by Danielle Golden Giglio
In 1985 Greg Chevalley of Bayport was a teenager looking for a way to make some spending money. He went to his dad Rene and the idea of starting a farm on family land where greenhouses once stood was planted. The land on the north end of South Gillette Avenue in Bayport lay dormant for three years before Greg began working the fields. And for the next ten years Greg’s Farm Stand stood there selling fresh produce every summer. People from our community and surrounding areas would flock to the farm stand to get corn, tomatoes, pumpkins and more.
The first crop they decided to plant was pumpkins because everyone would go out east for this fall time staple. Rene said, “We planted the front fields with lots of pumpkins. After we planted, we realized that crop will be harvested the end of September when Greg was in school.” That is when the Chevalley family and Greg’s friends went to the back fields to plant summertime vegetables.
Greg’s Farm Stand was a huge success that first year and he did very well. When the pumpkins were ready to harvest there were so many they could not sell them all. Flower Time around the corner, where Blue Point Nature Preserve is now, ended up buying Greg’s pumpkins to sell in their stores.
In the late 90s after college, Greg joined New York City Fire Department and was starting his own family. The farm stand was done and construction of new homes on the land began. Sadly in 2015 Greg succumbed to 9/11 related cancer leaving behind a devastated family, wife and two sons.
This past summer Greg’s older brother also Rene Chevalley decided to plant a pumpkin patch at his house in Blue Point in memory of Greg. “I grew the pumpkins only to make my brother proud and for his sons and family to remember what he did”
And in true Greg’s Farm Stand style it was a huge crop of very big pumpkins, way more then what was expected to grow. There were so many pumpkins that Rene invited the whole neighborhood to take some pumpkins. The Chevalley family plans on planting pumpkins seeds again next summer to remember Greg and who knows maybe another farm stand selling only pumpkins could be in the works.
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