Salt Haying

Among Kost’s photographs are pictures documenting the harvesting of salt hay within Brookhaven Hamlet. While these pictures are from around the turn of the 20th century, the work was likely little different from the harvesting done from the 17th century onward. The harvesting of salt hay was also the subject of several of Kost’s Paintings.

Salt hay was the principal natural resource which lead to the initial settlement of Fire Place by the early Setauket farmers in the 17th century. Salt hay grows naturally in the marshes along the ocean bays of New England and Long Island. It was highly valued by the early farmers as a supplement to “English” hay, in that it required no cultivation or clearing of land. This hay also was shipped to markets, such as the Bushwick Hay Market in Brooklyn, and sold as packing material, insulation for ice, fodder, bedding for cattle, and mulch for crops.

On 10 June 1664, residents of the original Brookhaven Town settlement at Setauket purchased a large tract of land from the native Americans which became known as Old Purchase at South, which included the area of Brookhaven Hamlet. A portion of this purchase was quickly divided into valuable “meadow shares” extending from the Great South Bay north to where the more forested upland region began (essentially to where Beaver Dam Road is now). The evidence of these original shares can still be seen in the general north-south alignment of properties in aerial views of the Hamlet. (The less valuable upland shares were divided later.)