Flashback: When Staten Island farms fed Manhattan

Agriculture played a significant and valuable part in Staten Island’s financial growth, from Native Americans who farmed the land, to the expansion of the Island farms by the Huguenots and the English.Farm life was a never-ending struggle with nature, taming the landscape to make fields into farms by cutting forests and clearing and draining the swamps to create a pasture for domesticated animals. Horses were popular and used for the plowing and carrier of produce. Many farms included fruit orchards of various types such as apples, pears, peaches, and figs. Manhattan was the principal market for the 18th and 19th-century farmers of Richmond County, according to Staten Island Advance archives. (Compiled by Jan Somma-Hammel)