When the pandemic and the call to quarantine began in March, Carolyn Snyder and her family, the owners of Round Swamp Farm in East Hampton, sprang into action to provide homebound residents with homemade soups and groceries, including chickens, eggs, milk, and pantry staples.
After having just returned from Maine, where they attended the wedding of Brian Niggles, Ms. Snyder's grandson, and Laura Sisco, the entire clan -- including Ms. Snyder's daughters, Lisa Niggles and Shelly Schaffer, their husbands Charlie Niggles and Al Schaffer, and their children, Steven and Jimmy Niggles, and Alexa and Nick Shaffer -- immediately got to work preparing and delivering food to more than 300 families between Montauk and Bridgehampton.
They delivered more than 1,000 quarts of soup, and hundreds of pounds of produce, said Ms. Snyder, who described the effort as "a labor of love from a family that cares."
"Going back generations in our family, when times were hard it was the warmth and nourishment of a homemade meal that could always be counted on to lift up the spirits of a person in need," said Brian Niggles earlier this month. "Much the same way my great-grandmother would deliver fruit pies to anyone struggling over the holidays, or a coffee cake to a friend feeling under the weather, this effort was our way of carrying on that old-fashioned family tradition of helping out."
