Chicken or Egg: A Farm May Disturb Hamptons-Adjacent Rusticity

It’s a conceit on the East End of Long Island, N.Y., that the agricultural character of the area should be preserved. Attempts to do that go back half a century, to when land values rose to the point that farm families wanted to sell out to subdividers. But the gloss of today’s version–mostly vineyards and boutique row crops–obscures the sometimes noxious aspects of living near active plant and animal raising, which earlier generations accepted. A particular rub has developed in the North Fork town of Southold, where a 16-acre plot that had been legally preserved–though it apparently had not been farmed in that same half a century–was bought by someone who plans to tend 6,000 hens on it. Some nearby homeowners, who may have been attracted by proximity to the fallow acreage, are screaming about elements of the intended egg (or chicken) operation. As the latest East End Beacon story on the controversy explains, some unusual twists to Grant Callahan’s application exist, but then ag preserves often involve the unexpected, as on the South Fork or “Hamptons.” (Who knew that trees or horses could be a problem?) Such are the vexations in some of America’s most valuable precincts.

Furor Continues Over Southold Chicken Farm