Inside Youngs Farm, one of Long Island's oldest working farms, in Old Brookville

When Paula Youngs Weir was 9 and her sister, Jo-Hana, was 12, they asked their father if they could set up a little stand by the telephone pole on Hegemans Lane. It was 1960 and John Youngs ran a 250-acre truck farm — that is, one devoted to growing produce for local markets and farm stands.

The girls noticed that sometimes there wasn’t room on the truck for all the family grew and, Paula recalled, "We thought, ‘Why not try to sell it by the side of the road to people driving by?’ Our father said that we could keep any money that we made, and, at the end of the summer, we had made $1,000."

The next summer, their dad built a small wooden farm stand set back from the street, and Youngs Farm’s retail operation was officially launched.

During the ’70s, the sisters, now working full time at the farm, noticed there were plenty of fruits and vegetables that were too irregular or damaged to sell. "We thought, ‘Why not start making jam and baked goods?’ Those peaches were fine for pies, we could use the carrots for carrot cake." Then they created an annex adjacent to the fresh produce to display the goods they baked in a corner of the old potato barn.

That original farm stand is still going strong, though it’s been expanded over the years to accommodate refrigerated and frozen prepared savories (the farm’s own soups, sauces and dressings) plus displays of artisanal crackers and condiments, imported olive oils, teas and coffees and dairy products from other small farms. There’s another area dedicated to housewares and gifts — it turns out Paula has a talent for sourcing products for a country store without tipping into kitsch. Her love of baskets of every size, shape and provenance can’t be contained; they occupy any spare floor space and there’s nary a ceiling rafter that doesn’t have something woven, slatted or caned hanging from it.

The largest section of the store is dedicated to baked goods. That corner of the potato barn is now a commercial kitchen employing two chefs (one sweet, one savory) and 25 bakers and cooks. Staffed around the clock, the bakery churns out homestyle sweets that have become the farm’s bread and butter.

There are old-fashioned honey-walnut bars; tender, buttery sweet-tart lemon bars (the recipe is from Paula’s husband’s aunt); stout shortcake biscuits that Paula’s grandmother used to top with strawberry whip (crushed berries with whipped cream) and wash down with a whiskey sour. The bestselling "peach cake," with its topping of oven-roasted peaches, looks more like a pie but, in fact, it’s nothing more than a big, round butter cookie topped with sliced peaches; their juices sink into and moisten the dough. Another bestseller, the chocolate almond torte, came from the family of customer Rachel Schwartz. "One Passover during the 1990s," Paula recalled, "she asked if we could make this flourless cake. We’ve been making it ever since. Rachel lived to 94 and always said she should have asked for a royalty."

With their innovations, Paula and Jo-Hana, who died in 2010, set their family farm on a course that switched its emphasis from wholesale to retail, and that decision has been its salvation. Established in 1983, Youngs Farm is the oldest working farm in Nassau County because of its owners’ openness to change. "The ability to diversify is the brilliance of this family," said Tim Dooley, who became a part of it when he married Paula’s daughter Remsen. "They pivot, and that’s how they endure."

FARMING IN THE FAMILY

The first Youngs on Long Island was the Reverend John H. Youngs. Born in England, he founded Southold, the first permanent English settlement in New York, in 1640. John’s son, Thomas, moved to Oyster Bay, where the Youngses were leading landowners; in 1880, they sold Theodore Roosevelt the 155 acres that became Sagamore Hill.

In 1893, John H. Youngs married Ida Hegeman and what had been Hegeman’s Farm became Youngs Farm. Initially a dairy farm, the family’s ingrained gift for flexibility was evident in 1920 when John’s son, Arthur V., began growing cabbages and potatoes. In 1950, when a nematode infestation made raising potatoes untenable, Arthur’s son, John H. (Paula’s father) established the truck farm.

You’d think a family that owned almost 100 acres in one of the most desirable suburbs in the country would have it made, but land is a

double-edged sword. The first thrust-and-parry came in 1978 when Arthur died. While his son John wanted to continue to work the land, other family members preferred to cash out. And there was also the matter of the inheritance tax. John wound up selling all but 15 acres to cover his expenses. The buyer was Old Brookville-based Banfi Wines, which wanted to establish a vineyard on the property. That didn’t work out, so Youngs and its neighbor, Rottkamp Brothers Farm (est. 1953), wound up leasing about 60 acres from Banfi and turning it back into farmland.

In 2005, Paula and Jo-Hana started the process of ensuring that the land would never be vulnerable to commercial development. With the help of the North Shore Land Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving agricultural land, Nassau County purchased the 60 acres. Youngs and Rottkamps still farm them, but they are designated agricultural in perpetuity.

The Youngs family currently farms 15 acres (7 of their own, 8 leased from the county) but, over the decades, the retail operation has become so popular, they can’t grow enough produce for the store. And, since they sell everything they grow, there are no longer any leftover peaches for pies or carrots for cake. To fill the gap, they rely on other Long Island farms.

"From May to September," said Tim, "we send trucks out east to Wickham’s [Cutchogue] and Briermere [RIverhead] for fruit, to Fox Hollow [Calverton] for corn, zucchini, tomatoes and pumpkin." They try to sell their own salad greens year-round (thanks to their greenhouse) but, this summer, they had to rely on Schmitt’s in Riverhead for lettuce because "a woodchuck ate half our crop."

FOR THE LOVE OF PIE

Childhood sweethearts, Rem and Tim left their financial-sector jobs in New York City to help Paula after Jo-Hana died. They represent the fifth generation and are now the driving force behind the business. (Paula’s other daughter, Abby Weir, helps out part-time; her son, Richard Weir, works in the tech industry in North Carolina.)

One of their first initiatives was to make the farm certified-organic. In 2015, they invited managers from a handful of Long Island farms to weigh in on Youngs’ soil. "The unanimous opinion," Tim said, "was that it was in very poor condition." Thus began a process of remediation that culminated in 2021 when they received USDA organic certification. The process hasn’t been without bumps: After decades of keeping the weed population down with chemicals, he explained, "When the soil improves, the weeds love it, too. And having been here so long, we have a very large ‘weed seed bank.’ " Another double-edged sword.

The switch to organic has made at least one longtime customer happy. Bridgette Gorman of Bayville has been shopping here since she was growing up in Locust Valley. She was "ecstatic" when Youngs got their certification. "I’m here almost every day," she said. "When I was younger, I was more of a bakery shopper, but now I actually cook, and I love their produce and the produce they bring in from other farms — it saves me a trip out east." 

The self-described Youngs superfan is "so grateful to the family. Really, this place is one of the perks of living in the area." On a late-summer weekday, Gorman’s basket was full of corn, peaches, romaine, blackberries and shallots. But Gorman still has that bakery shopper inside of her: Her enthusiasm for organic produce in no way overshadows her love for Youngs’ lemon squares and coconut pie.

When James Distefano became head pastry chef a year ago, he knew the stakes were high. "They built this business on the quality of the pies," he said. His job is not only to maintain their quality, but to make sure that the scale of production never turns them into industrial products.

Dough is made in a 30-quart mixer but, "halfway through, we take it off the paddle, grab a bowl scraper and get in there elbow-deep. It has to have that handmade feel." Likewise, even though the shells for the single-crust pies are stamped out by machine, the edges are hand-fluted if they will be visible in the finished product, as with the coconut, pecan and pumpkin pies. "It takes a practiced fluter about 10 seconds per pie but it makes all the difference — every fluter has different ‘handwriting.’ "

The double-crust pies are made pretty much the way you would make them at home: Both the top and bottom crusts are hand-rolled, the edges trimmed, folded under and crimped by hand. Hanging in the bakery is a sign that shows how each pie should be vented so it can be clearly identified: a round hole for blueberry, a star for raspberry-peach, three squares for strawberry-rhubarb, six small slits for peach and so on. During the fall, pie production kicks into overdrive. "At the height of the season," Distefano said, "we could go through 200 pounds of apples a day."

Apple pies are made exclusively with Empire apples. "Fruit pies present a special challenge," Paula explained. "Each individual fruit may have different levels of sweetness or liquid. For volume baking, you need one dependable apple and Empires have consistency, flavor, availability — and they fit our coring machine." Early in the season, Youngs buys apples from Briermere; once those are through, "we go upstate."

At the height of the season, we could go through 200 pounds of apples a day.

- James Distefano, head pastry chef

If you want a Youngs pie, you’re going to have to go to Youngs Farm. Unless, that is, you happen to be at the impossibly chic Americana Manhasset shopping center in the impossibly chic apparel boutique Hirshleifers. There, hard by the athletic shoe department (black-studded canvas Christian Louboutin sneakers: $995), you’ll find Youngs Farm Cafe, serving a familiar lineup of bakery items and refrigerated soups. Unlike in Old Brookville, there are panini and a full line of espresso drinks.

"We’d always declined offers to partner with other businesses," Rem said. "But the Hirshliefer family are longtime customers and friends. In 2022 they asked us for some help in setting up a holiday pop-up and offered to put our stuff in the window. It was hard to turn them down — and it just grew from there."

"it’s actually been helpful," Tim added. "It turns out that they have customers, local people, who don’t know we exist. Our staff has to explain to them, ‘There is this farm 12 minutes up the road from here ….’ "

While the farm barely advertises, he expects to look for more opportunities to "extend the brand" in the future because "a healthy business has to grow." When he and Rem came aboard in 2011, Youngs Farm employed 30 people. That number is now 75. Ironically, he said, COVID was a huge boon. "We used to close between New Year’s and Valentine’s Day, we used to be closed on Mondays. But during COVID, our customers felt safe shopping here and really started to depend on us."

Rem said, "We had curbside pickup, and we had to build a website because, at first, we’d be on the phone for 30 minutes with a customer trying to tell her everything we had in stock." The couple is already talking about doubling the capacity of the kitchen, reorganizing the warehouse and enlarging the store.

Paula is still involved in the business but is leaving the big decisions to Rem and Tim. "It’s got to be them now, making the decisions. The business is going to grow and change. Will it endure? That’s every generation’s question. Each generation must decide if they want to carry on, jump through the hoops to keep it going."

Youngs Farm, 91 Hegemans Lane, Old Brookville; 516-626-3955, youngs.farm