CHEBEAGUE ISLAND — When you live on an island and run out of milk, what do you do?

Until Tuesday, Nancy Hill knew the answer to her own riddle: Go to Doughty’s Island Market. Now, for her and the 400 other year-round residents of the Casco Bay island, the answer is much more complicated.

Doughty’s Island Market closed its doors on Tuesday after 65 years in business. It was the only grocery store on Chebeague Island, which swells to a summer population of about 1,600 residents, who can only get there by boat.

Many islanders are struggling to imagine how they’ll regularly access groceries now.

But on the market’s last day, they celebrated its service — not just as a store, but as a symbol of the island community.

FLOWERS FOR JULIE

At 9 a.m., Julie Doughty, 62, opened the store the same way she had for nearly four decades: the coffee was brewed and egg sandwiches were made before the red, white and blue striped “Open” flag went up. Right away, the regulars beelined to the breakfast selection.

Behind the register, where Doughty has long tallied up prices by hand, hangs art drawn by her sons, as well as the framed first dollar the store made and a roll of Kodak film that expired in 2005.

Her in-laws, Earle and Josephine Doughty, opened the general store in 1961. After she married their son, the young couple took over the market in 1987.

Doughty’s been running the store on her own for the past decade after her husband’s death in 2015. Her two adult sons who live on the island help out, but they are pursuing their own careers and don’t plan on taking over.

“I thought, ‘I’ve been doing this so long,’” she said. “I needed change.”

On her last morning before retirement, more than 150 longtime customers streamed into the store, taking shelter from the drizzle outside.

Each handed Julie a yellow tulip — her favorite color — and were greeted with a hug. After dropping more flowers and baked goods on the counter, they crowded into the store, shook the rain from their jackets, and began to sing.

They had adapted the lyrics of “A Bicycle Built for Two.”

“Island Market is closing its doors today / We will miss it more than we can say / The jokes and the stories were many / And it didn’t cost a penny.”

“I’m not good at speeches,” Julie said after the performance ended. “Coffee on me.”

Doughty’s Island Market was always a meeting place, said Donna Miller Damon, 75, who organized the singing. She grew up coming to the market and remembers weighing her baby sister on the store’s food scale.

“Coming here these days is just an excuse to visit,” she said.

A ‘KEY TO SURVIVAL’

Many Chebeague Island residents do the bulk of their shopping on the mainland, primarily at the Hannaford in Yarmouth — the store closest to where the ferry docks. But Doughty’s Island Market served islanders as a place to pick up some staples — condiments and bread and eggs, chips and ice cream, coolers of chilled beer and store-made Italian subs and potato salad.

“This place is the key to survival year round,” said Leila Bisharat, 83. “This is the safe harbor.”

Older residents in particular depended on the local option. Nancy Hill, 76, and David Hill, 79, said they take the 15-minute ferry ride to shop in Yarmouth once a week but typically got milk, ice cream and soda at the market, all too heavy for them to carry on the ferry.

“This is the saddest thing,” Nancy Hill said about the closure.

Getting all of their groceries on the mainland will be an adjustment for some and a significant challenge for others. Some island residents said they’ll need to buy bigger fridges to stock up on off-island goods.

The market was the only place on the island to carry other essentials, like sunscreen, menstrual products, cough medicine and hand soap.

To get to the Hannaford in Yarmouth requires keeping a car on the mainland, which many Chebeague Island residents cannot afford. Ordering groceries for delivery through Casco Bay Lines, which has become more possible in recent years, requires internet and a credit card — items not on hand for older residents who have been shopping by cash or check for decades.

“A town used to be a town because it had everything,” said Chuck Varney, 63, who runs a farm on the island and usually asks a friend for a ride to a grocery store when he arrives on the Yarmouth dock.

Following the store’s closure, there won’t be a place on the island to get a beer for most of the year, as the restaurant with a bar is only open in the summer. If your milk spoils or bread gets moldy, it could now be a week before you have time for a ferry ride to resupply, Varney said.

“It’ll be nine months of nothing,” said Varney, who leaves his farm almost daily for lunch at the market, which gives him a chance to connect with people.

Year-round residents are also considering the impact on the summer population, a crowd that gets bigger each year, and the dozens of contractors who work on the island.

“I can tell you there are thousands of people who aren’t here who are saying, ‘How am I going to survive? Without the Italian sub and egg salad?’” said Bisharat.

WHAT’S NEXT

Island residents will find a way to adjust. They always do, they said.

The store will remain closed for at least a year as the Doughtys figure out its long-term future. The family said they have no immediate plans to sell or lease the store, though they have already gotten some leasing offers, and several residents are interested in turning it into a food cooperative.

Doughty, who has spent two-thirds of her life working at the market, also has to figure out what comes next.

“I don’t know anybody who works as hard as she does,” said Mark Heels, Doughty’s partner of eight years. “Being a storeowner is not just a vocation, it’s who she is.”

One thing she knows is she wants to spend time with her 3-year-old grandson, Teddy, a 10th-generation Chebeague Island resident. After four decades of busy summers in the store, she’ll be able to spend this one with him on the beach.

As the hubbub of the market’s final morning slowed down, customers bought their final sodas and chips, gave Doughty their best wishes and got sent home with some of her flowers.

“It was an honor for everyone to show up for my family, for all they’ve put into the island,” said Doughty.

With about 150 people coming through the door, over a third of the island’s year-round population visited Doughty that morning.

She knew them all by name.