The Kuzniewski Family has been making pickles on Long Island for over 100 years and long before that in Poland. Antoni and Michlena Kuzniewski brought the family pickle recipe from Mazovia - the heart of Poland - to New York in 1890. Our family is from the town of Koziebrody, given its name due to an abundance of edible mushrooms in the local forests called "goat beard," or, "kozie-brody" in Polish. Today the area is still known for its highly valued wild mushrooms, primarily porcini, as well as rye used to make the world’s finest vodka. The Kuzniewski family gathered the porcini mushrooms, drying them to use in the winter, and cultivated the lands of the noble family Bolesta-Koziebrodzki for centuries, producing the annual rye harvest, as well as cucumbers for pickles.

Pop's1934 Chevrolet pickup
on the farm where he made pickles in wooden barrels,
Westhampton, New York

Michalena “Lena” and Antoni “Tony” Kuzniewski made the journey to New York in1890. They settled first in Flushing, NY, but by 1906 were farming in Calverton, NY, just north of Westhampton, and making those amazing Polish pickles. Their son, my grandfather, "Pop," left the family farm in Calverton in 1920 and brought the family pickle tradition with him to Westhampton, on the south shore of Long Island. And that is where I learned to make pickles fourty years ago, in the farm's "milk house ." The spirit of those days is still alive in our pickles today at the Ketchaboneck Pickle Company.