Dairy Farms of East Hampton

Esperanza and Irwin discuss the proliferation of dairy farms on the east end in the not too distant past. If you define a dairy as any farm with more than eight cows, there were once 42 operational dairy farms in East Hampton alone, according to the East Hampton Farm Museum. At that time, “most of the milk was for local consumption,” said Robert Hefner, historic preservation consultant for East Hampton Village. By the 1960s, most dairies on the East End had been shuttered, with the last two operating into the early 1980s—Carwytham Farm in Bridgehampton and Cow Neck Farm in North Sea. We'll focus primarily in East Hampton with the Sherril, Hardscrabble, and Dune Alpin Farms. The dialogue about the Gould and Tillinghast farms, and their subsequent merger to form G&T took us to a side story: the beloved G&T Chicken House on Race Lane.