In the hypermarket that is today’s Hamptons real estate, a property bordering on an agricultural reserve has a powerful selling point. Anyone with a few million can have a McMansion, but is your vista protected from somebody else’s development?
Still, there are reserves, and then there are reserves. And what I picked up from a conversation this week with John vH Halsey, president of the Peconic Land Trust, is that most “farmland” held in reserves on the East End of Long Island, N.Y., is not actually tilled soil, the kind of pastoral setting that might come to mind. In fact, he says, in all of the 89,728 acres that is Southampton town, only 300 are fully and officially kept for cultivation. The rest in reserve has been set aside in various land arrangements that can be a far cry from the farmland-preservation goal that has animated Suffolk County citizenry–if not always farmers themselves–for at least half a century. (Many farm families were most keen, instead, on keeping their property options.)
It was in the early 1970s that the weekend-luxury rush to the Hamptons took off, and with it the loss of its rich Bridgehampton loam soil to those homebuyers, to forced sales for estate and property taxes, and to the middling returns from potatoes and dairy. Much preservation effort–or artifice–has followed from that, with Halsey’s Trust group involved in many of the genuine deals. (It also looks after woodlands and watersheds.)
These days, depending on the several legal structures available, one may see not row crops but amusements for kids or adults (wineries, golf), boutique horse stables or–most likely–“tree farms.” This last category means commercial nurseries, serving the now-huge home landscaping industry on Long Island’s South Fork, especially.
It is an irony not lost on Halsey and others that the decades of actions meant to safeguard the character of the Hamptons, by such measures as rezonings intended to ward off suburbanization, have supercharged the high-end property market. This in turn fostered the demand for great gardens and screened parcels that summons the landscape designers and endless work crews that call on the satellite nurseries. (They also add considerably to the stunning daily “trade parade” of traffic from west on Long Island.)
It can be argued that the result adds much beauty to the Hamptons (the now-ubiquitous “green giant” trees being a basis for dissent). But it’s a far cry from the mid-20th Century character of the area that many idealize, and that motivated the “save the farmlands” campaigns.
At the same time, the incredible wealth concentration on the East End has generated much charitable giving to the Peconic Land Trust to do its work, while also amassing a huge tax kitty from property sales since 1999 for set-aside acquisitions by town governments in the area. The Hamptons cycles, virtuous or not, go on. –June 27, 2025
Tim W. Ferguson 