North Fork Foodie Tour adds new farms and producers

Sunday marks the 17th anniversary of the North Fork Foodie Tour, the annual self-guided exploration of the North Fork’s agricultural and culinary treasures.

Ticket holders have access to 20 venues, as well as the opportunity to meet farmers, artisans and chefs who turn the region's bounty into some of Long Island’s most celebrated foods.

This year the tour includes a number of locations farther west — seven in the town of Riverhead alone — so that visitors from up-Island spend less time fighting weekend traffic.

New to the lineup this year are Red Barn Farm in Baiting Hollow, where you can meet and learn about Andean alpacas; Lavender by the Bay in Calverton, Long Island’s best-smelling farm; 1760 Homestead Farm in Riverhead, offering raw honey, free-range eggs, heirloom produce and Concord grape pie; Matchbook Distilling Co. in Greenport, producer of bespoke spirits; and North Fork Chocolate Company in Riverhead, chocolatier extraordinaire and Long Island’s only bean-to-bar chocolate maker.

Tour-goers can chart their own course for the afternoon, using the map as a guide to take advantage of special tours and demos planned for the day.

Returning participants include Castello di Borghese in Cutchogue, founded in 1973 as Hargrave Vineyard, Long Island’s first winery, and purchased by the Borghese family in 1998; Mattituck Mushrooms, growing shiitake, king trumpet, pioppino, lions mane, maitake and pink, yellow and blue oysters; Goodale Farm in Riverhead, Long Island’s only full-scale dairy farm; KK’s The Farm in Southold, our only biodynamic farm; Sang Lee Farms in Peconic and Satur Farms in Cutchogue, the granddaddies of North Fork organic farming.

The tour's headquarters is Peconic Land Trust's Charnews Farm in Southold where speakers will be featured on the half-hour beginning at 10:30 a.m. Learn about the current state of Peconic Bay scallops from aquaculturist Harrison Tobi; and watch chef Allison Katz of Ali Katz Bakery and Food Shop assemble a seasonal North Fork salad and discuss her journey from Manhattan to Mattituck.

The Foodie Tour is organized by the North Fork Reform Synagogue. This year’s tour is dedicated to the memory of Kay Freeman, who served as co-chair from its inception in 2007.