After leaving New York City for rural Long Island, some newcomers don't like what they've found

A few weeks ago, we reported about how some new rural dwellers were surprised by the real sights and sounds of rural life near horse farms in Georgia. Some New Yorkers who moved from the city to parts of Long Island are experiencing the same culture shock, reports The New York Times.

Recently, more New Yorkers have moved to the North Fork area of Suffolk County on Long Island (at left in a Times graphic) to escape the sprawl of the city and of the nearby Hamptons. The new development has brought the newcomers into conflict with their farming neighbors, reports Corey Kilgannon. The newcomers "are not nearly as enamored of the less pleasant aspects of farms, like noisy machinery, animal smells, pesticides, dust from plowing, and zoning that lets homeowners keep barnyard animals," Kilgannon writes. "More and more, those culture clashes are the subject of town hall meetings and political campaigns in Riverhead and Southold, with officials caught in the battle over supporting farmers’ livelihoods and other homeowners’ quality of life."

Suffolk County leads the state agricultural production and has 700 farms that cover about 34,000 acres, Kilgannon reports. That farmland is the main draw for summer tourists and these new homeowners, but increasing development might put it in jeopardy. "People move out to farm country and want its benefits — the views, the charm — without realizing that farms make noise and create a degree of odor and dust,” Joseph M. Gergela, executive director of the Long Island Farm Bureau, a lobbying organization, told Kilgannon. “This has become farming in suburbia, and farmers have to be good neighbors, but it isn’t Disneyland.” (Read more)