‘Stuff the Truck’ at Main Road Biscuit Co.

On Sunday, Nov. 30, Main Road Biscuit Co., located at 1601 Main Road in Jamesport, encourages brunch-goers to bring with them canned goods, dry foods like cereal and oatmeal, and/or unopened packaged toiletries to donate to the community. Those who’d like to participate can drop their items in the bins of the antique truck located behind the restaurant. All items will go to Mattituck High School’s food pantry.

For more information, visit Main Road Biscuit Co.’s Instagram @mainroadbiscuitco.

Kait’s Angels Gift Card & Toy Drive

Kait’s Angels is holding their annual Gift Card & Toy Drive through Saturday, Dec. 6. Be an angel this Christmas and help local kids enjoy the holiday season. The organization is collecting new, unwrapped toys and gift cards for kids across the North Fork and in Riverhead. 

Donations can be dropped off before the cutoff date at any of the five following locations: Billy’s by the Bay, 2530 Manhanset Ave., Greenport; Hair Solutions, Suite J, 887 Old Country Road, Riverhead; East End Bagel Café, 46519 County Road 48, Southold; St. John Paul II Regional School, 515 Marcy Ave., Riverhead; and Dr. Doroski’s office,887 Old Country Road, Riverhead.

For more information, visit kaitsangels.org. 

Orient Beach State Park coat and non-perishables drive

The annual Holiday Tree Lighting at Orient Beach State Park will be held Friday, Dec. 5, at 4 p.m. All are welcome to enjoy music, snacks and hot cocoa prior to the tree-lighting led by Santa Claus at 5 p.m. While the event will include festivities aplenty, those who come are also encouraged to give back to their community by bringing gently used coats and canned food items. Any donations are welcome and appreciated. 

For more information, visit the park’s event site here. 

Cutchogue Fire Department’s ‘Stuff the Sleigh’ 5K Race and Walk

On Sunday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. the Cutchogue Fire Department will host their 13th Stuff The Sleigh 5K Race and Walk. The race raises funds for fire department’s scholarship fund and other charities supported by CFD. A portion of the proceeds will also go to the American Parkinson’s Disease Association, The Firefighter Cancer Support Network and the Center for Advocacy, Support and Transformation.

The children’s fun run will kick off the morning’s festivities at 9:15 a.m., in which they run a shortened race to the firehouse, met by Santa at the finish line. The race proper will begin at 10 a.m. in front of the firehouse and follows a scenic 5K course within New Suffolk. Once the race ends back at the firehouse, a reception complete with awards, clam chowder and other refreshments will take place. 

The race also serves as a toy drive, and all participants are asked to bring a new toy to “Stuff the Sleigh” for families in need during the holiday season. Cutchogue Fire Department hopes to gather hundreds of gifts by the end of the race. Children who take part in the fun run are asked to bring donations of two non-perishable food items.

To sign up for the race, click here. For more information regarding the race, click here. 

Twin Fork Beer Co. and Riverhead Rotary food drive

For a limited time, patrons of Twin Fork Beer Co., located at 807 Raynor Ave., Riverhead, can bring in nonperishables and get a free beer. This food drive benefits Open Arms, Church of the Harvest and St. John’s Parish food pantries.

For more information, call Twin Fork Beer Co. at 631-209-4233 or visit Riverhead Rotary’s website at riverheadrotary.org.

CAST’s Toy Drive

Through Monday, Dec. 15, the Center for Advocacy, Support and Transformation is hosting their Holiday Toy Drive. They ask that community members donate new and unwrapped toys for children of all ages at the physical sites below, or ship them directly to CAST, 53930 Main St., Southold, NY 11971, attn: TOYS. 

Cutchogue drop off locations include: 

• Cutchogue Barths Pharmacy, 28195 Main Road
• Cutchogue New Suffolk Free Library, 27550 Main Road
• Cutchogue Presbyterian Church, 27245 Main Road
• M&T Bank, 31525 Main Road
• Unit 2 Go, 50 Commerce Road

Greenport drop off locations include: 

• Blue Duck Bakery, 130 Front St.
• Congregation Tifereth Israel, 519 Fourth St.
• DIME Community Bank, 218 Front St.
• Floyd Memorial Library, 539 First St.
• Goldsmith’s Toy Store, 128 Main St.
• Greenport Harbor Brewing Co., 234 Carpenter St.
• Holy Trinity Church, 768 Main St.
• M&T Bank, 74825 Main Road 
• Peconic Landing, 1500 Brecknock Road

Mattituck drop off locations include: 

• Blue Sage Spa, 11700 Main Road
• CVS Pharmacy, 9870 Main Road 
• DIME Community Bank, 10900 Main Road
• Mattituck-Laurel Library, 13900 Main Road 
• Starbucks, 10095 Main Road
• Strong’s Marine Mattituck Bay, 2400 Camp Mineola Road
• Strong’s Water Club, 2255 Wickham Ave. 
• Strong’s Yacht Center, 5780 West Mill Road
• Total Dental Care, 7905 Main Road
• Zeifman Orthodontics, 50 Love Lane 

Orient or East Marion drop off locations include:

• Angel’s Country Store, 8955 Main Road, East Marion
• Orient Congregational Church, 23045 Main Road
• Orient Country Store, 930 Village Lane

Shelter Island drop off locations include:

• Shelter Island Historical Society, 16 South Ferry Road
• Shelter Island Library, 37 North Ferry Road 
• Shelter Island School District 
• Shelter Island Town Hall, 38 North Ferry Road

Southold and Peconic drop off locations include: 

• Bank of America, 53300 Main Road
• Blue Duck Bakery, 56275 Route 25
• CAST, 53930 Main Road
• DIME Community Bank, 54970 Main Road
• First Presbyterian Church, 53100 Main Road
• The Giving Room, 56215 Main Road
• Greenport Harbor Brewing Co., 42155 Main Road, Peconic
• Mullen Motors, 55980 Route 25
• Port of Egypt Marine, 62300 Main Road
• Southold ACE Hardware, 54795 Route 25
• Southold Free Library, 53705 Main Road
• Underground Training, 53345 Main Road

Finally, Riverhead’s drop off location is RGNY, 6025 Sound Ave. 

CAST is also accepting gift cards and monetary donations, which can be mailed to CAST, P.O. Box 1566, Southold, NY 11971. 

For more information, visit castnorthfork.org or call 631-477-1717. 

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Rotarians Wally and Jean Mahoney enjoy the Uncorked festivities. (Credit: Deborah Wetzel) Under the tent at RGNY for the 2025 Riverhead Rotary (Credit: Deborah Wetzel) Rotarian Bill Sannok relaxes during the Rotary Uncorked fundraising event at RGNY. (Credit: Deborah Wetzel) (Credit: Deborah Wetzel) Sheila Barrila and her daughter, Melina, enjoy the Uncorked fundraising event at RGNY. (Deborah Wetzel) Tijuana Fulford, executive director of the Butterfly Effect Project and one of the evening’s beneficiaries. (Credit: Deborah Wetzel) Jean Bauer of Jamesport enjoys the Riverhead Rotary’s 2025 Uncorked event. (Credit: Deborah Wetzel) Kristin Cafiero, director Camp Pa-Qua-Tuck, another beneficiary of the donations made at the Riverhead Rotary Uncorked fundraiser. (Credit: Deborah Wetzel) Jacob Phillips, chief of Riverhead Ambulance Corp., the third beneficiary of the Riverhead Rotary Uncorked event at RGNY. (Credit: Deborah Wetzel) Gina Muzio and her husband, Chris Adams, enjoy the Riverhead Rotary Uncorked event. (Credit: Deborah Wetzel)

Now in its 18^th year, the event raises thousands of dollars. This year, the Butterfly Effect Project in Riverhead (BEP), which was targeted with online racist messages and threats over the telephone in February leading to the cancellation of an annual fundraiser, was one of three nonprofits that will benefit from the event.

First time co-chair of the event, Tom Lennon said, “The Butterfly Effect Project has had a rough year, and we thought this would help them.” Co-chair Sherry Patterson agreed. “When we saw what happened and they had to cancel their fundraiser, we had to step up and help them.” 

Approximately 30 North Fork restaurants shared space with breweries and wineries filling the outdoor tent and the air-conditioned barn. Riverhead’s Pastaria Barila Restaurant owner Sheila Barrila, toting her 5-month-old Melina, said, “We love Rotary and it’s also for the cause. And my husband loves to feed people!” Past chairman Pat Wiles estimated the evening would bring in $50,000. “We felt empathy toward the Butterfly Effect Project. We like them and what they’re doing.”

A veteran of the event, 89-year-old Wally Mahoney of Riverhead, has been attending Uncorked for at least a decade. “You have to support them, the Butterfly Effect, because they’re good people. It’s just terrible what happened a few months ago.” His daughter Jean, a Southold Rotarian, said the hate messages are “a crime and it was against women.”

A Rotarian for 50 years, Bill Sannok of Mattituck, credited with being the brainchild of the event, said, “The first year we raised $7,000. Second year $17,000 and the third year $25,000. It takes a few years to get up to speed. The raffle is our biggest money maker.”  He added that what happened to the Butterfly Effect in February was “scary.”

BEP founder and Executive Director Tijuana Fulford said, “The idea of cancelling our fundraiser meant we were letting down a community of children. It was heartbreaking. We also didn’t have the opportunity to celebrate our 10^th anniversary. It was overshadowed by this. This event tonight is special because you’re opening a door of access for us to be seen by people and it’s such a prestigious group.” 

Jeanne Bauer of Jamesport, attending her fifth Uncorked feels, “It’s not pretentious. It’s for the people who live in the community.” 

Camp Pa-Qua-Tuck in Center Moriches was also a beneficiary of the fundraiser. Director Kristin Cafiero said it was an honor. “Without this, our camp could not operate.”  She said the money would cover food and fees for nearly 550 special needs kids this summer.  

The third recipient was the Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance Corp. Chief Jacob Phillips thinks UnCorked is an incredible event. “We are honored to be a recipient. It will go towards our equipment and T-shirts.” 

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Westhampton Beach-based graphic designer Matt Senie sells ads to local businesses and later sells the custom-made board games to municipalities and regions in the tri-state area.

“We got [The Suffolk] theater involved,” he said. “The Riverhead Moose Lodge in on the game. The [Riverhead] Rotary is on the game. The civic groups were all in. The Riverhead BID was all about it.”

He said the Long Island Aquarium bought up all four railroads on the board.

“People gravitate towards the railroads,” Mr. Senie said. “They like to own them. They usually hold on to them as long as they can before they become bankrupt.”

Mr. Senie made his final “Riverheadopoly” sale at a recent local art show where he met new East End Arts executive director Wendy Weiss. “She was the last sale,” he said.

Businesses like Riverhead’s Richmond Realty Corps “were really excited about giving them out as gifts,” Mr. Senie said. “East End Catering is on the board.”

Revco Lighting & Electric Supply bought — you guessed it — The Electric Company space. Mr. Senie said that the new Peconic Hockey Rink at Veterans Memorial Park snagged the iconic “Boardwalk” slot on the game board.

“They were one of the first [businesses] to sign up,” he said.

The new game is the first new edition of “Riverheadopoly” in two decades, and the third since 1989. 

The first game Mr. Senie created was for East Hampton in the late 1980s. From there, he made games for towns all over the tristate area, including Huntington, Northport, Sayville and numerous Connecticut towns, along with the Hamptons and Long Island as a whole. “There are four Montauk games since 1989,” he said.

In 1932, Charles Darrow created Monopoly based on an earlier, very similar board game called The Landlord Game, created by anti-monopolist Lizzie Magie, who patented the concept in 1904. In 1935, Parker Brothers bought the copyright to Monopoly and Mr. Darrow became the nation’s first millionaire game designer. When the company learned his game was based on The Landlord Game, they snapped up the patent for that game, too.

Since its 1935 debut, Parker Brothers has sold more than 275 million games — nearly twice what the nearest competitors, Scrabble and Clue, have sold.

“We’re very pleased to have the quality of businesses we have,” Mr. Senie said of the new edition of “Riverheadopoly.”

Fans of Riverhead can purchase a copy of the game in local stores or on Mr. Senie’s website.

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The festival raises funds for a variety of charitable projects by soliciting donations of plants and flowers from nurseries all over Long Island and as far away as New Jersey. The rotary then sells everything at a discounted price. There’s also a high-roller raffle in which just 300 tickets are sold for $100 a piece — with a $10,000 prize for the winner, $3,000 for second prize, $1,000 for third prize and a pair of $500 prizes as well.  

The annual weeklong event raises money for Riverhead Rotary charities, Operation International and Peconic Bay Medical Center.

The festival, which got underway nearly three decades ago, was originally run by the Peconic Bay Medical Center, according to Riverhead rotarian and PBMC pulmonologist Dr. Raj Patel. He said that several years ago, veteran rotarian Jack Van de Wetering helped convince the Riverhead Rotary to take over and expand the festival.

“I think the hospital had a group of people that were selling geraniums, but they were only making a couple thousand dollars,” Mr. Van de Wetering said. “We said, ‘we can do better than that,’ and that’s how it started. So we went from a couple thousand to $50,000 to $100,000 and now we’re up to basically $300,000. And all this is given. It’s donated.”

Dr. Patel said that over time the festival has blossomed into a North Fork springtime tradition.

“It’s come to a point where people wait for this festival to occur,” he said. “They wait for Mother’s Day to come along and they reserve all their spending money to spend at the Garden Festival because they know it’s a win-win situation for Operation International, for the hospital, and for the community.”

The doctor said the primary beneficiary of the annual garden festival is Operation International — a secular, apolitical, humanitarian organization founded in 1996 by a group of Southampton doctors, Dr. Patel among them. The charitable organization provides free medical care and performs complex surgeries on children and adults without access to basic health care in poor countries.

“What we do is free operations all over the world, no matter where it is,” he said this week. “We do very complex surgeries covering general surgery, plastic surgery, dental operations — and now we have started neurosurgery and orthopedics.”

Dr. Patel provided the Riverhead News-Review with a series of bracing before-and-after pictures of successful Operation International surgeries.

About a dozen volunteers, including Carl Nielsen and work force interns from the Timothy Hill Ranch, man the festival’s rows and rows of tulips, hyacinths, lilacs, peonies, pansies, azaleas and forsythia — to name just a few of the flowers featured this week.

Among the dozens of nurseries that donated to the petal-packed festival are Hopewell Nursery in New Jersey, Ivy Acres in Calverton, Kurt Weiss Greenhouses in Center Moriches and Riverhead’s Van de Wetering Greenhouses. Sponsors include the Allstate Foundation, Tanger Outlet Center, Dime Bank and Riverhead Building Supply.

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