Harvesting Salt In Amagansett

On a recent Thursday morning, Steven Judelson was collecting sea water in 5-gallon buckets down at Atlantic Avenue in Amagansett. It was a hazy day, the fog slowly burning off as he made trips into the ocean to gather 900 pounds of water to make salt. Over the course of a week he will visit this beach five or six times, harvesting around a thousand gallons for his company, Amagansett Sea Salt.What sounds like back-breaking work is actually a longtime hobby turned profession. Mr. Judelson began making artisanal sea salt with his wife, Natalie, more than 25 years ago, and in 2008, when his real estate development business suffered, he decided it was time to make the leap to full-time producer.

“We weren’t sure it would work because of the price point,” said Mr. Judelson, whose salts retail for $9 a jar. “We thought if there was any place in the world where it would work, this is it.”

There was not much literature available on small-scale salt production—at that time there were only three artisanal salt makers in the United States, Mr. Judelson said—so the couple figured it out for themselves.

“We spent a year and a half doing larger-scale experiments,” before settling on solar evaporation, he said. That method felt best in terms of environmental impact and final product: a finishing salt that Mr. Judelson says tastes like fleur de sel but has a coarse texture like that of kosher salt, which he credits to the damp nights on the South Fork. It is this “briny” flavor paired with a full grain that appeals to high-end restaurants like Nick and Toni’s, Ruschmeyer's and 11 Madison Park, which was one of their first wholesale clients.

The business exceeded expectation—blowing though all their inventory before Christmas, the couple realized they needed to expand. They had been operating salt works on friends’ properties around Amagansett, but when they decided to consolidate, they cold-called the Peconic Land Trust to see if there was any land for them to lease.

“Without the Trust, I probably wouldn’t be in business,” said Mr. Judelson, whose salt works are now located on a half-acre on the Deborah Light Preserve, which is owned and operated by the Trust in Amagansett. The Trust would not disclose how much Mr. Judelson leases the land for, but said it falls between $150 and $500 an acre per year, which is in line with all of their leasing agreements with farmers.

“Steven isn’t technically growing anything—farming usually is cultivation of plants and animals and fungi—but he is making something out of a living thing,” said Luke McKay, project manager at the Peconic Land Trust, who works closely with the farmers who lease land through the Trust. “He is in a gray area.”

“We thought it was a really neat idea,” said Mr. McKay, adding that Amagansett Salt Works can get a lot of production of salt out of really little space.”

By the end of 2015, the Amagansett Sea Salt company should have a new and larger home, as Mr. Judelson’s production has increased rapidly—he made 2 tons of salt in 2014. In addition, the Peconic Land Trust would like to make Mr. Judelson’s plot of land, which boasts high-quality soil, available for food production, as salt-making requires only open space and sunlight.

The Trust also leases land to local food producers like Balsam Farms and Bhumi Farms. “Everything that can be farmed, that is actual tillable land, is currently being leased,” said Mr. McKay, who also works on the Trust’s Farms for the Future Initiative. “At the moment, we are at capacity, and that is why we are trying to think creatively and look at the land that we do have out there and see what can we get back into agriculture to meet the demand for start-up farmers.”

In addition to the Deborah Light Preserve, the Trust owns and operates the adjacent Quail Hill Farm Preserve and Town Lane Preserves, as well as other farmland on the South Fork, leasing a total of 230 acres to farmers, 210 acres of which were donated to the Trust by Deborah Ann Light between 1989 and 1995.

"I never wanted to be associated with the Paris Hilton Hamptons,” said Mr. Judelson, who spends 80 percent of his time on the East End and the rest in New York City, where his wife works and his sons attend high school. “Although I do understand that that association does sell some salt.”

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