Briermere Farms — 4414 Sound Avenue, Riverhead, NY 11901

ByPeter
Apple pie slice on counter

Briars covered the ground when Leonard and Gertrude McCombe bought a farm on Riverhead’s Sound Avenue in 1960, and the old fruit trees came with the deal. Sixty-six years later, that same stretch of North Fork farmland draws long lines of cars from both directions, every driver after one thing: a pie baked that day.

Briermere Farms sits at 4414 Sound Avenue, and it is the rare farm stand whose reputation traveled farther than the farm itself. The Wall Street Journal called it a local legend back in 2010. A national food site once ranked its pies the best in New York. And the family that runs it still talks about fruit the way other people talk about weather, as something that arrives on its own schedule and cannot be hurried.

From Briars to Bakery

The McCombe chapter is not the first. A farm brochure, summarized in a 2021 essay on North Fork Patch, says a Cornell entomologist named Frank Atwood Sirrine bought the hilly property in 1901, named it Briermere, and planted apples, peaches, pears, and berries. By the time the McCombes arrived, Dan’s Papers reports, the land had gone wild with briars while the old trees still stood.

Clark McCombe, who now runs the farm with his brothers Michael and Philip, gives the date without ceremony: “My parents, Leonard and Gertrude, bought the farm in 1960.”

What grew from that purchase is larger than most people picture from the roadside. The farm covers more than 200 acres, running from the bakery down toward Long Island Sound. Much of the fruit and many of the vegetables are grown on the property. The kitchen turns out roughly thirty preserves, gooseberry, elderberry, and cranapple among them, and the stand sells cut flowers. Fruit that comes in out of season gets frozen so the ovens never have to idle. The same essay cites that 2010 Wall Street Journal profile and its local-legend verdict, which by now reads less like praise than like a plain description of the place.

The Photographer Who Kept a Farm

Here the story takes a turn that no pie review would predict. The same Patch essay identifies the farm’s original owner, Leonard McCombe, as a staff photographer for Life magazine.

Old apple orchard on the North Fork at golden hour

His biography backs that up. Born on the Isle of Man in 1923, McCombe began working for Life in 1945 at age 22 and stayed until the magazine’s weekly run ended in 1972. In 1948 he followed a young woman named Gwyned Filling through her first months of trying to build an advertising career in New York, a photo essay Life titled “Career Girl: Her Life and Problems.” On August 22, 1949, the magazine ran his photograph of the cowboy Clarence Hailey Long, the image Wikipedia credits with inspiring ad executive Leo Burnett to create the Marlboro Man campaign.

A photographer’s whole discipline is waiting for the ordinary moment to reveal what it is. That turns out to be decent training for a farm that bakes by the calendar, where the work is mostly showing up for the same fruit every year and getting it right.

A Year Counted in Pies

Open the farm’s calendar and it reads like a ledger kept in fruit. Patch’s 2019 reporting laid it out: strawberry rhubarb in June, raspberry, blueberry, and peach in July, then apple taking over the fall with pumpkin following close behind. The shelves also carry blueberry cream, chocolate cream, and apple crisp, plus a peach raspberry that one Yelp reviewer singled out. McCombe said that autumn belongs to apple, and that his own favorite is plain blackberry with nothing else in it.

Late fall tightens the list. Northforker’s Thanksgiving roundup calls apple, pumpkin, and pecan the late-fall favorites and describes the farm as the standard-bearer for pie on this end of the island. The same piece mentions the long lines of cars that form for it.

Production scales to match. Newsday reported in 2011, as summarized in the Patch essay, that a staff of ten to twelve bakes through October. The baking does not stop for the holiday itself. McCombe said in 2014, “We’ll still be baking on Thanksgiving morning.”

One practical note: the lineup follows the harvest, so nothing on the shelf is guaranteed on a given day. The farm posts a daily pie list on its website, and it is worth a look before the drive.

The Day BuzzFeed Picked New York’s Best Pie

On September 13, 2019, Patch reported that BuzzFeed had ranked Briermere first in New York in a post on the best place to buy a pie in every state. The write-up leaned on Yelp reviews, and the page does not explain what else went into the ranking. McCombe called the honor wonderful.

Fresh-baked fruit pies cooling on a rack

The quote that stuck came from a Yelp reviewer identified as Samuel T.: “Blueberry cream pie is the best pie I’ve ever had.”

A seven-year-old ranking is a snapshot, not a verdict. Still, the pile of evidence has only grown since. Briermere’s Yelp listing now shows more than 650 reviews, and the lines of cars Northforker describes every late fall make a better poll than any list.

Planning the Stop

Address: 4414 Sound Avenue, Riverhead, NY 11901
Phone: (631) 722-3931
Fall 2026 hours: Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Friday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (as posted on the farm’s website)
Website: briermerefarms.com
Social: Instagram @briermerefarms, plus a Facebook page under the farm’s name

Orders go through the phone. The farm’s site says it accepts cash or credit cards, takes no pre-payments, and asks guests to mention any food allergy before ordering. Thanksgiving falls on November 26 this year, and the website does not spell out holiday ordering, so a call is the safest way to find out how and when to reserve.

The pie case is the headline, but it is not the whole stand. The Patch essay notes that the farm sells its roughly thirty preserves and cut flowers alongside the baked goods, and that day-old pastries are sometimes sold at a discount, a detail that rewards anyone who asks. Because lines of cars are part of the Briermere experience, arriving on a weekday morning is a reasonable way to shorten the wait, though the farm’s site makes no promise about crowds.

Sound Avenue rewards a longer loop. Nearby, Schmitt’s at 3355 Sound Avenue is a fourth-generation family farm known for horseradish and a caramel apple nut pie made with fruit from its own orchard, with pre-orders by phone or at the stand. Farther west, The Cooperage Inn at 2218 Sound Avenue in Baiting Hollow is better known for pot pies but also sells key lime, coconut cream, and pumpkin cream desserts, with a sister shop, NoFo Pot Pies, at 11160 Main Road in Mattituck. Those details come from the same Northforker and Riverhead News Review roundup.

For more of the neighborhood, the North Fork food trail maps farms, wineries, and roadside stands worth a detour, the season-by-season guide to Long Island farm stands covers what to buy when, and the story of how Lewin Farms invented North Fork agritourism shows another way a farm stand becomes a destination. Closer to the holiday, a diner countdown to Thanksgiving pie keeps the calendar honest.

Quick Answers Before You Drive Out

Where is Briermere Farms? At 4414 Sound Avenue in Riverhead, on the North Fork.

Roadside farm stand with pumpkins and apples

What are the fall 2026 hours? Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Friday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., according to the farm’s website.

Can a Thanksgiving pie be ordered ahead? The farm takes orders by phone at (631) 722-3931. Its website does not mention Thanksgiving pre-orders, and it says no pre-payments are taken, so call and ask.

Which pies are the famous ones? Apple in fall, with pumpkin and pecan close behind. Blueberry cream earned the Yelp praise quoted in the 2019 ranking coverage.

Who runs the farm? The McCombe family. Clark, Michael, and Philip McCombe operate it, according to the 2021 Patch essay.

Sources

Peter Kalafatis

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