Cucumber and Peach Salad with Mint and Goat Cheese Recipe

For all their most recent history as a summer resort for the rich and famous, the East End of Long Island has been farmland from the arrival of the first English settlers in 1640.  The land and the climate here are extraordinarily good for growing.  The glaciers left behind rich top soil that in places is 6 feet deep.  Locals and those of us who love the place decry the fact that we now grow multi-million-dollar houses on what was once fertile ground for corn and most particularly, Long Island potatoes.  But all is not lost.  In the 1970s, a group now headed by the scion of one of our original families, one John v.H. Halsey, was formed to preserve our farmland. Today the Peconic Land Trust can claim an enviable record of buying development…