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By: Adina Genn July 8, 2022 Comments Off on Family growers plant their future on Long Island

In Long Island farm country, it’s easy to get swept up in its rolling vistas, the rhythm of hard work, the generations of family and community.

But farming takes grit. And for many growers, the cycle of planting and harvesting is in their blood. They were raised tilling soil, or someone close to them did. Some have been farming their whole lives, while others explored opportunities outside of agriculture only to turn to the land to plant their future in farming.

“If you love what you do, it’s not work,” said Kareem Massoud, who spent time on Wall Street before returning to the East End to make wine at Paumanok Vineyard in Aquebogue, and now Palmer Vineyard in Riverhead. He is also president of Long Island Wine Country.

The work, he said, is “laborious, tedious, monotonous” and sometimes “heartbreaking.”

Quoting his father, Charles Massoud, who with his wife, Ursula, founded Paumanok, Kareem Massoud said: “Winemaking is less of an art and more of a partnership with Mother Nature – and she’s the senior partner.”

KAREEM MASSOUD quotes his father to say: ‘Winemaking is less of an art and more of a partnership with Mother Nature – and she’s the senior partner.’ Courtesy of Hirsch Media

Fred Giachetti, a real-estate attorney who with his wife Lisa owns Del Vino Vineyards in Northport, which is expanding into Riverhead, agreed.

Winemaking, he said, “is a labor of love.”

Any farmer can relate. One bad hail storm, drought or blight after a year’s hard work, and growers could instantly lose their crops.

Long Island is home to more than 30,000 acres in production, with more than 21,000 acres preserved for farmland in perpetuity, according to George Hirsch, a chef and author who has tracked East End farms for decades.

There are more than 550 farms in operation, some dating back 13 generations, according to Hirsch. And there is a diversity of farms – some are more than 400 acres, some less than one acre. The region produces a diversity of crops, with more than 7,000 acres devoted to fruits and vegetables, and more than 3,000 acres to wine-grapes.

Tilling the soil now are “next-generation farmers,” said Hirsch, whose show “George Hirsch Lifestyle” airs on PBS/Public Television Stations, while his radio show of the same name airs on WLIW FM.

Once comprising mostly potato farms, today’s farming landscape is dotted with vineyards, vacation homes, an influx of year-round residents, day laborers and congestion. While there’s a ready market for farm-fresh ingredients, there are also complaints about noise from the generator pumps and tractors and sometimes the odors coming off a working farm.

But, Hirsch said, “there needs to be a certain amount of respect,” adding that farmers “were here far before any of the general population.”

And in an age of technology, farmers, he said, have new possibilities at their fingertips, including growing crops hydroponically and vertically.  After all, “bending in the hot sun takes its toll. The manpower isn’t there.”

When Eric Sepenoski, who is fourth-generation at Seps Farm in East Marion, grew up in the 1980s, more than 30 Puerto Rican men lived and worked on the family farm from spring until fall. This strategy would become prohibitive, as the cost of living rose and new OSHA rules took hold. His father and grandfather cultivated 400 acres in Orient, East Marion and Southold. And the women in the family managed 20 greenhouses of annuals and perennials, and the farm stands. His grandmother also handled the “underappreciated side of farming,” the bookwork, as the paperwork grew “increasingly complicated” with required documented reports, he said.

With his family farming at a time when Long Island was one of the nation’s top producers of potatoes, Sepenoski, now also a Southold trustee, knows all too well the hardships growers face from natural elements and market pressures.

From his dad, Sepenoski grew up on stories from the 1960s when “everyone’s potatoes rotted in the barns,” he said. At the time “society took a blow,” he said, as collectively the lives of potato farmers revolved around the crop, from planting seeds to watering to harvesting.

That saga “stunned and disoriented an entire generation in agriculture,” Sepenoski said. “My father, a kid at the time, had thought that farming could go on as it was forever.”

It was time to diversify, and the Sepenoski family started growing cucumbers and peppers.

Next, the selling model would change.

“Years ago, farmers would sell through Hunts Point Market with primarily a single commodity such as potatoes, cauliflower, corn and broccoli,” Hirsch said.

It took resources to pack up produce and then bring it all to Hunts Points.

There, buyers were “trying to get you to accept the cheapest price – you were hostage to a middleman,” Sepenoski said.

Now, “farmers are more focused on their local community area, attracting a client base via their farm stands and CSAs [community supported agriculture],” Hirsch said. “They sell a wide selection of fresh produce and curated items from their farm.”

GEORGE HIRSCH: ‘Farmers are more focused on their local community area, attracting a client base via their farm stands and CSAs.’ Courtesy of Hirsch Media

In Sepenoski’s family, it seemed “there was always someone working harder. Your values as a moral person hinges on the ability to labor,” he said.

It’s a work ethic to which Massoud seemingly relates. His parents purchased a potato farm to convert into a vineyard when he was 10.

“I was child labor, walking in my father’s footsteps, planting,” he said. “It was boring.”

A winemaking uncle of Massoud’s mother came over from Germany and “was instrumental” in getting the vineyard going.

By the time he was a junior at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Massoud had cultivated a new appreciation for vineyard life.

“I talked to my parents. I was so excited about what they started and said, ‘I want to work for you.’ They were like, ‘Woah, that’s not why we sent you to an Ivy League,’” he said. His parents had risked a lot to start the vineyard, and they wanted to ensure Massoud had a steady future on his own.

On a Wall Street track, Massoud spent two years at a private equity firm, and then left the field. He traveled a bit, and used his family’s home as a base.  Whenever possible, even during his time on Wall Street, he worked in the tasting room, at harvest, wherever he could help.  Ultimately, that temporary status became permanent. Today, it’s a multigenerational vineyard, which had long been the plan, with his parents still involved, as are his brothers.

Sepenoski, who always did well in school, began to live in two worlds: farming and academia. He would farm in the summer, running a farm stand in Shelter Island, and pitch in planting, harvesting and packing.

But as he pursued higher education, he did a semester at sea, where he met his future wife. Later, he lived and worked in Sierra, Nevada, and spent time with Habitat for Humanity house in the Dominican Republic, serving as a translator. He went to graduate school in Boston, ultimately earning his PhD in English rhetoric and composition from Northeastern University.

“It’s good to get away from farming,” said Sepenoski, who taught writing, and wrote his dissertation on North Fork farming, striving to help farmers educate the public about their work.

Throughout, the “farm just rolled on under the same momentum,” he said.  In spring, “we’d say, ‘what are we doing – let’s throw our hands up and walk away,’” as the way of doing business grew more burdensome. But then, “we’d order seeds, and the farm would start flourishing. It’s just as much work to plant a few seeds as a lot.”

Since Sepenoski’s grandfather died in 2001, the family scaled back, now running Seps Farm in East Marion, where the season extends to Christmas. The farm – which now grows a variety of items from beets to onions to kale and more – preserves and processes its crops into jams, pickles and pies.

A family dynamic too is present at Del Vino.

“My wife’s family in Italy are winemakers – they have a vineyard,” Giachetti said. “They taught me how to grow the grapes and make the wine.”

The Giachettis recently closed on the $850,000 purchase of the Krupski Farm, a 30-acre property of pastureland land, which is agriculturally preserved, will be converted to vineyards in Riverhead. Previously, the soil was used to grow rye, wheat, barley and other crops, Giachetti said.

Giachetti said he contracted with vineyard manager Steven Mudd, who is getting the property ready for next year.  The purchase allows Del Vino to become more vertically integrated by farming more fruit from their vineyards. At the Riverhead property, Del Vino plans to add a new tasting room, slated to open in 2024.

This 30-acre property of pastureland land will be converted to vineyards in Riverhead for Del Vino Vineyards. Courtesy of Del Vino Vineyards

With new innovations at the ready, the farmers take a measured approach.

Massoud said that Paumonok was the first winery on Long Island to introduce the screw-caps, and an early adopter of solar panels. And while they may sometimes experiment with winemaking, “our goals and philosophy are the same – to grow the highest quality wine.”

Sepenoski, too, is discerning, having turned down an investor who approached him about filling the barn with LED lights to grow greens in winter to sell to New York City restaurants.

“I’m not opposed to technology,” he said. But “it’s a double-edge sword …  why do we want to work year-round, farming?” Winter has long provided that much-needed time to regroup before the next growing season.

He has other ideas about his resources.

“It’s about keeping the land working, providing food locally and young people can get a job,” he said.

For Giachetti, the vineyard has been “a place of celebration,” where more than 625 young men proposed to their brides, and that hosted “over 500 wedding anniversary parties of 25 years or more,” Giachetti said.

Owning a vineyard has transcended into community-building, he said, “in a way that is greater than we ever realized.”

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