So what do you do if you're a farmer on Long Island and it's winter and you can't grow anything?

Well, one thought is what they do with this Bridgehampton farm.

They raise cows and use their milk to make cheese.

It's a fascinating process that we're going to show you.

I'm Doug Geed, out east for Newsday TV.

♪♪♪ These lovely ladies are part of the family here at the Mecox Bay Dairy in Bridgehampton, one of a handful of farms open year-round on Long Island.

It'll be one of the stops on our show.

We'll also visit the Kent Animal Shelter in Calverton, which recently finished a multi-million dollar restoration.

Then we'll show you an out-of-the-way spot on the North Fork where you can get a closer look at out-of-this-world places.

And after searching the skies, we'll go underwater and meet some of the fascinating creatures at the Long Island Aquarium.

First, though, an historic South Fork farm where they're busy all year round.

♪ ♪ Varieties of cheese we're doing, they're all raw milk cheeses.

We're doing a brie style, which I call Atlantic Mist, that has the white rind on the outside and a nice creamy texture inside.

Then we're doing a "Tomme," T-O-M-M-E, which is sort of a generic type of cheese.

It's a semi-hard, it's a, I call it Shawondase.

That is a, we make it in big 20 pound wheels.

It has a bit of a tangy finish, and it's a nice creamy texture.

And then we do a cheddar, which is similar to the Shawondase, but it doesn't have the tanginess.

It has a nice, mild cheddar flavor.

We do Sigit, which is a longer term, aged Alpine style cheese.

So it's a drier, harder, it'll age longer, and it's got an intense nutty flavor.

So that's like a Parmesan Romano Asiago.

Fresh milk within the last three days, pump that across into the, through piping, into the cheese vat.

And then from there, I will put the curd knives on and rotate the milk so it stirs and heats up.

The first addition will be culture and that's at 88 to 90 degrees.

After culture, you add rennet about 10 to 15 minutes after that.

And the rennet is an enzyme that coagulates the milk, binds the proteins together.

So it becomes like jello.

About 35 minutes after that, for the sigit specifically, you cut the curd.

So I'm trying to cut it into very small pieces, wheat grain size pieces of curd.

And then you heat it up over an hour.

And so the curd will become kind of rubbery.

At that point, I drain the whey and hoop into molds.

So the curd goes into molds, and then it gets the shape.

-So the rind, that's interesting.

It isn't a cover.

It's just the cheese and the air, you're saying, hardens it.

-Right, right.

So when we salt it, the day after making, it will expel more whey, so it'll dry out.

A few days after that, it'll be dry enough to put on the shelves.

And from there, it'll form the natural rind.

- So what's the longest you will age cheese before you sell it?

- So the sigit, which I'm making today, that's the longest.

That ages, we like to sell that at two years.

It can age for longer.

We've had sigit that's five years.

- One of the main things I do in the farming season is we rent about 150 acres of farmland in the area.

And so we grow all of the feed for the animals.

Not just the cows, but we raise pigs for pork.

We raise beef as well.

Chickens, Thanksgiving turkeys.

We're able to grow all that feed on land in the area.

And of course the dairy, we are collecting all of the manure from the dairy, which becomes fertilizer for the fields, so it's a regenerative operation.

Yeah, complete cycle of life type of thing.

Just tell us about the cows, you know, what type they are, temperament.

They're Jersey cows, which is the smallest of the dairy breeds.

They are known for high component milk, which is high fat and high protein.

Not a tremendous amount of production, the lowest production, but the high fat and high protein works very well for cheese making.

Jersey cows are very docile, curious, friendly.

The facial markings, they're pretty.

Yeah.

They're like pretty animals.

Yeah, yeah.

The, you know, it's, I'm sure it's a matter of preference, but the Jersey cows, we think, look the nicest.

That black kind of mask.

Yeah, yeah.

And sort of a, more of an aesthetic face maybe.

They're not long snout.

-So you're raising animals for meat also?

-Yeah.

All of our bull calves are used for beef.

We do pigs.

Pigs are natural for a dairy, cheese-making dairy, particularly because they get to eat the whey that's left over from the cheese-making.

We do turkeys at Thanksgiving time.

-So all of that's for sale here.

You have a farm store here on the site?

-Yep.

We have a farm store on site.

We sell our raw milk.

We sell our cheese.

We sell the different cuts of meat.

That's year-round, yes.

I, in particular, do farmer's markets.

Dad as well.

All the family really is doing farmer's markets, which is one of the main reasons why we wanted to transition to this model away from the more commercial agricultural model because we are directly in touch with the people who are consuming the products that we're making.

People have a genuine interest in what we're doing and why we're doing it and how we're doing it, and we like to talk about it, like to tell people about it.

It's a mixture of art and science, so as a musician, the art side appeals to me.

And making a product that people enjoy is very satisfying, to see people eat it and enjoy it, and it makes me feel good.

♪♪ >>Well, here's a sight you don't see often, a water park in the middle of winter.

This is the Lazy River at Splish Splash and Riverhead.

In summer, it's filled with water, but as you see in winter, leaves and snow.

But before you know it, it'll be spring clean-up, getting ready for opening day.

Well, speaking of sights you don't often see, what about Jupiter, the Milky Way, galaxies, millions of light years away.

You can see all of that from right here on Long Island.

Let's pay a visit to the Custer Institute in Southhold.

♪ ♪ We are the oldest public observatory on Long Island.

It started back in 1927.

Charles Elmer, he and his wife, Mae, lived about a mile down the block by Cedar Beach.

And they began observing the night sky with friends of his from New York City.

The property here was acquired in 1937.

In 1938, the first building was constructed.

The tower that we're in, the dome is three stories above us.

This was constructed in 1947.

It did not become open to the public until the 1960s.

We do outreach for the public every Saturday night.

Visitors come, there's no appointments, no scheduling needed.

The long-time saying about Custer is "It's for the curious."

So a lot of the visitors here, they've never been to an observatory before, they don't know what they're going to see.

We try our best to show them exciting, interesting objects that are impactful to them when they look through the eyepiece.

Certainly the reaction from someone looking at Saturn for the first time, you know, wow.

Do you have a favorite time of year?

Because I know there's differences also with what you can see.

Of course.

Wintertime, this is the time of the astronomy.

It starts as the fall kicks in.

And all of the winter, we'd be outside shivering.

If it's snow, we'd be biting our lips.

But you can see deep space objects.

And for me, the jaw-dropping is the Leo triplets.

You can see so far, millions of lights away, just to see these beautiful three galaxies dancing.

You said millions of light years.

Yes, millions of light years ago.

Our solar system is very vast and it took me a couple of years to realize how big our solar system is.

Roughly we have about 400 billion stars in our Milky Way.

Andromeda, which is the next closer galaxy to us, is about 1 trillion stars.

How many observatories are there in the world where you can just go and hang out there and look through telescopes and find like-minded people?

One of the benefits of having an observatory here, the sky is dark, it's a little bit more remote, Southhold Town is amenable to helping us reduce the light pollution at night.

In the summer especially we have a music program that our president runs and so on those nights if there's a concert, blankets on the lawn and lounging outside is a common sight.

But even on non-event nights, if it's just a random Saturday where it's a clear sky, people will bring their own telescopes, their own binoculars, their own chairs and enjoy the view.

We have some antique telescopes up on the wall.

We have a telescope from the 1850s that was made by Fitts.

You know, it's a refracting telescope.

Every now and then we'll actually set it up on the lawn and observe with that telescope.

We have some classic telescopes from Alvin Clark.

He was a famous telescope maker at the turn of the last century.

In addition to the dome upstairs, we have an observing shed on the outside.

In that shed, we have a telescope with a camera so we could set up, you know, just show people, you know, images on the screen.

We have a, you know, 10-inch binocular telescope.

You know, it's kind of unique.

I moved out here about 18 years ago.

I live a couple blocks away.

I was always fascinated by astronomy.

And as a retiree, I felt like I was given back.

This is a great asset to Southold.

We get a lot of children here.

By the fact, half our visitors are kids.

And yeah, they're fascinated by the whole complex and looking around and then going upstairs, looking through the telescope, getting educated by our experts on astronomy and what they're seeing.

I always enjoy letting the kids be able to use the telescope because most of the time you're like, "Well, can you see it?

Can you see it?"

And if you're looking at Saturn, right, when you look through an eyepiece, it could look like just a small circle, but you'll just faintly see a ring around it.

And with kids, it's the best reaction because it's like, they won't tell you no.

They're going to tell you like, "Well, maybe I can see it."

But we know when they can finally see it, they're like, "We can see it!"

And that's kind of the magic of the moment.

So I see seating up here.

This is very cool.

So the public is obviously allowed up here.

We bring groups anywhere from 15 to 18 people at a time on Saturday nights.

We just do them in groups and fill up the room, talk about the telescopes, talk about the dome.

And even during, when the weather's inclement, when we can't open the dome and are not observing, we still bring people up here to discuss the inclement.

Oh yeah, no, this is very cool up here.

What we have here are two refracting telescopes.

They're descendants of what Galileo used over 400 years ago.

Obviously this swivels, right, because you want to see the whole sky.

Correct.

So this is a motorized mount.

It's a German equatorial mount, which not only allows us to position the telescope anywhere we need to, but it also compensates for Earth's rotation.

What I'm trying to do here as a volunteer is to simplify science.

So I explained to not just the children, but to the adults coming in, saying that if you take a jetliner, you know we all take the jetliner, and if you aim towards the Sun, nobody wants to go to the Sun, but if you aim towards it, it will take us about 19 years, non-stop flight.

Now if you want to take the same airline and you want to be like, "Oh, I want to go to see the Pluto," the same plane, non-stop flight will take you 800 years.

And a telescope is a time machine.

Everything that you're seeing through a telescope, it's light that has taken a certain amount of time to travel here.

So you were looking back in time as the item was when the light left it.

Be it an hour ago, a year ago, four years ago, or 20 million years ago.

♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪ You'll definitely see some rare sites at the You'll definitely see some rare sites at the Custer Institute.

I hope you get a chance to check it out.

Well, this is a rarity.

A downtown on Long Island that has a river running right through it.

This is the Peconic River right behind the stores and shops on Main Street and Riverhead.

And if you go up the river a little bit from where I am, you'll come to one of Long Island's biggest tourist attractions, the Long Island Aquarium.

It's massive compared to when we first opened.

We've been adding new habitats throughout the years.

We're on 3.2 acres.

We also have a hotel next door and the marina with the canoe and kayak rentals.

So it's definitely a destination.

A number of the animals here were originals.

The four sand tigers that are in there now were from the Freeport area.

They were maybe 30 inches long and now they're 10 feet long and 400 pounds.

I've got some clownfish that are 28 years old now.

I've got some fish, some corals that are now 35 years old.

Corals are amazing.

To the general public, they look like colorful rocks.

Corals are animals.

They're related to jellies and anemones.

Are they territorial?

Very much so.

Corals want to secure their spot on the reef, so they have sweeper tentacles similar to like a sea jelly or jellyfish has, loaded with stinging cells, so they will sting and kill their neighbors.

They'll try to outgrow them.

If you can overshadow them, take that light away, then they can secure their spot.

So it's a very competitive world.

It looks very static when we're looking at it.

You're like, "Oh, this is really beautiful."

And it is, but it's a very dynamic, aggressive world.

So there's a constant warfare going on.

One interesting thing about the seahorses is the male does give birth.

The female transfers the eggs to his pouch.

I see that one guy there holding on with his tail.

That's what they do all the time?

Yeah, they don't want to be out in the open water.

So they're just an oddly shaped fish, and they use that to hold on to, so they don't get like drawn out into open currents.

So we're going to be giving them some shrimp this morning.

You see them slurping it up.

They'll just inhale the shrimp very quickly.

Oh, it's like a vacuum.

Yeah, exactly.

They almost look fake.

It's like you're watching a cartoon.

I've had people approach this tank, and I hear them yell, "I thought these were mythical.

They actually didn't know they existed.

So that was really, those are the rewarding parts of our jobs is when we do open eyes to a lot of it."

"So this is Pam.

Pam is actually our very first born here at the aquarium.

She just turned 16 years old.

It's a very exciting moment, you know, because naturally these guys will only live to be 15 years or so, but at a facility like ourselves, they can actually live into their 30s, if not early 40s.

So Pam over here, she is an African black-footed penguin, which often surprises people because everybody tends to think penguin and they automatically start associating cold weather, snow, and ice, you know, whereas in reality, these guys, they come from an area where they never see snow or ice.

When it gets too cold, we actually have to bring them inside.

We have to tuck them away to keep them nice and warm.

And they are, you know, they're awkward walking, but they're amazing swimmers, aren't they?

They are.

They're really built for life in the water.

They're really good at swimming.

They've got these beautiful wings.

Those wings are like paddles instead of, you know, wings to fly.

They can reach speeds of up to 15 miles an hour in the water.

And what's their personality, not necessarily in the wild, but like here?

Oh, everybody's so different.

You know, it's part of the reason why I think I fell so in love with them, because their personalities are so far ranged, right?

So we've got somebody like Pam, who's for the most part a very sweet, calm demeanor.

I mean, she's got her little spicy side.

But, you know, then we do have birds out there that are a little extra spicy.

We house up to 150 species of butterfly.

At any given time, we'll have between six and 800 individuals and you'll always see a new species every time you visit.

We keep our room at a beautiful 80 degrees all year.

So it's like a little tropical vacation every time you step in the room.

The blue winged ones seem very prominent.

What's their story?

So those are our blue morpho butterflies.

They're native through Central America.

We do see them most often.

And when you see them flying through the room, if there's a group of them, typically the first individual is a female and the following are males and they're doing a sort of mating dance to win her affection.

We put out a variety of plants that flower often to provide them with the most food.

Butterflies will feed on the nectar of the flowers.

And we also offer them ripened oranges, bananas.

Through the summers we'll even have watermelon in here.

They love those sweeter sugary juices because it provides them with the energy for flight.

What's the reaction of people who come in here, especially like the little kids?

We hear gasps when they walk through the door because it's so exciting and up close and personal.

You're really immersed in a different world when you enter this room.

Talk to people who are so excited when a butterfly landed on them.

Is there a way to kind of attract them, a color, a scent?

We always suggest wearing brighter colors.

So wearing things like neon pinks, purples, or yellows that resemble the foods they might be feeding on are your best options.

So who is this young man or lady?

This is our Chaco golden-kneed tarantula.

They come from Paraguay.

As a female she can live for around 15 to 20 years.

I should have asked this before, but do they bite or are poisonous?

So she is venomous.

So for venomous animals they do have to choose to inject it.

So she could try to bite us but not inject us with her venom.

But tarantula venom is not dangerous for people.

It is specifically to target the prey that they're hunting.

They're really, they're beautiful in their way.

I mean, their coloring and everything, they're fascinating.

Absolutely gorgeous.

So in order to grow, these individuals actually molt their exoskeleton.

So every time we see a fresh molt, those colors will be a little more vibrant and showy.

This is our spiny Australian stick insect.

They're trying to mimic dead leaves to help hide themselves from their predators.

I thought that was like Scorpion family, the way that tail was up.

When she lays her eggs, there's kind of a little hook at the end of her tail, and she'll fling them to distribute the eggs randomly to help give them the best chance of survival.

So anybody in this exhibit can hold these, or is that a special encounter, or no one's allowed to hold them?

So we have a special encounter for these individuals.

It's called our bug encounter.

We do it daily at 1 p.m.

and you actually come back into one of our lab spaces and you get to interact with all of our stick insects, beetles, roaches, and some arachnids as well, one-on-one with one of our trained entomologists.

So in general, who's the bravest holding bugs?

Men, women, or kids?

And let me guess, by far the biggest chickens are men.

They can be.

You can say it.

>> Yeah ( music ) You're looking at the Route 105 bridge in Riverhead.

It crosses over the Peconic River, connecting the South Fork and the North Fork.

Well, our next story involves an animal shelter that's been around more than half a century.

It's been connecting people and their new pets.

And the Kent Animal Shelter in Calverton recently completed a major renovation.

[music] Tens of thousands of animals have gone through here in the past 40 years.

Gretchen Scanlon came here in 1968.

There was a very old kennel building.

The kennel back then was okay.

It was like every other institution.

And back in that time period through the '70s, there was a lot of euthanasia on Long Island in the town shelters, not in the private shelters.

- But their mission and yours still today is no kill.

- Yeah, it's still no kill.

It's a haven still for homeless animals.

But then gradually the kennel became deteriorated.

The thing is this property was problematic from the beginning because it's in the Pine Barrens.

It's on a river that's part of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

And it took basically 20 years to come up with a plan that we could actually do.

We rebuilt the kennel building, replaced everything in there from the kennels, the old chain-link kennels, the old heavy guillotine doors, and we have a interaction room where people can come and meet a dog that they like and just kind of hang out with it for a while.

The average stay depends on the animal, you know, a lot of people and what they like.

You know, a lot of people like smaller dogs, some like the medium size, some, you know, large dogs.

Large dogs take a little longer to be adopted.

You know, it always saddens me when I hear that a dog's been here, whatever, five years or so.

Yeah.

Um, how many people come in looking for an older dog?

Some do.

Um, of course, most people want a puppy.

A lot of people just come in and like to go look.

Mm-hmm.

>> You know, and see what the different personalities are.

Maybe a dog just touches them.

Yeah.

Uh, when they, when they first meet the dog.

Some people might say, "Well, I just want a small dog," you know, or, "I just want a puppy," or, "I want an older dog."

I always like seeing, you know, in the kennel, the dog may be very, look, a little frightened or a little shy.

As soon as they get outside, it's a happy puppy dog, you know?

Or they may seem aggressive behind a gate, and you bring them out, and they're not.

When we do get people, they can come out, they can walk the dogs, they can spend time with the dogs, they can meet them inside.

We have volunteers that come out and walk the dogs, socialize with the dogs, which is, you know, great.

So Bubba's got a beautiful face.

Tell us about this boy.

What's the personality like?

He's just sweet.

He loves to go on walks.

This is him.

He's just a chill dog.

He doesn't really jump on you.

He just wants to be pet and wants the little lovins.

Do you have to have a game plan for each different animal depending on personality?

Well, we try to do the best fit for the family.

Somebody's coming in and they live in an apartment and we have like a very, very high energy dog.

You know, we kind of shy away from putting like a dog that's very high energy in an apartment.

You know, we would rather have them in a fenced yard.

And people are very good about it.

They're very understanding.

They actually ask for our guidance, like, you know, "What do you think?

Do you think this would be, you know, if it's an older dog, maybe wouldn't be good with children?"

So we try to just do the best fit.

( music ) ( music ) So what is that like?

So what is that like?

You must juggle a lot of emotions.

You get attached to a dog.

Oh yeah.

And you love them.

It's so, I mean, when, especially there's a dog that's been here like a while and then they go home, you're just so happy.

It's, yeah, it's, it's, you can't even describe it.

Talk about the cats.

I actually, I'm jealous of those cats.

It's a beautiful little setup they got in there.

It's a nice venue.

They can go inside, they can go outside in the screened in area.

You know, they're free roaming except for the, there is a separate room with cages for kittens and so forth.

Our clinic operates, I'm going to say, three to four days a week.

This is the spay clinic?

Yes, it's low-cost spay/neuter for the public.

Oh, so for anybody.

It's not like, not just adopting an animal here.

And we do vaccinations too, low cost, everything's low cost.

So you were telling me you're here 40 years, which is amazing.

41.

Yeah.

What are your greatest pleasures doing this?

When you think back of the joys here, the successes and what's kept you here for four decades.

It's seeing us taking in an animal that comes from some crisis, you know, because that's how you can label all of it.

You know, the person lost their home, you know, it comes from a high kill shelter or it's a hoarding situation, which is not uncommon, unfortunately.

Maybe they need some kind of medical care, you know, behavioral, whatever it might be.

And we then take care of that.

We take care of their veterinary needs, everything, and then send them home.

So my greatest joy is to see the family or the person taking that animal home.

That's probably what kept me here.

It's just been an amazing journey.

( music ) I hope you enjoyed our little journey around the East End, the most unique part of Long Island.

And we have plenty of interesting places to show you in the months ahead, including this home where the buffalo roam.

I'm Doug Geed.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time, "Out East" for Newsday TV.

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