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Groceries Delivered With a Dash of Love

Wed, 04/01/2020 - 23:06

 Round Swamp Farm helps the homebound

Durell Godfrey

After her grandson’s wedding in Italy was foiled by the Covid-19 crisis, Carolyn Snyder and her family, the owners of Round Swamp Farm in East Hampton, decided to spread some love here at home by delivering homemade soups and groceries, including chickens, eggs, milk, and pantry staples, to those who are housebound.     

Brian Niggles, Ms. Snyder’s grandson, and his fiancée, Laura Sisco, had spent months preparing for their wedding, but as the big day drew near “they kept watching what was happening in Italy and it was a nightmare,” said Ms. Snyder. “Then they got a license to get married in East Hampton but the churches closed.”     

With just three days of planning, the couple arranged to have the wedding at a favorite vacation spot in Maine. “It was glorious,” Ms. Snyder said.     

While making their way back from Maine, the family, which also operates markets in East Hampton and Montauk, decided they needed to help their community during the pandemic. The whole clan pitched in, including Ms. Snyder’s daughters, Lisa Niggles and Shelly Schaffer, their husbands, Charlie Niggles and Al Schaffer, and their children, Steven and Jimmy Niggles and Alexa and Nick Shaffer, as well as the newlyweds.     

“At first, they thought they’d just make soup and bread, but then they realized they had to do much more,” said Ms. Snyder. So far, the family has delivered more than 1,000 quarts of soup and hundreds of pounds of produce to over 300 families between Montauk and Southampton, she said.     

Ms. Snyder, a member of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton, used a church directory to compile a roster for deliveries. “I started looking at people I knew were alone and who might need help,” she said. “It didn’t matter if someone was rich or poor, it’s where there was a need.”     

Her friends Sandy Conklin, Sandra Vorpahl, and Connie Thomas added names to the list, and the food was quickly dispersed. “Jimmy Niggles delivered everything by truck, working 10 to 12 hours a day,” Ms. Snyder said, and Dee Greene, the manager of the farm’s Montauk market, dropped the bags off on the recipients’ doorsteps.     

“One woman sobbed, and another man said, ‘I can’t believe someone would do this for me,’” ­Ms. Snyder said. She described the effort as a “labor of love from a family that cares.”     

“It makes me happy and proud of my family,” she said.

Others Doing Good Deeds     

The Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton is joining with the food pantry in that hamlet to provide groceries for those in need during the pandemic, Leah Oppenheimer, the museum’s director of community outreach, announced on Tuesday. “Many families throughout the East End, particularly in the Spanish-speaking population, have been devastated economically during this health crisis,” she said. “We’re incredibly grateful to work with Tom O’Brien, Eileen Zito, and the Bridgehampton Food Pantry to address some of their immediate needs, namely ensuring everyone has enough to eat.”     

The East Hampton Clericus has donated $2,000 to food pantries here and to Meals on Wheels, it announced on Tuesday. “Those who live paycheck to paycheck and are now out of work may be only weeks away from not being able to feed their families,” the organization, which is made up of church and synagogue leaders on the South Fork, said in a prepared statement. “It is essential that we take to heart the meaning of being one’s brother’s keeper and turn those words into action.”     

John Gosman Jr., an owner of Gosman’s Seafood Restaurant in Montauk, donated 20 pounds of lobster to the emergency room staff at Huntington Hospital. “The point was recognizing the fact that they’re putting themselves under a lot of stress as well as danger,” Mr. Gosman said. “Why shouldn’t we step up? We’re a business on Long Island; we depend on all the people in health services to keep us safe when we get sick, God forbid. Talk is talk. Action is divine.”


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