Oceans rise, empires fall, and eras end – and Long Island duck farming was no exception to this.
Duck farming once defined Long Island agriculture, with up to 99 farms once operating on Long Island, most of them on what’s considered to be the East End. The cultural impact and legacy of this heritage remains clear: Long Island’s professional minor league baseball team is named the Ducks, playing out of Central Islip. They were predated by a minor league hockey team of the same name. “The Big Duck,” which now sits in Flanders, is a duck-shaped building operating as a gift shop for tourists, but it was once a giant advertisement for Long Island’s booming Pekin duck industry. The Big Duck is on the National Register of Historic Places.
