BY Eileen Duffy

No turkeys this year

After losing their entire flock of chicks, or baby turkeys, in a fire, Garden of Eve in Riverhead will not be selling heritage birds for Thanksgiving any longer.

This year would have been the fourth year, says Eve Kaplan-Walbrecht, who runs the organic farm with her husband Chris.

Last year, the Kaplan-Walbrechts sold around 100 turkeys, each of which had been reserved by customers hoping to serve a local bird for the holiday.

The turkeys were Bourbon Reds, which the couple got from a hatchery in Kansas when they were one-day old. Although they made common appearances on American tables a century ago, the flavorful Bourbon Reds were nearly driven to extinction by more industrial Butterball-style gobblers until they were resurrected by a grassroots resurgence of interest in old breeds of vegetables and animals.

“It was a lot of work,” says Kaplan-Walbrecht, “we liked eating them, but raising them was tough. They’re very fragile.”

Other local farms raise turkeys, but heritage birds are harder to find. Singing Bird Farm in Bellport (631.874.0448), run by Dan Morris and his wife, Marilyn, sell only 20 birds per year.

Garden of Eve will provide organic food over the winter, however, with their once-per-month winter share, which will include stored items like sweet potatoes, potatoes, onions and beets. The share, which this year will last from December through May, also includes two dozen eggs per month.

To find out about the share, visit www.gardenofevefarm.com or call 631.523.6608.

Wine dinnnners

Whether at the American Hotel in Sag Harbor, the North Fork Table and Inn in Southold, or the Jamesport Manor Inn in Jamesport, wine dinners continue to be a way for wineries and local restaurants to reach out to new consumers, while extolling the virtue of eating, and drinking,
locally.

This summer, in anticipation of its 80th anniversary next year, the Montauk Yacht Club held one dinner per month at its Lighthouse Grill, combining local food and wine from Wölffer Estate, Bedell Cellars and Raphael with local artists. The dinners, at $80 per ticket, were sold out, says a spokesperson for the restaurant, and the final installment of the season will be held October 30.

631.668.3100, montaukyachtclub.com

Paumanok Vineyards in Aquebogue held a variety of wine dinners at local restaurants over the summer to celebrate their 25th year in business. The last will be at the Jamesport Manor on November 7. This is a part of a series of wine, and beer, dinners at Jamesport Manor. A pairing of food and beer from the Southampton Publick House was held earlier this month. Subsequent monthly dinners featuring Pellegrini Vineyards, Waters Crest and Macari Vineyards are already on the calendar.

Call Jamesport Manor Inn 631.722.0500 for information and reservations.

Fruit Moth Interrupted

Shoppers searching for local apples and peaches will be glad to know that several East End growers are experimenting with a simple, but elegant, technique to eliminate pesticide spraying for a ubiquitous bug that can render fruit unmarketable.

To combat the Oriental fruit moth, technicians with the agricultural stewardship program at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County have been attaching twist ties soaked in a synthetic pheromone to the branches of fruit trees. The female-mimicking pheromone effectively confuses the male moths so much so that they cannot find a female to mate. The forsaken females do not lay eggs that produce the larvae that bore their way into fresh shoots and young fruit: the proverbial worm in the apple.

“Even after 2 years, the grower who first tried it has seen his moth population go down substantially, and he has been able to cut down the number of sprays,” says Lea Loizos, the agricultural stewardship technician who visits the trial farms, counting moth populations each week. “The hope is next year he won’t even have to spray.” When Loizos recently asked a peach grower in his second year of the trial if he was happy with the results so far and how his crop was looking, his short, but enthusiastic, replies were “Yeah!” and “Great!”

The benefits of the twist-tie program, which calls for about 100 per acre, are that they need only be applied once per season. In contrast, traditional pesticides require repeated applications, moths have shown an ability to build up resistance, and some of pesticides ultimately miss the pest and end up in the air, soil and groundwater.

J. King’s Farmers Market

J. King, the Holtsville-based food distributor, will continue holding its Long Island farmers market into the fall.

The market, which is held on the lawn of the distributor’s headquarters, has been featuring produce of East End farmers like Latham’s in Orient, Satur Farms of Cutchogue, Deer Run Farms of Brookhaven, Fox Hollow Farms of Calverton, Flora Greenhouses of Mattituck, and Wells Family Farms and Schmidt Farms, both of Riverhead.

Paulette Satur of Satur Farms says she has been using J. King as a distributor and thinks the market was a natural idea. The stands are near the company’s warehouses with commercial refrigerators that keep her specialty produce, like the fall items leeks and celery root, fresh.

One incentive for the market, says a J. King spokesperson, was to make every trip by the company’s trucks worthwhile. J. King’s delivers to local supermarkets and wanted to have their truck full on the trip back to headquarters. Aside from consumers, J. King’s goal was to attract chefs and put local produce on the menus of Long Island restaurants.

The market is at 700 Furrows Road in Holtsville and represents more than 35 local farms. It is open Wednesday through Saturday, from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m.

Wine bar starts at Roanoke

Local wine blogger Lenn Thompson of lenndevours.com will be hosting what he hopes will be a quarterly event at Roanoke Vineyards in Riverhead on October 19 from 2 to 5 p.m.

Lenndevours Wine Bar @ Roanoke Vineyards will feature two unreleased wines: Roanoke Vineyard’s 2005 Gabby’s Field Cabernet Franc and Lieb Family Cellars’s 2007 Pinot Blanc. There will be Mediterranean food, discounts on wine by the glass and attendance by members of the local and national wine industry. Thompson plans to live-blog the event.

In addition, proceeds from the event—including ticket sales and raffles of Roanoke library selections—will benefit Peconic Land Trust.

Thompson says the idea came after a discussion with the owners of Roanoke, who wanted to put together an event that would feature local wine and allow customers to taste wines not yet available to the public, their own and wine from other Long Island wineries. The Wine Bar will benefit a different charity each time.

Tickets are $10 ahead of time and $15 at the door. For more information call Roanoke, 3543 Sound Avenue in Riverhead, at 631.727.4161.

BBQ

A fter seven years of cooking and selling their Pit Bull Hot Sauce, Bay Shore residents Manny Ortiz and Lisa Anziano will be working with New York State farmers, including Brier Hill in Johnsonville, NY, to supply their Serrano, cayenne and Tabasco peppers. New York State garlic will be next.

In 2001, after encouragement from friends, the couple started to bottle their homemade hot sauce, a concoction that appealed to both their tastes. “Manny’s Puerto Rican and I’m Italian,” says Anziano. “He’d make rice and beans, and I’d always say, ‘Where’s the sauce?’” They based their recipe on sweet Asian sauces as opposed to vinegary sauces from the South.

Soon they were spending every weekend away from home selling their sauce at shows or making it in their Bay Shore factory, where one employee helps with the bottling.

The couple has pit bulls and says their sauce is a metaphor for the breed—strong but sweet. Part of their proceeds goes to pit bull rescue organizations.

Each year, Pit Bull Hot Sauce has come out with a new and sometimes hotter version and now makes rubs and fruit-based sauces.

The couple takes advantage of a food marketing program, the Pride of New York, operated by the State Department of Agriculture and Markets, to put their product on shelves of small stores and in some of the tasting rooms and farm stands on the East End. Their production is not quite up to the point to supply supermarkets, says Anziano.

“But we’re looking to put a pit bull in every refrigerator,” she says.