The North Fork, June 2025

Our third year going out East, as they say.

We saw just how embedded the North Fork sights have already become in Jasper’s memory when, upon waking up from a long nap in his car seat, he began to point out things that he recognized along Sound Ave.: the giant inflatable strawberry by a u-pick farm, the produce stands we’d visited in prior years, the stall selling handmade floral wreaths in the shade of yellow canvas.

This year, our AirBnB was in the town of Cutchogue. The house abuts a wheat field, and we were visited by wild turkeys, deer, and a groundhog. Bunnies would hop around the front lawn. Fireflies came out at night. There were wooden swings strung up to a tree at the edge of the property, facing the golden expanse of wheat that would glow at daybreak and turn a soft lavender blue in the evening light.

The sleeping arrangement for our family took a couple of nights to figure out. The crib in the listing photos ended up being in the basement bedroom, the saddest looking one of all, and so we tried to have Rowy sleep on a giant cushion tucked between our bed and the wall in our ground floor room while Jazz slept in between us. That bed was way too soft, and Jazz hated the feel of it so much that he slept by balancing his entire body on top of mine so as not to have to make contact. Rowy woke extra early, stood up and threw both arms across Kev, jolting him out of already fitful sleep. None of us fared too well that first night. Ultimately the boys all moved downstairs to that basement room, “the cave” as Jazz dubbed it, with the crib and a firmer mattress, and since the bed was too small for three, I slept alone in the lumpy bed for the rest of the trip.

We were already in a more attention-demanding phase of Rowy’s development: teething with molars and on the move, beginning to run and climb and far from mastering either skill. Then two days before leaving, he came down with a cold that would make its way through the entire house over the course of the week.

That cold sapped our energy and made the late nights and early mornings more punishing. An added bummer for me was that it took my sense of smell completely and my sense of taste mostly, so that I could only distinguish between salt, sweet, and sour - an unfortunate condition to be in when in Long Island wine country.

Still, we had a great time. We visited wineries and farm stands, enjoyed pool time and family meals, and escaped the worst of a heat wave that descended upon NYC that week (which killed my potted herb garden and a few of my squash vines).

We were even productive: we submitted the applications to get the boys their passports at the very cute and very small shack of a post office in Peconic.

In an incredible example of the perks small town life, we’d actually made our appointment with the office on Love Lane in Mattituck. We received a call from them on the morning of, letting us know that the person we needed to see would be out that day and that they’d already called ahead to the office in Peconic to arrange for us to be helped there. That office has been open since 1958 and is situated right next to some railroad tracks. Today, its neighbor is a little cafe where Kev got some iced coffee while I hurriedly copied the applications over with black ink since I’d completed them with a blue pen. (Rookie mistake not to read all of the instructions, and a blow to my self-perceived mastery in navigating bureaucracy.) While there I witnessed several local residents stop in, all on a first-name basis with the clerk.

The first few days were very hot and we spent lots of time in the pool in the mornings and late afternoons. On one afternoon, Kev and I There was some well timed rain that cooled things down without disrupting plans, and by the time we went berry picking on Friday, we were gifted with perfect weather.

At the berry farm, we wandered not fifty feet down the first row of blueberries before we began to question the directions we’d received to get to the strawberry patch. It turned out that our city-dweller sense of distance hadn’t adjusted to our more rural surroundings. Eventually we found the strawberries, after meandering and snacking on just-ripened blueberries as we went, like unhurried and gluttonous bears. The strawberries were shiny and shockingly red, jewels glowing from beneath the lobed leaves of densely planted rows. By the time we got to the raspberry bushes our baskets and bellies were full - still we found room for half a pint of small, sweet raspberries to take back for Rowy. My dampened sense of taste really hurt me here: the blueberries I was inhaling were likely less ripe than I believed, because the heightened acidity that I couldn’t detect made my teeth so sensitive that even speaking in the presence of a breeze brought twinges of pain for a couple of hours after.

I used to call Jazz my strawberry boy because he loved them so as a toddler - “strawbays,” he would call them. At bedtime I’d nuzzle my face into his palms to catch the last scent molecules of strawberries lingering on his tiny hands. Turns out that Rowy is my raspberry baby - he’ll eat a clamshell’s worth in one sitting if we let him.

Each evening, my father- and brother-in-law would build a fire. Jazz would go out there with them, jumping around as they gathered tinder and stacked the firewood. We indulged and let Jazz stay up later than usual, and we’d dance around the fire to get the last wiggles out before bedtime.

We brought a Pokémon jigsaw puzzle that we completed over a few days, and played mahjong with a set that my SIL happened to have in her trunk. The family time we get is the best part of trips like these. We visited nearby Southold, Greenport, and Mattituck. We returned to Love Lane Kitchen for brunch, Rose Hill winery for tasting flights, and Little Creek Oyster Farm & Market for oyster happy hour. We stopped by a goat farm and saw some baby goats while picking up some souvenirs for my in-laws’ neighbors.

The days were slow and simple, and it was easy to lose track of time. Before we knew it, it was time to pack up and head home. We love the North Fork, and look forward to returning next year.