Farming the Land of Their Dreams

WHEN EUROPEANS ARRIVED on Long Island in the early 17th Century, they stepped into a world tailor-made for their dreams.

Everything they needed to build and feed new communities was here in abundance -- land, trees, wildlife, and a sea teeming with all kinds of fish. But the Europeans' richest discovery was the ground they walked on.

For the Dutch, who settled the western end of Long Island, the soil was the most fertile they had ever known. For the English, who settled the East End, growing conditions were not only far superior to England, but better than what they had known around their colonies in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

"In Massachusetts, the soil was rocky and the growing season averaged 180 days," said John Strong, a historian at Long Island University's Southampton College campus. "On the East End, the growing season averaged more than 220 days. They gained another 40 growing days when they came to Long Island."

Well into the 20th Century, farming this rich soil was the common thread that tied together every community on Long Island. From wheat, which many Colonial-era farmers grew and sold, to fruits, vegetables and potatoes, Long Island's farms were multimillion dollar businesses by the middle of the 19th Century. Today, while playing a small role in Long Island's economic picture, they are more diversified than ever even as they have dramatically shrunk in number as well as acreage.

The disappearance of farmland can be seen in census and other data. In 1982, there were 49,000 acres of farms and approximately 800 farmers in Suffolk County; a decade later, there were 35,000 acres and 587 farmers. Two East End towns show dramatic change. In 1968, there were 11,900 acres of farmland in Southold Town; in 1996, there were 6,900 -- a 42 percent drop that averaged 180 acres a year. In Southampton, there were 12,450 acres of farmland in 1968; in 1996 there were 8,600 acres. This spring, less than 6,000 acres of potatoes were planted; a generation ago, there were more than 30,000 acres.

Still, the farms that remain are the most productive in New York State, and add about $150 million a year to the regional economy, the bulk of that from flowers and ornamental shrubs.

It is difficult to picture today, but there were working farms in Brooklyn until the early 1920s. Photographs show farmers plowing land while train platforms and apartment buildings rise in the background. There were small farms in parts of Queens for another generation after that, and farming survived for another generation in Nassau County. It is concentrated today in the five East End towns, but survives uneasily even there, as huge summer mansions continue to take over prime farmland.

The farming narrative of Long Island is the story of a people who arrived in a place they found perfect for their needs. The soil was a gift, and the Europeans knew it right off. Indians had farmed the same soil for 5,000 years -- and it wasn't worn out by the time the Europeans came. How could it wear out for the newcomers? And the story today is that it hasn't.

Few farm families have the rich legacy of the Halseys of Southampton. A Thomas Halsey arrived in 1640 to farm; his descendant, Thomas Halsey, 59, farms in Water Mill today. The first Halsey maintained a subsistence farms of a few acres on which he grew corn, flax and a few vegetables such as beets and carrots. The current Halsey farms 85 acres and raises a multitude of vegetables and herbs that he sells locally.

"We raise lettuce, tomatoes, beets, parsley, corn, herbs, along with cut flowers we grow in our greenhouses," Tom Halsey said. "When I was a child, my father and grandfather grew 250 acres of potatoes. We now have 85 acres, and what we used to farm on is now houses.

"But the truth is I'm growing more on a quarter-acre of land than my ancestors did on 200 acres. We make a better living on what we have now. We're smarter about what we grow."

In late May, Halsey's son, Adam, graduated from college in Pennsylvania, and he is now working on the family farm. "It's important to me to hold on to our land," Halsey said. "It was handed down to me, and I'm happening to care for it and pass it along. The keys to our success is our willingness to change with the times."

Potatoes were once the dominant crop of Long Island, grown from the heights of Brooklyn, across the fertile breadth of the Island, to the eastern ends of both forks. New York State figures show that in 1866, the New York potato crop covered 275,000 acres, perhaps half of which was on Long Island. In 1933, the first year Long Island figures are available, there were 43,000 acres of potatoes in Queens and Nassau and Suffolk Counties. In 1945, there were 72,000 acres of potatoes on Long Island, nearly all of them in Nassau and Suffolk.

World War II had ended, and the huge wave of suburban growth was poised to break over Nassau County. That year the potato crop was worth about $30 million. New York State estimates the Long Island potato crop to be worth about $11 million a year today, a figure the Long Island Farm Bureau describes as "break even," meaning the farmers who still grow potatoes earn back what they put in, and little more.

According to state figures, farming of all kinds on Long Island is today worth an estimated $150 million a year. But that number is dominated by the emerging flower and ornamental shrub business, which accounts for approximately $120 million a year. This number does not include the huge economic impact vineyards have made on Long Island; they are a $20-million-plus business that is growing each year. Field crops -- what remains of the potato crop, tomatoes, lettuce and other fruits and vegetables -- are worth approximately $20 million a year, according to state figures.

"When you see how much food is still grown out here, it surprises you," said Justine Wells, the Riverhead Town historian whose husband, Kenneth, farmed for years and whose son, Lyle, is continuing the family tradition on his Aquebogue farm. Wellses have been farming on the North Fork continuously since the 1640s -- an unbroken chain of flesh and blood history. But Lyle Wells' farm is dramatically different today and has evolved towards more economically viable crops. He gave up potatoes long ago and his now growing more than two dozen crops, including a number of kinds of lettuce, herbs and products for restaurants.

After the Europeans acquired the land from the Indians, the farms were tiny, meant mainly to support a single family. "The farming in the 17th Century and well into the 18th Century was largely subsistence farming," said Antonia Booth, the Southold Town historian. No journal or diary exists that would help present-day Long Islanders understand how farmers lived and worked in the 17th Century. It is known they raised wheat, which some records suggest was sold in New York City, also corn, tobacco, cabbage and different kinds of beans. What these crops meant in dollars and cents is difficult to determine.

What historical records are available show that, up through the early 19th Century, many heads of households who farmed their land held other jobs -- coopers, carpenters, small business owners, government officials, wheelwrights, and fishermen. But this does not mean their farms were not profitable. A book called "Antiquities of Long Island," published in 1874, referring to the end of the 18th Century, says: ". . . Long Island then produced more of the means of human sustenance than all the rest of the province put together." Some of the crops then grown, the book says, included apples and grapes, which were sold in New York City on ships from Long Island's many harbors.

The biggest catalyst for growth of farming on Long Island was the extension of the Long Island Rail Road to the East End in the middle of the 19th Century. The railroad allowed them to ship their crops to the huge New York City market. A second major catalyst was the invention of mechanical potato diggers in the late 19th Century.

"Farming on Long Island was always a profitable industry," said Richard Wines, a historian and writer whose family began farming in Southold in the 1640s and still farms today, in Riverhead. "You can see it in their grand homes and huge barns. But the opening of the New York City markets allowed farming on Long Island to grow by leaps and bounds, and it allowed farmers to command high prices for their goods."

In the late 19th Century, railroad stops on the East End, particularly at Jamesport, were the business freight stations on the entire Long Island Rail Road. Huge quantities of cauliflower and stawberries were loaded onto trains and shipped to New York City.

"Farming was by far the biggest employer on Long Island for many generations," Wines added. "The economy of Long Island revolved around the farming industry. I think it remained a key industry . . . well into the 20th Century."

Today, new growers are reinventing the farming industry, even as building pressure has increased across the region. Old farm houses have become the chateaux of vintners, and old potato fields have sprouted modern glass greenhouses, with climates and growing conditions controlled by computers and robots.

Two Riverhead flower growers, Jack Van de Wetering, and his brother, Peter, together raise more than 170 million plants of all kinds at greenhouses in Baiting Hollow and Jamesport. Their facilities use computers and robots, but, said Jack Van de Wetering, are still not as technologically advanced as greenhouses in his native Holland.

What does the future hold for his kind of farming on Long Island?

"I think we are a very important part of the future," he said. "I see more and more growers like myself establishing themselves here. I can see more cut flowers. There is a growing demand for perennials. The whole horticulture industry is a very big thing for Long Island. The vineyards have made an important contribution by keeping land in agriculture, but the flower business is where the profits are."