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Farming Takes Root

With careful cultivation, a living and a way of life grew

By Bill Bleyer | Staff Writer

Local farmers didn't impress John Johnston when he toured Long Island in 1860.

"The greater part of the farmers appeared to be at least a half century behind the age," the upstate farmer sniffed in a letter published in Country Gentleman and Cultivator magazine. "The land I think is excellent . . . but a good deal of it badly cultivated, or not cultivated at all, having been tilled as long as it would bear crops."

Unfortunately, Johnson was right when it came to western Long Island. In the late 1700s, some of that soil was depleted and fertility was declining on the rest of the Island as well.

As a result of poor farming methods, farmers were left with declining wheat yields after the turn of the century. In contrast, there is strong evidence that eastern Long Island retained its more fertile soil and farmers quickly embraced techniques to keep it that way.

As it was in colonial times, farming was more than the backbone of the local economy -- it was a way of life for about one of every five residents.

Working alone or in pairs, farmers tended an average 18 acres of crops on a 100-acre farm. They spent as much time fertilizing as they did cultivating and harvesting. And they rotated crops.

The largest cultivated crop was Indian corn, totaling 773,549 bushels a year on the Island, followed by oats and potatoes, according to the 1840 census. Farmers also produced wheat, hay, rye, barley, flax, cucumbers, cauliflower, pumpkins and cranberries. They raised livestock as well. There were about 15,000 horses and mules, 42,395 cattle, 73,326 sheep and 50,412 pigs. Later, farmers would raise ducks.

The animals provided farmers a valuable byproduct: manure. It was so highly prized as fertilizer that it showed up in an estate inventory appraised for almost as much as a 2-year-old horse.

Ezra L'Hommedieu, a wealthy Southold farmer and state legislator, experimented with using seaweed and shells to improve soil fertility. Soon, other farmers also turned to seaweed and shells as well as fish, ashes and bonemeal.

Northville farmer Noah Youngs spent 11 days carting dung and four days plowing it into the soil before planting wheat, he noted in his 1822 diary. He also worked three days collecting seaweed and in the spring he spent more than 36 days repairing nets and catching menhaden, a bait fish, for fertilizer.

East End farmers practiced crop rotation -- alternating potatoes, corn, buckwheat and oats with wheat, grass and clover. They also were quick to add equipment. Youngs owned a threshing machine by 1835. Reapers began to show up before 1855.

Farm communities were self-sufficient. Farmers produced almost everything they needed, with the exception of molasses, sugar, salt, spices, rum, iron and lime, said Justine Wells, Riverhead town historian. Most farmers worked at other trades; one of Wells' ancestors, for example, was also a coffin-maker.

Many farmers on eastern Long Island bartered with neighbors or sold their products locally because the limited New York City and Brooklyn markets were supplied by farms in western Long Island, New Jersey and along the Hudson River. The two products these farmers did ship to the city were cordwood and charcoal. Youngs' diary records 38 days spent cutting and transporting cordwood.

The Long Island Rail Road's arrival in Greenport in 1844 expanded farmers' access to city markets. Hay to feed city horses became East End farmers' biggest cash crop.

Wheat was a major crop for a brief time starting in colonial days. But when President George Washington toured Long Island in 1790, he saw little wheat "on acct. of the fly." He was referring to the Hessian fly, so named because supposedly it came from Europe with grain imported with Hessian mercenaries during the Revolution.

First detected in Brooklyn in 1779, the fly eventually spread as far as California. But it stopped destroying local fields after a Flushing farmer named Underhill obtained a southern strain of wheat that proved resistant.

By the end of the century, wheat was being produced more cheaply in the West. Long Island farmers then shifted to potatoes. Potatoes went on to become the premier crop in Riverhead for more than a century.

Cauliflower and strawberries also became important crops. Cranberries from Cape Cod were introduced at the end of the Civil War, first in the Sayville-Patchogue area and later in Calverton and Manorville.

But it was ducks and pickles that would join potatoes as Long Island's most famous exports. Farmers raised White Pekin ducks around Moriches and Riverhead. Farmers in Greenlawn grew cucumbers, which were cured into pickles at several area processing plants.

Whatever they grew, 18th-Century farmers relied heavily on "hard handwork," said Kenneth Wells, 77, a 10th generation Riverhead farmer. And so did their descendents. "When I grew up, we didn't have a tractor; we had horses," he said. "The hoe was the main tool."