Round Swamp Farm has become a mecca, from May to December, for anyone who embraces locally sourced food and loves home cooking (home cooking, that is, with a sophisticated twist). And the successful business has preserved a fishing and farming way of life for a family whose roots have grown here on land and sea for three centuries.
The Dreams and Despairs of Peter Beard HE WORKS OBSESSIVELY every night, often till the sun comes over his compound: the farthest-out home on Long Island’s South Fork. Hours later, after a restless sleep, Peter Beard walks out to the edge of the bluff, sits on a boulder, and watches the birds wheel and keen over the sea. “I always feel better,” he says, “when I’ve done a bit of this.”
Fighting Fake FarmsHE HAS ONE of the last great farms in the Hamptons, 33 acres in Wainscott north of old Main Street, and he is, in fact, East Hampton's last bona fide potato farmer. Strong and healthy at 58, Peter Dankowski plans to work those acres —and 400 more that he leases between Mecox and Amagansett —another decade or so. But at some point, he'll have to sell, and when he does, he fears farming here will cease.
Whale Off!Even as EAST observes and celebrates this region as it is today, we are rooted in the past. We intend for EAST to stand out as the magazine for people who feel easternmost Long Island is home - could be your only or your second or third home, but home.