grandchildren to work. Before Peter and his brothers were old enough to ride bikes, their grandfather picked them up in his truck to spend the day with him, baling hay and building sheds.

He’s youngest of four with two brothers, and a sister Suzanne, a brilliant student who earned degrees in literature, music and French. Suzanne’s passion for learning and teaching inspired her little brother to become a teacher rather than a farmer, earning a BS in secondary education from SUNY New Paltz, and a Masters in educational psychology from the College of Saint Rose.

Around the time Peter graduated from college, his mother died of a heart attack. Flu was going around and everyone was sick. When his mother told him that she wasn’t feeling well, he figured she was coming down with the same flu that he had a few days earlier, and suggested she take it easy. By the time he returned from the gym, he found she had collapsed. She later died in surgery.

Mary Miedema took care of everyone and everything in their home, and suddenly she was gone. It was a family that took love and comfort from each other, but didn’t express it verbally. “We never said thank you, or I love you,” Peter said. “We did things because that’s your family and you just do things for people.”

Peter’s sister was still home, but his older brothers were not, and Peter felt tremendous sadness, as well as the need to step up.

“I was trying to handle my own grief and not thinking about my dad’s grief,” he said. He had to learn to cook. “He’d come home and my sister and I would have dinner ready for him.”

Peter had done some substitute teaching in college, and in 2000 got his first teaching job in Germantown, N.Y., working with kids who struggled in a regular class setting, and were often disruptive. From that school he went to an even tougher one, a year and a half at Pius XII, a residential facility for kids who were in flux between home, detention centers, or awaiting trial. It was a long way from splitting wood and working at the IGA.

His education did not completely prepare him for the students he met in those first years of teaching. “I had to adapt because these kids were not going to. I couldn’t just stick a textbook at them, and say do your work. They were acting out because they couldn’t read, they couldn’t do their work.”

In Germantown, Peter met a fellow teacher, and they married. Her parents had a place in Noyack, and while visiting them Peter first discovered Shelter Island. They moved to Long Island in 2005, and Peter began teaching at Child Development Center of the Hamptons (CDCH), a charter school for kids with learning disabilities.

CDCH had no sports program, so Peter, a lifelong athlete and avid sportsman, decided to apply for a position coaching basketball at the Shelter Island School. He started coaching basketball and baseball, and still does to this day.

A year into his coaching duties on Shelter Island and still teaching in East Hampton, Peter met the late Jack Monaghan who had learned that Peter taught history, and wondered if he would consider taking an interim position for a teacher who was on medical leave. Jack made a powerful impression on Peter, who agreed to come to Shelter Island even though it meant giving up a permanent job with no guarantee of future employment.

He started commuting from Southampton, and took the South Ferry one bitter January day in a shirt and tie. “As a kid, I would not wear a coat,” he said. “The school would call home and say, ‘If you can’t afford a coat …’ And I heard my mom tell them, ‘We have coats! He won’t wear them.’”

As he rolled off the ferry, Glenn Waddington, who was on the crew, pulled him over with bad news. Peter’s tire had a piece of metal stuck in it. Seeing that his son’s coach was not dressed for a mid-winter tire change, Glenn ordered Peter to park his truck at the ferry and leave it. “The keys are in my truck, take it, go to work,” Glenn said.

Two students in Peter’s class were also in the mechanics program at BOCES, and during a study hall went down to the ferry, took the tire off Peter’s car, fixed it, put it back, and found a volunteer to ride down to the ferry with Peter to return Glenn’s truck, refusing the money Peter tried to give them.

If he had any doubts that Shelter Island was the place to be, that settled it. “I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else,” he said. “I’ve been in all kinds of different schools, and I give a nod to the gods that this turned out to be a perfect fit.”

He’s not afraid of letting his classes get into touchy topics. “I hope they take the discussion in a direction that is uncomfortable, because we need to discuss things,” he said. “We set ground rules and we talk. It’s not always solved by compromise, but we get the issue out there.”

Peter’s still close to his friends from high school. “I have a core group of people I trust who are by my side — five or six people, we call, or text, we go on vacation together. For 25 years, we’ve always been there for each other,” he said.

After Peter and his wife split up in 2013, he moved to Shelter Island. When he’s not teaching, he’s coaching, working with a student group or walking around the Heights with Adele, a 4-year old French bulldog with black spotted ears. She also loves to ride shotgun in his truck, and Peter claims she only snores “when she is really, really tired.”

Lightning Round

What do you always have with you? If I’m not in school, my dog Adele is with me.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? The beach at Menhaden Lane.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? Nashville with my friends.

When was the last time you were elated? This summer, when I met Joe Namath eating dinner at Isola.

What exasperates you? People who text and drive.

When was the last time you were afraid? During the recent storm there was one crack of thunder — sounded like it was right outside my door.

Favorite book? ‘Cash’ by Johnny Cash.

Favorite food? Shepherd’s pie.

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

Most respected elected official? Teddy Roosevelt.

The fall that just fell

MARTIN BURKE PHOTO Autumn dawn at Congdons Creek.

The fall equinox happened right before my eyes at the Heights post office on Saturday, Oct. 19, when Jim Eklund, still dressed in his three-season uniform of shorts, nearly collided with a person wearing a bulky, hip-length Fair Isle sweater as she barreled through the front door. They do-si-doed, and she eyed his knees.

“How low did it get overnight?” she asked him.

“Shorts weather is almost over, but I’ll go kicking and screaming.”

It’s so last-century to believe that fall starts on Sept. 23 and ends on Dec. 20.

Astronomically-speaking, those dates are the brackets, but this year, the events occurring inside them (so far) have included nor’easters, hot flashes, emotional upheaval and snowfall.

The sunrise over Congdon Creek was warm and windless on the first Monday in November, a day that made some of us fear we’d lived long enough to see the end of commercial scalloping. The unusually placid weather made the disaster coming into focus even more heartbreaking.

When things go badly wrong, it is awful to be reminded that your affairs may be tangled, your life upended, your livelihood threatened, your existence in doubt, but the sun still rises and the earth turns.

Jim Pugh took advantage of the fine weather on opening day at the town dock to get his boat out of the water for the season. He maneuvered a rusty trailer into position (since few were scalloping, there was plenty of room) and proceeded to bail water from a swamped Whaler that was lolling in the water like a half-inflated swimming pool raft.

He rowed it around the dock, nosed up on the landing ramp, and hopped into the water to pull the ancient skiff up onto the trailer. He pressed a passerby (who was hanging around hoping to see some scallops) into service, positioning the boat on the trailer, while the rest of the water drained onto the pavement, down the hill and into the creek.

I was just glad to see that somebody got something good out of the water that day.

Not long after the scallop catastrophe was revealed to me, Russell Glover of Consider Bardwell Farm came by to tell me I’d better throw away that wheel of cheese I bought at the final Havens farmers market — a cheese that was going to get me through the fall.

The cheese-maker’s safety inspector found listeria — a milk-borne bacteria — from milk they had purchased from another farm. The voluntary recall meant they had to shut down production, destroy their inventory and let their staff go, a nightmare scenario for a small cheese maker like Consider Bardwell. Their reaction prevented anyone from getting sick, but how and when they can start making cheese again is in doubt. A GoFundMe effort is under way now that may help them hang on.

Feeling pretty low as I contemplated a winter without affordable scallops and my favorite cheese, I voted. It made me feel much better, even though I had to convince a pollworker that my signature was actually a match with the one they had on file. My penmanship is slipping.

In November and December, steep declines in the striped bass and bluefish population in our waters got headlines and prompted stricter recreational fishing regulations.

Fewer bluefish were landed along the mid-Atlantic coast in 2018 than in any year on record, an existential threat to Bob’s bluefish and blue cheese special, and the snapper derby, not to mention the recreational fishing industry.

It’s not just the people who enjoy fishing, make cheese and round up their winter income on scalloping that are in pain, and have had setbacks this fall. Maybe a new hip kept you inside, or you had to skip a gathering of friends while battling a head cold. You lost an election, or your old dog is spending less time on the porch lying in the sun now that the shadows are sharper, and the sun sets early.

We’re a community that cares for neighbors who are hurting, and likes to support people who need a hand. We are really good at making change locally, but more and more the roots of our problems are global.

The other day, I decided to walk my favorite trail at Mashomack backwards. My goal: to see an entirely new set of water views, hills and hollows. (The trail was backwards — I did not walk backwards, that would be stupid.) A rustle of leaves and a ringed tail sticking out from under a low boardwalk across marsh confirmed that I was not the only one surprised by my path through the woods.

It was good to look at this very familiar place with new eyes. I thought about the first time I laid eyes on Miss Annie’s Creek, 30 years ago, how important this place is to me, and how I must do what I can to take care of it.

When we voted, we made a lot of changes at the state and local level, and we’ve already seen many East End leaders take up arms against the effects of climate change.

Increasingly, it’s the job of our elected officials to figure out what to do. There has never been a more important battle to win.

Sea change-Inside Montauk's commercial fishing industry

Published in the Summer 2019 issue of Newsday's Feed Me magazine.

By Charity Robey Special to Newsday Updated July 21, 2019 5:00 AM

 

When Gosman’s Dock, 14 acres of restaurants and shops at Montauk Harbor, went on the market for $52.5 million in 2015, it signaled the latest evolution in a "discovered" coastal town that used to be all about surfing, fishing and dive bars. But walk past the dumpster and ice machine onto the dock that stretches into the harbor, and you’re in another world. You will typically see a forklift operator removing boxes of fish from a boat’s hold, or two guys hefting lobsters into the back of a pickup truck. Welcome to Montauk—past its heyday, perhaps, but alive and still bringing fresh local seafood to people who know enough to buy it up while they still can.

Montauk is not only the biggest commercial fishing hub in New York, it’s one of the largest in the Northeast. But that’s not saying much. In the United States, about 80 percent of the seafood we eat is imported, and most of it has been frozen, thawed and refrozen multiple times while being shipped and processed. Prices for local wild seafood, the stuff landed at the town dock or a dock on the east side of the harbor, hit a high of $21.2 million in 2012. By 2017, this figure had slid to $14.8 million.  

Unlike Gurneys’ or the iconic Shagwong Tavern, Montauk’s commercial fishing boats don’t attract investors eager to keep their businesses afloat, and their property (boats, gear and permits) is not easily transferable from one person to another. Fishers are foragers of wild food in an industry that is heavily regulated, with quotas, licenses and practices dictated by state and federal governments. And unlike farmers, they have no federally subsidized crop insurance to tide them over when their harvest is threatened by wild weather.

John Nolan, his wife, Laurie, and their son John Nolan III are owner-operators of the F/V Seacapture (“F/V” stands for “ fishing vessel”), a boat that hauls in 25 percent of the tilefish caught in the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s region, which stretches from New York to North Carolina. John Nolan III, 32, has been captaining the boat since he was 21, fishing 100 miles off Montauk year-round with a crew of five. They are at sea for 6 to 10 days at a stretch.

Robert Aaronson, John Nolan, Tom Eshenfelder, Armaan Gretarsson, Marty Senkus and Steven Doyles on the Seacapture in Montauk with a load of Golden Tilefish. Credit: David Handschuh

 

On a brilliant October day last fall, the 82-foot Seacapture arrived in Montauk Harbor with 20,000 pounds of tilefish in the hold. It had been a longer trip than usual: While a nor’easter pounded the coast, Seacapture had stayed far offshore, out of harm’s way. The entire crew was on deck in a celebratory state, including one young salt wearing a bunny outfit (Halloween was a few days away), who helped secure the boat as Nolan III stepped onto the dock to an emotional welcome from his mom, his sister Molly and his sister Jean’s baby, a cherub named Bodie. His father was picking up a large order of bacon-and-cheese sandwiches to feed everyone. Cousin and former crewmate Robert Aaronson, who had gone out to the jetty to take in Seacapture’s safe return, was on hand to help unload. Nolan III pointed proudly to the hold, packed full of cleaned, iced fish, and said, “Oh yeah.”

The crew—Tom Eshenfelder, Stephen Doyle, Al Ellis, Mark Semkus and Armann Grettarsson—were ebullient. “We had a little bit of weather,” Nolan III said. “But we fished every day. We have a good boat for it. We were getting beaten up pretty good, good-sized waves one day. Stuck it out and caught some fish.”

Extreme weather, the sprawling thicket of regulations and quotas, and reproduction and migration changes in fish species are existential threats to today’s commercial fishing business. The key to survival is to grow and maintain a sustainable fishery, and the story of how the Nolan family developed the market for Atlantic golden tilefish out of Montauk is worthy of a Harvard Business School case study.

The Nolans catch tilefish on a longline, a 40-mile length of wire rope with 4,000 baited hooks that snap on, an innovation John Nolan introduced to the Montauk fishery in the 1980s, after he and Laurie saw it used to catch tilefish during a fishing sojourn in Florida. Prior to that, most Montauk fishers used nets for tilefish, but the Nolans’ new gear began to outperform the traditional method.

Left: Unloading Golden Tilefish from the Seacapture on the dock in Montauk. Top: Captain John Nolan III on the Seacapture. Bottom: Steven Doyles sorts Golden Tilefish by size in the hold of the Seacapture. Photo credit: David Handschuh

Although it takes a skilled crew to bait and then remove fish from the line without being gouged by the business end of a hook, line-caught fish are never damaged by a net, and the method, when properly managed, results in less bycatch.

It was Laurie Nolan, who shed for five years alongside her husband, that spearheaded another important change in the Atlantic golden tilefish industry in 2004, when she decided the fish was getting a bad rap. Since the 1970s, the FDA had put tilefish in the same category as swordfish, tuna and king mackerel—fish that contain elevated mercury levels and should not be consumed by pregnant women or small children.

Knowing that the warning was based on samples taken in 1976 from the Gulf of Mexico in the vicinity of oil drilling (which can produce mercury pollution), she wanted to see if the local tilefish, which live in deep, clean water and do not migrate, had elevated mercury levels as well. She followed testing protocols and sent samples of fish caught by her family to a lab for analysis. The results showed no danger from elevated mercury levels, the FDA amended the warning and Atlantic golden tilefish became recognized as one of the most sustainable and healthy fish around.

It’s also one of the most delicious. Most of the Nolans’ catch goes to Hunts Point, the vast wholesale market in the Bronx, where restaurants and seafood shops from all over the Northeast go to buy fish. A few thousand pounds is distributed through Dock to Dish, a community-supported fishery program that supplies Montauk seafood to restaurants and consumers, and another 1,000 pounds of whole tilefish from every load goes to Gosman’s to be filleted and sold to East End restaurants. With a firm texture, white flesh and flavor similar to lobster (because of their habit of eating crustaceans), tilefish is a favorite of chef Dan Barber at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills and makes a regular appearance on the menu at Nick & Toni’s in East Hampton. The Nolans’ tilefish is a mainstay at the New York Google cafeteria, where 5,000 employees not only enjoy eating it, they know who caught it.

The same goes for the Jonah crab claws from Montauk’s John Aldridge and Anthony Sosinki. They are fishing partners who have been instrumental in establishing the viability of this meaty- clawed creature, usually considered a bycatch of lobstering. Sean Bennett of Dock to Dish said the Google employees are particularly enthusiastic when steamed Jonah crab claws are on the menu at the company cafeteria.

Googlers may not realize, however, that they’re eating the catch of bonafide media figures, ones who can tell you in harrowing detail about the dangers of the job. Aldridge and Sosinski, longtime partners on the F/V Anna Mary, fish for lobster, and in the middle of one July night in 2013, Aldridge, alone on deck, fell off the boat. He spent 12 hours in the ocean without a flotation device or GPS personal locator beacon before he was pulled out by the Coast Guard. The story of the resourcefulness and resilience he called on to survive long enough to be rescued became a book and movie, “A Speck in the Sea.”

“It’s a job for somebody who has something to prove.”

John Nolan III

Even if you don’t fall overboard, fishing is not for the faint of heart. “It’s a job for somebody who has something to prove,” said Nolan III. “For me, it was my dad, I guess. You got to dig deep some days. You wonder, ‘What am I doing?’ And you just do it anyway.”

Family plays a part even for someone like Dave Aripotch, who happens to be one of the few commercial fishers in Montauk who did not grow up in the business. At 63, Aripotch is “the oldest full-time offshore guy” in the area, and he’s been at it for enough years to prove he’s not just being rebellious. “I’ve been doing this since I was 18,” he said. “Some nights I wake up in a mad panic thinking, ‘I’m going to have to get a real job someday.’ ” Like so many baby boomers born on Long Island, Aripotch went clamming in the Great South Bay as a child, but unlike most, he graduated quickly to working on a commercial trawler, going for swordfish, tuna and tilefish on trips that would have him at sea for weeks. Today he works from the 73-foot FV Caitlin & Mairead.

Aripotch’s wife, Bonnie Brady, is his advocate and shore-side support, as well as a vital voice for commercial fishers at sea, who can’t attend the endless rounds of hearings around issues of licensing, fishing regulations and quotas. “It requires 15 plates spinning,” she said. “If you do it right, you have this great harvest of fish and you get to feed people.”

So far, none of Aripotch’s children has shown an interest in following him into commercial fishing. His first mate, Jackson Urgilez, has been working with Aripotch for more than a decade. Aripotch hopes to work out a deal to pass the boat and his fishing permits to Urgilez when he retires in a few years. “I would like to see him do it. I would like to see fishing stay in this town.”

Montauk’s fishing families have mixed feelings about government regulations and quotas, which can hurt their short-term bottom line but help keep species sustainable in the long run. A prime example is the sea scallop fishery. “Scallops made a big recovery,” Aripotch said. “You had to rotate the areas, which makes sense. They came back. So did fluke, sea bass, striped bass. They put all these regulations in place, and fishing got better.” That is not to say that Aripotch approves of government intervention in his business. A recent proposal, to allow a Danish company to build a wind farm in the middle of a prime fishing area 35 miles offshore, is one that Aripotch and most other commercial owner-operators out of Montauk consider a serious impediment to their business.

Hank Lackner, owner-operator of the trawler Jason and Danielle—at about 90 feet, the largest commercial fishing boat out of Montauk—thinks the threat the proposed wind farm poses can’t be fully appreciated by people who don’t understand how much space in the ocean fishers need to operate. When the nets of a trawler open up, they are like a huge sail moving through the water, herding schools of fish before them.

“Those windmills, you can’t tow a net around them,” Lackner said. “They become closed areas, even if they are a mile apart.”

Lackner’s main cash crop is squid, and for the past two years the cephalopods have been unusually plentiful. The handful of commercial fishers who have permits to take squid caught their quota so early, they had to stop fishing by midsummer. Lackner fishes with two of his children and is hopeful that they will continue the family business.

“We’re some of the last hunter-gatherers on Earth,” Aripotch said, as his crew unloaded 50,000 pounds of porgy—equal to the biomass of about five mastodons. The fish were iced, boxed and bound for Hunts Point. “It’s money, but I never lose sight of producing food. Like a farmer ... harvesting fish.” 

By Charity Robey Special to Newsday

True grit.The story behind Commander Cody's Seafood on Shelter Island

Published in the Summer 2019 issue of Feed Me magazine.

 

There was a time when an East End fisherman who caught a lot more than he could sell would buy a fryer, set up some picnic tables and open a restaurant. A few of those joints, such as Commander Cody’s Seafood on Shelter Island, are still around because they have the most devoted customers and the freshest fish. Jim Hayward, who started a restaurant named for his dog Cody in 1993, says his success has more to do with simple food rooted in his raising. “If you don’t want the real deal, don’t come here, because I don’t use substitutes. I do home cooking.”

Hayward grew up in Ridgeland, heart of the South Carolina Lowcountry. He was the oldest of nine siblings, and his mother expected him to shoulder the cooking responsibilities from the age of 10. “She’d sit back and point that stick in case I’d burn the food,” he said. “I was cooking for the whole family.” He grew up cooking hearty fare in large quantities: crab boil, fried chicken, pulled pork and ribs — the foundations of his menu today.

Jim Hayward weighs out clams and muscles at Commander Cody's Seafood on Shelter Island. Photo Credit: Raychel Brightman

On a recent weekday afternoon, 84-year-old Hayward was unloading boxes of porgy, squid and clams from the back of his pickup truck, his dog Frankie (Cody passed in 1995) staying close enough to snag anything that might drop. Hayward is a big man and easily carried large boxes full of iced fish across the gravel yard to the restaurant on Smith Street, which is also the home where he raised his daughters, Chloe (39) and Amanda (35). Inside, Amanda, pastry bag in hand, was putting the finishing touches on 35 chocolate-frosted birthday cupcakes for a catering order.

The gravel yard turned into a parking lot a few hours after Hayward unloaded the seafood. Customers came in for takeout orders, to buy fresh fish or to eat fried chicken and ribs at picnic tables on the patio. To enter Commander Cody’s, they stepped past the fish-smoker still redolent of hickory, squeezed by the drinks cooler, stood next to the blue whiskery waters of the lobster tank and evaluated the vivacity of the clams before they placed their orders for locally caught, home-cooked delectables, whether smoked, steamed, grilled or fried.

Commander Cody's Seafood on Shelter Island. Photo credit: Raychel Brightman

The restaurant’s reputation extends far beyond Shelter Island — a notable accomplishment, considering a ferry ride and sophisticated navigation aids are required to find it. On a weekday in May, the Mascucchinis from Philadelphia were on their way to Montauk when a little research convinced them to detour to Commander Cody’s. Ron Mascucchini said they had to drive around and come back a few times since the hours of operation here are like the fish: subject to availability. After lunch, Mascucchini, seeing Hayward at the lobster pot on the patio, came over to thank him for the freshly prepared food, including fries with a coating of a peppery spice mix Hayward swears by. He told Mascucchini, “It won’t give you a headache, but it will make you sneeze.”

Hayward came to Shelter Island in the ’50s to farm and fish, selling his catch first from his truck and then from the seafood market in his home, and he has always kept South Carolina culture, family and food close. Hayward’s nephew Gene works with him. Eight of his nine siblings are living, and living well, several in New York. Hayward said, “If you invite the Haywards over, you better have a lot of food because this family will eat everything.”

For many years, Hayward made his living as a commercial fisher, dragging for flounder, but these days he buys most of the fish he sells. “I buy from all the guys who fish. That’s why you got cellphones. You call around and see who has fish. I usually buy striped bass from guys on the South Fork.”

Although he no longer takes a trawler out for flounder, Hayward still dredges for bay scallops, as he did this past fall after the installation of a pacemaker drew a warning from his cardiologist to avoid scalloping for at least six months. Hayward thought the doctor must have meant six weeks, because the season for bay scallops is only five months long. “I don’t know how I got it wrong. I must have seen some dollar signs,” he said. “For the time I could go out there, I felt fine.”

Decades of commercial fishing taught him where to get great fish, and also what to do with it, including preparing the notoriously bony porgy. Porgy is delicious if you can figure out how to remove the rows of short, sharp bones. Hayward stood next to a 10-gallon tub of pristine porgy fillets and said, “When I cut it, it has no bone in it. I filleted those this morning.” You could make sushi from it.

Left: The lobster roll at Commander Cody’s Seafood on Shelter Island. Top: The clam bake filled with lobster, little neck clams, shrimp and muscles. Bottom: Fried chicken. Photo credit: Raychel Brightman

The menu at Commander Cody’s is a combination of New England seaside cooking (lobster rolls, lobster dinners, clam bakes) with the coastal South Carolina dishes of Hayward’s youth, including a Lowcountry boil — a steaming, spicy pot of crab, corn, sausage and potatoes that hits all the major food groups. Hayward learned to make ribs by watching his uncle use a barbecue pit dug in the ground, a technique that virtually guarantees a stupendous quantity of food, as well as quality.

Hayward makes no accommodation to the contemporary food scene at Commander Cody’s. If tiny bits of parsley have been scattered over your clam bake, it’s not for decorative purposes, it’s food. The posted business hours are loosely observed, and the vibe is fast-casual without the fast. “I tell people, if you are in a hurry, don’t come here to eat. We cook everything to order. If you can’t wait, I’m still going to do it the way it’s supposed to be done. I believe in feeding people and giving them enough to eat. Not putting some rabbit food out.”

Amanda Hayward does all the baking and desserts, including an outstanding blueberry bread pudding served with homemade ice cream — available in very un-Lowcountry flavors such as blueberry-basil and Guinness. And although her dad swears he doesn’t eat ice cream (“I eat yogurt. I don’t like much sweet stuff.”), he is still proud of her exuberant use of dairy products, in line with family tradition, “If you don’t like butter and the real deal don’t come here.”

Blueberry basil bread pudding is served with homemade coconut ice cream at Commander Cody's Seafood on Shelter Island. Photo Credit: Raychel Brightman

Amanda and Chloe grew up on Shelter Island, graduated from the Shelter Island school and went to college, unlike their dad who left school in the fourth grade. Amanda, who, in addition to the baking, does much of the cooking at Commander Cody’s, worked in the restaurant business in Las Vegas after graduating from The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. Chloe went to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and is manager of education programs at the Studio Museum in Harlem, to the delight (and chagrin) of her father, who would like her to live closer. “She says there is not enough culture out here for her.”

When Hayward’s marriage to Chloe and Amanda’s mother ended, he marked the transition with a celebration. “I do what I do and I do my best. I’ve got a lot of haters but I’m like a steamroller. I roll them over.” He invited 100 people, dug a pit, and roasted an 88-pound hog on an old bedspring in a ring of fire stoked with charcoal and cherry and hickory wood for flavor. “We partied down. When Jim Hayward gives a party, it’s a party.”

Hayward is known on Shelter Island for the big family events he has catered over the years, including celebrations at the Shelter Island home of Gov. Hugh Carey, who was a friend as well as a customer.

Shelter Islander Esther Hunt, 95, is old enough to have babysat for Jim Hayward (she didn’t) and is a devoted customer. She recently described herself as elated when she heard that Hayward had returned from his annual spring stay in South Carolina and would soon be serving up her favorites at Commander Cody’s. “The salmon is very good, and I love his scallops,” she said. “And the servings are so generous, they can last for two meals.”

It’s tricky to ask an octogenarian to articulate his vision for the future, but for Hayward, well into his eighth decade of cooking, an afterlife with food seems like a foregone conclusion. As a child, Hayward said, “I had to learn to cook in big pots,” a life skill that proved valuable. “For a wedding on Ram Island, I cooked 100 lobsters,” Hayward said. “When I go, [the lobsters] are going to be at the Gate.”

Tales old and tall- A Shelter Island family gathering

A sea of shining Dickerson relatives and their partners

From the August 22 issue of The Shelter Island Reporter

The sound that emerged from Jean Dickerson on Monday afternoon was like something out of a bullhorn, summoning upwards of 70 relatives to arrange themselves around her twin sister Jane, brother Ted and herself, for a family photo that extended the photographic and child-wrangling limits of nature. (Pro-tip: Create a baby-corral in the foreground and toss the wiggliest ones in there.)

With the temperature approaching 90 degrees, and the youngest members of the Dickerson clan struggling to escape the arms of their parents, the moment was immortalized with phones and cameras, and everyone got down to the business of swapping stories.

The assembled crew was just part of the enormous Dickerson family; the part related to Herbert Otis Dickerson — known to all as H. Otis  — father, grandfather or great-grandfather of most of the participants. A central figure in 20th-century Island history, H. Otis was a builder who served on the Town Board, the School Board and for many years as Town Justice.

Ted Dickerson, Jean Dickerson, and Jane Fowler are the only living children of H. Otis still around, and all are well into their 70s. Jean and Jane started organizing the event about a year ago, the first reunion of this part of the clan since 2000.

“I don’t call it a reunion,” Jean said. “I call it a gathering, because so many have not met before.”

Arthur Springer, one of H. Otis ’s three grandsons, and his wife Linda, hosted the event under a tent in their shady yard and as soon as the group pictures were taken, it was taken over by a mobile pizza oven on a truck that began producing delectable thin crust pies and arugula salad.

H. Otis was known as a hanging judge, and his children remember how some recipients of his brand of justice might have preferred hanging. According to Jane, when a young man found guilty of reckless driving was sentenced by H. Otis to write out the entire 50,000-word New York motor vehicle code in longhand, the youth complained that his punishment was “juvenile.”

H. Otis is said to have replied, “When you act like a man, you will be treated like one.”

A copy of the entire vehicle code in the unfortunate offender’s handwriting is preserved in the judge’s papers.

In the 20th century on Shelter Island, Dickersons were everywhere. H. Otis’s sister Helen Smith was the Town Clerk for decades before her daughter, Dotty Ogar, not only succeeded her mother as Town Clerk in 1978 (an elected position) but is probably the longest-serving Town Clerk in New York State. The mother/daughter team served Shelter Island for much of the last century, and Dotty is almost a quarter of the way into this one. Jane recalls that Aunt Helen was the terror of anyone submitting an expense account to the town for reimbursement. “She was known for treating the town’s money like her own,” Jane said.

Growing up in a well-known Island clan occasioned some resentment from other kids. “Sometimes other people thought we got away with things,” Jane said. “There were so many Dickersons, and there were roads named after us.”

She remembered one kid in particular who lived nearby and teased her about her family.

“Yes, he did,” concurred Jean, “but the funny thing is, he was a Dickerson too, on his mother’s side, and didn’t even know it.”

Not present at this reunion was Neil Dickerson, the oldest child, considered the best Dickerson of his generation by some, including his half-brothers and sisters from H. Otis’s second wife Louise.

Kevin Springer and his son K.D. (Jack). At 22 months, Jack was the youngest descendent of H. Otis Dickerson at the gathering.

Neil, who died in 2009, was a Coast Guard veteran, a graduate of Brown University and an electrical engineer. Carol Wolkom Dickerson, Neil’s wife, said he loved growing up on Shelter Island. “They did a lot of hunting and fishing and I remember him saying everyone would talk about roast beef, but they never ate beef, they only ate venison,” she said. “And the first time he had roast beef, he said, ‘Why do people like this?’”

In 1946, H. Otis’s son Ted remembers being in his second-grade classroom in the old wooden Shelter Island schoolhouse, when his teenage brother Neil — who had noticed smoke coming from a second-floor science lab — ran through sounding the alarm to get out. His warnings resulted in the safe evacuation of his three siblings and everyone else from the school, which was gutted.

“We followed the evacuation protocol for my classroom,” Ted remembered, “which had the entire second grade running through the lunchroom located directly below a chemistry classroom that was actively burning. As we ran through the cafeteria, we saw some dropping ash and smoke, but it wasn’t until we were outside that we realized we had run under the fire.”

It has been said that wherever you go, there you are, and Dickersons who have left Shelter Island for other places can testify to that. Clifford Springer is H. Otis’s oldest grandchild, and a longtime resident of New Hampshire. Seated with him were his wife, Carol, and their children, Christopher and Kate, all New Hampshire natives listening to Cliff tell tales of discovering Dickerson relatives who got there before them.

Ann Dickerson, Ted’s wife, said in the years she’s been a part of the family, she and Ted have found a number of Dickerson relatives near their upstate home in Penn Yan, N.Y.

Jean, who came back to Shelter Island to live in the family’s Midway Road home after years away, noticed after the festivities began, that she and her twin Jane were dressed alike, something they haven’t done on purpose since their college days. They both swore that the identical “Rosie the Riveter” socks they wore were a complete coincidence.

On a day full of tall tales and family ties, who could argue?

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.