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Farmers

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Volunteers from the Smithtown Children's Foundation deliver a produce box to a customer's car
Sujecki Farms prepares a truck for delivery
Farmer Ernie Herrington of Red Fox Organic Farms
A produce box sample from Sujecki Farms
A produce box sample from Red Fox Organic Farms
Local non-profit pivots fundraising effort and aids local farmers, community, and economy

The Smithtown Children’s Foundation has spent the last twelve years helping local residents in need. Funds are raised primarily by large gathering events. C0VID-19 has canceled all of those events for 2020. “We had to pivot just like every other business. Unfortunately, need is at an all-time high, when our funds are at an all-time low,” said Christine Fitzgerald, President, and Co-Founder of Smithtown Children’s Foundation. “We had to get creative.”

Farm to Trunk is the brainchild of SCF board member and former Nesconset Farmer’s Market Manager, Nancy Vallarella. “COVID related social media posts revealed local residents were ordering product from distributors that were sourcing produce from all over the country. With Long Island’s harvest approaching, why not organize a minimal contact delivery system that would help Long Island farmers, the local economy, and provide the consumer with the freshest, nutrient-packed produce available?” she said.

Red Fox Organic Farms, located on the property of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Brentwood, was the first Long Island farm to join this fundraising program. Jim Adams, Red Fox’s Farm Coordinator remarked,” We are thrilled and so grateful to be working with SCF. It’s just the connection we needed to begin sharing our food with the Long Island community.”

Smithtown resident Dawn Mohrmann has purchased the Red Fox Organic produce box for the past four weeks. “The Farm to Trunk Smithtown Children’s Foundation program has been an easy decision. A great foundation paired with great local, organic, farm-fresh food! Healthy produce for our family is what we look forward to every week,” said Mohrmann.

SCF’s Farm to Trunk will be bringing Sujecki Farms (Calverton), back to Smithtown as an additional produce provider for the Farm to Trunk Fundraiser. “Sujecki Farms has a following here in Smithtown. They have been an anchor in Smithtown’s Farmers’ Market history for over a decade,” said Vallarella. “They are a family that has been farming on Long Island for over 100 years. We welcome their products and are excited to continue to support their farming effort.”

All orders are placed directly with each farm and are delivered to Watermill Caterers, 711 Smithtown Bypass/Rt.347, Smithtown. Smithtown Children’s Foundation volunteers deliver the produce boxes to the customer’s car trunk from the southwest corner of the Watermill’s parking lot every Wednesday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. There is no on-going commitment. Consumers can order week to week.

Information on the program can be found on the Farm to Trunk — Smithtown Children’s Foundation Facebook.

Order links:

Red Fox Organic Farms — https://www.redfoxfarm.farm/product-page/red-fox-box

Sujecki Farms — https://www.sujeckifarms.com/product-page/smithtown-farm-to-trunk-veggie-box

Photos from Nancy Vallarella

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Activists demonstrate across the state in a 2013 rally for farmworkers’ rights. Photo from U. Roberto Romano

The road to fairness for farmworkers starts in Suffolk County.

Supporters of the Farm Workers Fair Labor Practices Act, as it has been known for the majority of its existence, which has spanned years and decades, will begin a 200-mile march to Albany on May 15, starting from Sen. John Flanagan’s (R-East Northport) office in Smithtown. A group called the Rural Migrant Ministry organized the March for Farmworker’s Justice. The group has been lobbying for better working and living conditions and benefits like overtime pay and health insurance for farmworkers, who Linda Obernauer, a volunteer with the ministry, said “live in fear” under “strongholds” from many farmers.

“The owners of the farm are the landlords — the owners of the housing,” Boris Martinez, a farmworker from a nursery in Patchogue, said through translator Katia Chapman in a phone interview Tuesday. Martinez is from El Salvador and has worked at the nursery for about two years, he said. “The owners only care that the housing is okay when inspection is going to come. They don’t care what state the housing is in, what condition the housing is in. It’s most likely that there will be at least 10 people living there.”

Nathan Berger is the main organizer of the march, which is a yearly occurrence. Participants march between 10 and 15 miles per day, stopping overnight to sleep at churches or at homes provided by volunteer host families. Obernauer said anyone is welcome to march, and they can join during any leg and participate for as many or as few miles as desired. Berger could not be reached for comment.

“We should all be involved in this,” Obernauer said in a phone interview Friday. “They are who we are but we don’t give them justice.”

Martinez said during a snowstorm last year many of the rooms in the housing provided by the owner of the farm where he works had leaks. Snow and water got inside of virtually all of the rooms. About 10 tenants share the home at a given time.

“The difficulty is that if we were to say to the owner that it’s not adequate housing he would send us out of the house to rent elsewhere because here when you work at his farm we don’t pay rent and it would be difficult to afford rent elsewhere,” Martinez said. “None of the workers are paid overtime pay. None of us have health insurance and if we get sick we don’t have the resources to pay for basic medical care. I know a lot of other workers in the area and none of them are paid overtime pay. Many of us don’t have a day of rest either. I’m right now working about 60 hours a week but when the weather warms up I’ll probably be working 67 or 68 hours.”

“The owners only care that the housing is okay when inspection is going to come.”
­— Boris Martinez

Martinez added he has friends who work upward of 80 hours a week.

“Those in power, they don’t care how we’re doing as workers, what they care about is the money that we’re producing for them,” he said.

An anonymous website, located at www.nyfarmworkerprotectionbill.com, provides the farmers’ perspective on the seemingly never-ending battle. An attempt to contact the purveyor of the website was unsuccessful. The email associated is no longer active.

“[The Rural Migrant Ministry] and others have recruited various celebrities and ‘foodies’ to support the bill, as well as downstate/New York City legislators, most of whom have never even been to a farm,” the site says. “We believe these individuals have been misled and have not done the proper research to find out the truth about farms, growers, farmworkers, and the challenges we face to bring fresh food to as many tables as possible.”

State Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan (D-Queens) is the sponsor of the bill in its current form. The site suggests increased rights and benefits for farmworkers would take a financial toll on farmers’ businesses.

“What we are talking about are five or six exemptions to state labor law,” the site states. “These exemptions, like the one for overtime pay exist because of the production and marketing realities associated with farming. Farming does not take place in an enclosed building with a regulated environment. We have a limited time to plant and harvest. If overtime is enacted, farmers will have to cut hours during the growing season so as to afford the extra hours needed at planting and harvest times which can’t be avoided.”

Flanagan was a sponsor of the bill during his time in the State Assembly in the early 2000s. Since being elected to the State Senate in 2002 he has publicly supported the bill. However, despite becoming the GOP majority leader in 2015, the bill remains before the Labor Committee and has yet to pass the Senate. Flanagan did not respond to multiple requests for comment through his public relations personnel.

Jose Ventura, another farmworker from Guatemala who lives on Long Island, said his living and working conditions are not bad, but he also does not receive overtime or health benefits. He will be participating in the march.

“I’m participating in the march because even though, as I said, I like my job, I also see my friends, my companions that they are not always treated well,” Ventura said in a phone interview Tuesday through Chapman as a translator. “On their farms they’re not always paid fairly. There’s a lot of Guatemalan farmworkers and some of them are mistreated in the job and while I feel that this march is for the benefit of my people, therefore I feel motivated to be a part of the movement.”

Martinez, who also plans to participate in the march, said he knows his value and plans to fight for it.

“Farmworkers are the most important workers in every country because they’re the ones producing the food for the country.”

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Before Terryville residents dropped off their mail in Port Jefferson Station, they had the Terryville Post Office. Pictured above, that latter post office during the early 20th century. Photo from the Port Jefferson Village historical archive

Terryville residents now get their mail service from the Port Jefferson Station post office, but they used to go to their own little outpost at the home of the postmaster.

Before Terryville residents dropped off their mail in Port Jefferson Station, they had the Terryville Post Office. Pictured above, that latter post office during the early 20th century. Photo from the Port Jefferson Village historical archive
Before Terryville residents dropped off their mail in Port Jefferson Station, they had the Terryville Post Office. Pictured above, that latter post office during the early 20th century. Photo from the Port Jefferson Village historical archive

The Port Jefferson Village historical archive puts the operation dates of the Terryville Post Office as 1888 to 1918 and from 1924 to 1958. That first stretch of years coincided with a time when the eponymous Terry family was flourishing in the area.

The four Terry brothers moved in from Farmingville to farm around Old Town Road, Jayne Boulevard and the street that would later become Terryville Road, and built homes in what was once a wooded area, according to George Moraitis.

Members of the Terry family are buried at Cedar Hill Cemetery, and the late Moraitis, formerly the cemetery’s historian, included biographical information on them in his written history “Forevermore on Cedar Hill.” Moraitis noted that the third-born brother, Thomas R. Terry, helped start a local school district in 1874 and served as its first board president before offering his home on Terryville Road — by Viceroy Place, near what is now Comsewogue’s Terryville Road Elementary School — to serve as a post office. His cousin’s son, Preston Terry, was the first postmaster.

The Terryville Union Hall had been erected just a year before, in 1887.

Though the post office had that brief stint between 1918 and 1924 when it was not in operation, it stayed in the family when it reopened. According to Moraitis, Ruth Terry, the daughter-in-law of Thomas R. Terry through son Harry, was its final postmaster. She was once a teacher in the school system her father-in-law had started decades earlier and had grown up in one of the original homes on Terryville Road’s southern end.

Before Terryville residents dropped off their mail in Port Jefferson Station, they had the Terryville Post Office. Pictured above, that latter post office during the early 20th century. Photo from the Port Jefferson Village historical archive
Before Terryville residents dropped off their mail in Port Jefferson Station, they had the Terryville Post Office. Pictured above, that latter post office during the early 20th century. Photo from the Port Jefferson Village historical archive

Harry and Ruth Terry, who also served as Comsewogue School District treasurers, hosted the post office from the early 1950s until 1957, when it merged with the one in Port Jefferson Station.

According to a history of the area included in Brookhaven Town’s 2008 Comsewogue hamlet study, the couple’s residence was on the southeast corner of Terryville Road and Whitman Avenue, which would put it across the street from the post office’s original home, at Thomas R. Terry’s house.

The study history quotes neighbor Audrey Agnew, who describes someone named Mr. Jersey who lived up the street and would “transport Terryville’s mail from [the] Port Jefferson train station to Ms. Terry.”

“When the post office was eliminated, we were promised that we could keep ‘Terryville’ as our address,” Agnew said.

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