The Florida Agricultural Museum has been at its current location in Palm Coast for the past two years. Bruce Patek, executive director, credits the museum’s beginning to Doyle Conner, a former state commissioner of agriculture.

With a tour on a people mover, visitors may stop and enter the buildings to hear about the seven different exhibits. The first is the Clark Homestead, an original pioneer homestead built in 1890. The home has been fully restored, and on the tour a visitor can learn how the Clarks lived.

The Clark Homestead is an example of a cracker house. John Beale, the guide, shared that the term cracker came from a Scottish term, craick, that meant “liked to talk.”

 “This is a typical cracker house, with wide porches and doors and windows that line up even,” John shared. “Sliding windows are also typical to the homestead, as well as a tin roof.”

The kitchen was built separately, he explained, because when people would set up a homestead they began with a one-room cabin – then, they would build the main house and move out into it, and the former cabin would become the kitchen.

Besides the kitchen garden, John said behind the house would have been a large cornfield, which was a cracker staple, and a sugar cane field. The cane would have been harvested after first setting the field on fire to scare out the wildlife and bring the sugar to the top of the stock.

The cane stock was then cut and run through the cane grinder, which would have been turned by an ox, mule or whatever could be hooked to it. After the juice was collected, it was boiled down until it became cane sugar; at times, the cane was cooked a bit longer until it became black strap molasses.

At the Clark Homestead were examples of Florida Cracker cows and Cracker horses. These breeds were originally brought in by the Spanish in the early 1500s and the animals have since adapted and become their own breed. The Cracker Horse, in fact, recently became the official State Horse.

Bruce explained Florida was one of the last open-range states and that fencing was not required until the late 1940s. “Florida cowboys were really cow hunters. They used cow dogs to help find them,” he said.

The dogs were a vital part of the cowboys’ work. “It was wild in the woods and the cow dog had a job to do, or you could get gored by the cows,” Bruce explained.

With the open-range policy, if you hit a cow on the road back before the fencing requirements went into effect, you would have been responsible for fixing your car and also, replacing the cow.
Besides the Cracker cattle and horses, there are Belgian horses, mules and donkeys, as well as a few wild hogs that were captured and brought to the Clark Homestead. These hogs are descended from pigs brought over by the Spanish.

Also along the tour was the Traxler County Store, filled with canned goods and items needed for 1890s daily life. There are examples of most anything a homestead could need. The museum also offered a tour of the Caldwell Dairy Barn, a 5,000 square-foot open-air barn.

In addition, visitors receive a tour of the Strawn Citrus Complex, which was moved from Deleon Springs, Fla., to the museum.
This complex consists of five historic buildings restored to a 1940s appearance.

One building offers a Black Cowboys exhibit, which tells the story of Africans and African-Americans involved in Florida’s cattle industry. The exhibit says the term “cowboy” came from 18th century South Carolina, for the black male slaves who tended cows.

There is also John Hewitt’s sawmill, where visitors can see the colonial period archeological site of a water-powered sawmill that operated from 1770-1813.

There are plans to expand the museum, Bruce explained, to include a Native American village, a Spanish ranch and a pre-Civil War plantation. The museum is located at 7900 Old Kings Road, Palm Coast, FL 43237, or call 386-446-7630.

Readers with questions or comments for Cindy Ladage may write to her in care of this publication.