A Florida Fresh Market

Primed by promises of fresh, local produce, I visited a local fresh market this week for the first time in a long while. I surmised that since a lot of vegetables are grown in Florida, that a fresh market in Florida would have little room for foreign fruit. So I was disappointed to see Chilean grapes and California avocados.

I acknowledge my hypocrisy in expecting local produce in Florida, a state whose vast agricultural economy is based on selling to people who live elsewhere. For centuries, Florida farmers have made their livings by selling oranges and green beans and strawberries to people far, far away. Pioneering farmers loaded citrus onto steamboats and trains so that hotels in New York City might serve sectioned fruit to their guests. Thousands of men were lured to Florida by the promise of a better life as a gentleman farmer, with ten acres in the country and a house in town.

Indeed, there were several local products available at the Oldsmar Fresh Market that I do not see at my local Publix or Wal-Mart Supercenter. There were fresh breads from a local bakery, fresh Gulf seafood, and honey from local bees. Of course there were Florida strawberries, and Ruskin tomatoes. There was a table of Florida citrus, and not the shiny perfect fruit that gets mailed away in gift baskets, but the duller, lumpier fruit Floridians keep for themselves because it tastes so good. Here were the Florida grapefruit, the Temple orange, and the Honey Murcott. The Temple and the Honey Murcott oranges are both tangors, crosses between tangerines and sweet oranges. The Temple orange gave its name to the city of Temple Terrace, where larges groves of the fruit once grew. The Honey Murcott orange is named after Charles Murcott Smith who first planted groves of this variety nearby in Pinellas County.












"Home cooking: Surviving for a week on locally grown food" (St. Petersburg Times, October 24, 2008)

Sundries

From other blogs:

Gulfstream Park Opens, 1944 (Colin's Ghost) History of the horse racing track at Gulfstream Park

Frostproof (The South Florida Watershed Journal) The Floridian winter wonderland

Bites of the Alligator (The Keeper's Blog) A steamboat wreck on the St. Johns River

Ringling's Isles (Architecture Research) Development of St. Armand's Key

From newspapers:

"Busch Gardens to end 50-year flow of free beer" St. Petersburg Times, January 6, 2009

"Old Pinellas school could become teacher housing " St. Petersburg Times, November 12, 2008

"Couple buys 80-year-old penthouse of Babe Ruth" St. Petersburg Times, January 2, 2009

"Citrus grove grew with owner's passion " St. Petersburg Times, January 2, 2009

War Beans

The Castor Bean plant grows quickly and easily in Florida, has been grown commercially here in the past, and is used in Brazil to make biodiesel fuel. Sounds great, sign us all up, the answer for what to do with all that land cleared due to citrus canker -- well, maybe not. The plant is invasive and poisonous, one of its products being ricin. Nonetheless, 90 years ago castor cultivation in Florida was a matter of national concern.

The time was 1917, and the United States had joined World War One. One of the inovations of the Great War was the use of airplanes for military purposes, and castor oil was valued as an aircraft lubricant. Soon the plant was under cultivation in Florida, the southwestern states, and California, with growers guaranteed a price of $3 a bushel. Problems with labor, pests, and transportation lowered yields and raised prices demanded by growers. Production was far below government estimates, and the War Department turned to foreign sources of the oil. American petroleum companies promoted mineral and other oils for use in aircraft.

Soon after fields of castor were planted in Florida, armyworms began marching and munching their way through the foliage. State plant inspectors waged battle armed with dust sprayers full of powdered arsenate of lead, quickly saving that year's crop. The State Plant Board reported:

"In dealing with the emergency created by this outbreak of the army worm the Plant Board was called upon to make rather heavy expenditures. A total of $1,946.85 was expended by the Board, covering traveling expenses of inspectors, telegrams, emergency circulars, dusting machines, poison, etc. The large quantity of castor beans saved from destruction, and therefore made available for the use of the Government, more than justified the expenditure."

The war ended before all problems with massive domestic production of castor oil were resolved. Peacetime demand for the oil much less, and farmers turned to other crops. Castor bean plants are still found along roadside ditches and fields throughout south Florida, where they are considered weeds.

Photograph on page 304 of the 1918 edition of The Overland Monthly: "Human and Physical Elements in a Picturesque and Successful Castor Bean Campaign in Florida. --Herman B. Walker of Miami, and the illuminated Ford in Which He Several times Traversed the East Coast, Calling upon the Farmers to Plant War Beans."
-----

Sources:

"Castor Beans Grown in Titusville Supplied Oil for World War I Planes." Indian River Journal Volume VI, Number 1 (Spring/Summer 2007), pp. 2-3.

The Quarterly Bulletin of the State Plant Board of Florida, Volume I, 1916-1917. Gainesville: State Plant Board of Florida.

1918 Year Book of the Oil, Paint and Drug Reporter. New York: Oil, Paint and Drug Reporter, 1919.

Florida News Stories

"The Strawberry Schools" (Tampa Tribune, April 6, 2008): "We started in April and ended in December. The three-month break from January to March was timed for when the strawberries ripened. Children were needed to help pick the crops. On small family farms, everybody had to work to make a living."

"Bring back Jack!" (St. Petersburg Times, April 2, 2008): "If we lived in Florida, we'd reach out the back door and pick oranges for breakfast. We'd catch fish in the canal behind the house. Coconuts, Bea! We'll have our own coconut tree!''

"Historic fishing shacks of bygone days" (The News-Press, March 29, 2008): "Norton’s shack — where he fished for mullet and pompano by night and tended nets by day, where he waited for boats to bring food and where he ultimately died — still stands in Pine Island Sound more than 80 years after it was built. "

"The Ghosts of Al Lang" (Tampa Tribune, Special Report) Al Lang Field and Spring Training in St. Petersburg

"Ruth And Gehrig At Home In St. Petersburg" (Tampa Tribune, March 23, 2008) ""I think a lot of people here sit on this rooftop and wonder what was going on back then in those penthouse suites," says Marsha Reynolds, a Flori-de-Leon resident and co-chairman of its Heritage Committee."

"As Kissimmee celebrates its 125th anniversary, its identity is changing" (Orlando Sentinel, March 24, 2008) "But as ranches give way to housing developments, the small community that turns 125 years old this week is struggling with an identity crisis: balancing the cow-town image (and the jokes that come with it) while trying to shift toward a more sophisticated reputation as a cosmopolitan town next to Walt Disney World."

"Flavor of Key West supports a struggling Florida industry" (Herald Tribune, March 16, 2008) "At the Eaton Street Seafood Market in the historic district, a long glass case displayed a who's who of the city's seafood scene: plump piles of pinks (the local shrimp) snuggled next to a yellowtail snapper, a mound of stone crab claws and fresh slabs of grouper."

Our State Fair

For over one hundred years, Tampa has hosted the Florida State Fair. It's not so different from other state fairs, with rides, food on a stick, and 4-H clubs with sheep and steers. There's exotic looking chickens and rabbits, bleating goats, and cow milking demonstrations. Over on the other side, there's a guy carving wood with a chainsaw, just outside the exhibition hall where the Elvis impersonator contest is underway. There are pig races, a giant alligator, and spinning thrill rides. For just a few dollars you can throw a dart/ ball / ring and win an unwieldly stuffed animal.

In 1904 the South Florida Fair was organized to promote Tampa's economic resources and bring tourists to our fair city. For seven decades, the fair was held on the west shore of the Hillsborough River, near the Tampa Bay Hotel, now part of the University of Tampa campus. Eventually anew, larger fairgrounds were built in east Tampa, on Interstate 4, and this is where the fair has been held each February since 1977.

In other months of the year the fairgrounds host craft shows, horse shows, and concerts. Year round, Cracker Country is a popular school fieldtrip destination.

If you want to go, you'd better hurry -- Monday is the last day this year!

Plant City Has Some Big Strawberries

It's strawberry season again in Plant City!



1939 photos of Strawberry Festival



City of Plant City - History



Remembering Plant City, by Gilbert Gott (Google Books)



Plant City (Images of America; Google Books)



Plant City in Vintage Postcards (Google Books)

It's Cold Outside!

Well, maybe it was only a two cat night, not a three dog night, but temperatures in Florida dropped well into the freezing zone yesterday and this morning. Here in Tampa, we saw numbers in the 20s, and word is still out on how the strawberry crop fared.

It's not the coldest it's ever been here, and for youse guys up North, it's practically beach weather. But for Floridans, sub-freezing temperatures threaten livelihoods. Which is in part why Governor Crist declared a state of emergency, allowing farmers to get their crops out of the fields and to market more quickly. But, speaking optimistically, this 2008 cold snap is not a repeat of the winter of 1894-1895, when severe freezes changed the trajectory of Florida's history.

On December 29, 1894, extremely cold temperates reached far southward in Florida, as far as Palm Beach. In Tampa, the mercury dropped to 18 degrees fahrenheit. Fruit dropped from trees, blanketing the ground, and farmers lost the year's crop. This was bad enough, but on February 7, 1895, the temperatures dropped again. The trees and plants that survived the first frost had just begun to recover, sending out new, tender shoots. Whereas the first freeze destroyed one year's harvest, the second freeze killed the trees to the ground. Since it takes 5 to 10 years for citrus trees to first bear fruit, the loss was more than many farmers could overcome. When you read the histories of Florida's towns and counties, it's a common theme that after the freezes of 1894 and 1895, people left in droves, either to return North or to go further south in Florida. It took ten or more years in some cases for communities to recover from this loss. The state's citrus industry was devastated as well, with less than 150,000 boxes of fruit shipped out of state in 1895, a 97% drop from the 5,000,000 boxes shipped in 1893.

And then there's Julia Tuttle's orange blossoms.

The romantic version of the story goes something like this. Railroad magnate Henry Flagler was huddled in frigid north Florida, when he received a box from Julia Tuttle in Miami. In the box were fresh orange blossoms, proof that Miami had escaped the cold hand of nature. Inspired by the white petals, untouched by frost, Flagler then built his railroad farther south, from Palm Beach to Miami. The reality is that Flagler already knew Tuttle and and others in Miami, and was already considering extending the railroad down there, but didn't want it to detract from his hotel in Palm Beach. The freeze was the impetus for Flagler's decision to go ahead and put Miami on his map.

The weather this week hasn't been like it was 110 years ago, and farmers and grove managers have new fruit and vegetable varieties and new techniques to help weather cold temperatures. But it's prudent to remember that in Florida, a day or two of freezing temperatures can have long lasting and long reaching ramifications.

Florida News, After a Long Weekend

"Eight million pounds of citrus will crisscross the country" (Orlando Sentinel, November 21, 2007)

"A Florida Thanksgiving" (Herald Tribune, November 22, 2007) "'Pluck 'em, skin 'em, bread 'em and fry 'em' is his family's traditional recipe for wild turkey, dating back four generations to Florida's first Austin Heacock -- Hay-cock -- who came down from Ohio with the Sebrings in 1912."

"Old-timer recalls when citrus ruled area" (St. Petersburg Times, November 23, 2007) Memories of Orange Blossom Groves.

"Wooden icon breathes new green life:
The governor endorses the energy efficiency project of the new owners of the Belleview Biltmore Resort & Spa." (St. Petersburg Times, November 20, 2007)

"Restoring the Everglades" (Tampa Tribune, Special Report)

"Herbert Saffir, creator of hurricane intensity scale, dies at 90 " (St. Petersburg Times, November 23, 2007)

"State Has a History of Primary Skirmishes" (Tallahassee Democrat, November 25, 2007)

"'60s concrete monsters get a second look" (Miami Herald, November 21, 2007)

Palmetto Historic Park

Palmetto Historic Park is located at 515 10th Avenue W, Palmetto, Florida, just off US 41 north of Bradenton. Several historic structures have been moved here, and are open to the public.

The Cypress House, originally located on Longboat Key, is now a small military museum. It was built using pecky cypress, a decorative wood type. The holes in the wood are apparently caused by the growth of a fungus in the living tree.

The Heritage Station Post Office, built in 1880, was Palmetto's first free-standing post office. When it was built, mail still came to Palmetto by steamship from Cedar Key. The post office was moved here in 1982, and was the first building the Palmetto Historical Park. On Heritage Day each year, you can mail letters from this post office, each one getting a special hand cancellation.

A prominent feature of the historical park is the 1914 Carnegie Library, which over the years has also served as Town Hall, the school library, and the Girls Club. Today it houses a local history library. The current public library is across the street.

The Manatee County Agricultural Museum and Hall of Fame is also at the Palmetto Historical Park.

The park and agricultural museum are free if you just want to walk around (donations welcome), and tours are available.

State Vegetable?

It came to my attention today that Florida doesn't have a state vegetable. State fruit, pie, beverage, flower, soil, freshwater fish, and many more, but no veggie. That's ok -- many states don't, and of the ones that do, two chose sweet potato, some picked tomatoes, and three selected some variety of onion. Utah added the State Historic Vegetable section (sugar beet), and Oklahoma started conversation by naming watermelon as its state vegetable.

Practically every vegetable under the sun is grown in Florida -- which would best represent this state? How about naming the state tree (Sabal Palm) as the state vegetable as well? That would be swamp cabbage (or hearts of palm, depending on where you are dining). However, since harvesting the cabbage kills the tree, you would need permission before using fresh swamp cabbage to make this recipe:

Marinated Flank Steak with Stewed Florida Swamp Cabbage (from Emeril Lagasse and the Food Network.com)

This Week's News -- Historic Florida

"Capt. Sewell's Homestead Still Stands" -- Eliot Kleinberg of the Palm Beach Post is writing a series of columns about Florida towns turning 50. this week -- Sewell's Point.

Speaking of anniversaries, Happy 185th Birthday Jacksonville! ("Commemorating Jacksonville's First City Planners" -- Financial News and Daily Record)

"Jackie Robinson Ballpark Scores All-Star Game" (Daytona News-Journal) getting ready for the Florida State League All Star Game at "the field where Jackie Robinson broke professional baseball's color barrier 60 years ago during a spring training game."

"Train Depot Fate Still Unclear" (Panama City News Herald) What should be done with the Bay Line train depot in Panama City?

"His Land, His Ranch, His Lifetime" (St. Petersburg Times) A profile of rancher Milo Thomas

"History Club Collects Firsts" (St. Petersburg Times) Why wait until everyone has forgotten? Wiregrass Ranch High School students record history as it happens.

"Wright Rescue Takes Shape" (Orlando Sentinel) Frank Lloyd Wright buildings at Florida Southern College in Lakeland are now on the World Monuments Fund 2008 list of 100 Most Endangered Sites.

Largo Feed Store

Yesterday I visited the Largo Area Historical Society with a tour group from the Florida Historical Society meeting. Largo's historical society is housed in the historic Largo Feed Store, a 1910 building moved to its current site in 1992.

In 1910 John Gainey built a feed store out of rusticated concrete block he manufactured himself. The store was run by Francis Marion Campbell, who had moved to Largo in 1867 and also owed and operated the Hotel Largo. Campell died in 1912, and from that year until the 1980s, a succession of owners ran a feed store in this building at this location.

When in the 1980s the Florida Department of Transportation began planning to widen Bay Drive, the Largo Area Historical Society worked to have the old Largo Feed Store moved to Largo Central Park. After it reached its current home, the historical society, the city, and the Florida Department of State worked together to have the building refurbished. Now, in addition to housing historical exhibits, it serves as a multipurpose building across the street from the Largo Public Library, and near the city's cultural center.

Rusticated concrete block, also called rockfaced concrete block, was made in a mold to create a surface texture that resembles stone. Its popularity as a building material peaked between 1905 and 1930. Concrete and concrete block were popular building materials well before then, but it took two technological advances to make mass production of rusticated concrete block possible. First, Harmon S. Palmer patented a hollow concrete block manufacturing machine. Second, the method of making Portland cement was improved and standarized. With a easy manufacturing method and reliable materials, rusticated concrete block became a widely popular building material, the ideal being that with nonskilled labor, the blocks could be made at the construction site. Block machines were even sold through the Sears catalog. Advantages of the blocks included that they were less expensive to lay than brick, they imitated the appearance of a more expensive material (quarried stone), and they were fire resistant.

In 1917, F. J. Straub patented a method of making cinder blocks. Cinder blocks used aggregates to make a lighter block, and they had smooth surfaces rather than the rough surface of rock-faced blocks. By the 1930s, cinderblock had replaced rusticated concrete blocks in popularity as a building material.

Sources:

"Historic of the Historic Largo Feed Store," pamphlet produced by the Largo Historical Society, Largo, Florida.

Pamela H. Simpson, "Cheap, Quick, and Easy: The Early History of Rockfaced Concrete Block Building," Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, 1989.

Frogs!

"Time's fun when you're having flies." -- Kermit the Frog

In a state closely associated with with reptiles, the amphibians are sometimes overlooked. However, organizations such as the Southwest Florida Amphibian Monitoring Network and the Hillsborough River Watershed Alliance's Frog Listening Network are keeping their eyes - and definitely their ears - open. It's important work, since amphibians can be indicators of the health or decline of our environment.

But for those of you who aren't the type to be convinced by gentle green throat-clearings, there is the movie Frogs!, starring 1970s vintage Sam Elliot, Ray Milland, and Joan Van Ark. Filmed in part at Eden Gardens State Park and Panama City Beach, Frogs! shows what happens when you spray too many chemicals on the hoppy creatures. That's right, nature gets even. The film's poster is a bullfrog with a severed hand in its mouth.

Perhaps those amphibians are just upset because they just read Ralph Stoutamire's 1952 publication, Bullfrog Farming and Frogging in Florida. Florida's frog industry was but a tadpole, but Stoutamire gave advice on the design and management of commercial frog farms. The best chapter is the "Statement of F. B. Cramer, Sr., President of the Southern Industries, Inc., Frog Farm Located Just North of Tampa, Florida." Page 35 shows Mr. Cramer himself, a respectible looking man wearing a tie, with his spectacles tucked into his shirt pocket as he holds a large spotted dangly-legged frog. To feed his frogs, he relies heavily on fiddler crabs found on bay beaches (Page 37 shows his special crab-catching apparatus). He sells the legs and arms to canners, and tans frog skins to be made into leather "ladies shoes, belts, purses, key rings, the covering of artificial bait for fishing and other novelties." The photos are great -- to illustrate how big the frogs are, a lovely lipsticked young lady holds two enormous amphibians by the feet. On the next page, four grim frog hunters pose with headlamps and gigs. Evidently Wauchula was the centrepointe for catching wild frogs, with 29,000 pounds shipped out in just 5 months of 1941. Stoutamire: "As a wild bullfrog seldom weighs more than 2 pounds, even the pessimistic must admit that is a lot of frogs."

Stoutamire's pièce de résistance is 16 pages of "Famous Ways to Serve Giant Frogs." Yes, 16 pages of 1950s frog recipes such as "Giant Frog Sandwich Spread," "Jellied Great Bullfrog Creamed Salad," and "Giant Bullfrog Fondue." I kid you not.

Linoleum and Touch of Tung Oil

This may not seem like it's about Florida at first, but bear with me.

Recently I read Linoleum, by Jane Powell and Linda Svendsen (Gibbs Smith, 2003). It's a coffee table book--oversized, glossy photos, not too much text. Yes, an actual entire book about linoleum, the floor covering of the hoi polloi. The photographs really make this book, transforming linoleum into abstract pieces of art. The text covers much the same territory as other books and journal articles on the topic, but with a welcome sense of humor. The last part of the book recounts the author's experiments to determine whether linoleum can withstand cat pee. (We're not to the Florida part yet.)

Frederick Walton, an Englishman, invented linoleum in 1855. It was basically canvas or burlap coated with oxidized linseed oil, cork dust, and resin. There have been variations on this over the years, but the key point is that linoleum uses natural products and is not vinyl.

Linoleum originally was made from linseed oil, which came the name. But later other kinds of oils were used, among them, tung oil. Tung oil comes from the nuts of the tung tree, which is native to China. The oil has other industrial uses, including as an ingredient in varnish.

Heading into the twentieth century, China was the leading producer of tung oil, and had cornered the market. So some Americans looked around for where tung trees might grow well in the United States, and came up with north central Florida. The first tung trees were planted in Florida in 1906, and the first oil was produced from their nuts in 1913.

Wars disrupted supplies of tung oil from China, which in turn encouraged increased production in Florida. The zenith of Florida's tung industry was during World War II. Jefferson County claims to have been the center point of this industry, with over 12,000 acres of tung oil trees in the 1950s.

But the tung trees weren't the only thing happening in Jefferson County at the mid-century mark. A young man named Homer Formby used some of that oil to make his own line of furniture finishing products. His first store was in Jefferson County, in the old Monticello Opera House.

Storms, freezes, and competition put an end to Florida's tung oil industry in the 1960s and 1970s. Formby made a pile of money, sold his company, and in the 1970s/80s owned some islands down in the Keys.

Florida just may be the Kevin Bacon of the 50 United States.

Sugar

U.S. Sugar is closing its Bryant Mill, which opened in 1962 north of the small town of Pahokee.

"U.S. Sugar Closes Historic Bryant Mill as Industry Struggles in Florida" (Sun-Sentinel, April 9, 2007)

Sugar has been produced commercially in Florida for nearly 250 years, probably beginning in New Smyrna. The Bulow Plantation sugar mill was destroyed during the Seminole Wars, and the antebellum sugar plantations of David Levy Yulee and Robert Gamble are now state parks. In the 1880s, Hamilton Disston tried large-scale production of sugar in St. Cloud, but weather and soils pushed sugar growers further south, down to Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades. Sugar growers relied heavily on seasonal labor, and in the 1930s and 1940s, and even into the late 20th century, the cane fields were hot spots for migrant labor issues. After the U.S. embargo on Cuban goods in the early 1960s, there was an increased demand for Florida sugar. Sugar production is still strongly tied to international trade and labor issues, recently the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Read More About It:

Big Sugar, by Alec Wilkinson (Alfred A. Knopf, 1989)

Cuba's Sugar Industry, by Jose Alvarez and Lazaro Pena Castellanos (University Press of Florida, 2001)

The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise, by Michael Grunwald (Simon & Schuster, 2006)

O, Those Ostriches!

Every spring, the state legistlature meets to discuss the budget and taxes, and someone always mentions Florida's sales tax exemption for ostrich feed. In 1992, ostriches were reclassified as domestic livestock, and the tax exemption went into effect to support what was seen as an emerging industry in Florida. Starting in the late 1980s, ostrich was promoted as a low-fat, low-cholesterol beef alternative. Soon, ostrich farms were popping up all over the place. Unfortunately, demand did not follow and problems with slaughtering, marketing, and distributing kept ostrich product prices high. In the mid to late 1990s, most ostrich farms in Florida went out of business. The feed tax exemption stayed.

Ostrich farming was popular in Florida one hundred years ago, too. The first ostriches were brought to the United States in the late 1880s, and in the late 1890s the Florida Ostrich Farm opened in Jacksonville. While this was a tourist attraction featuring ostrich races, they also raised the large birds for their feathers. Depending on the color, length, and width, a single plume could cost as much as $40 (approximately $800 in today's dollars). The fluffy plumes were popular decorations for ladies hats, both in America and Europe. In addition to individual plumes, the Florida Ostrich Farm sold feather boas, stoles, and fans.

Ostrich farms were popular tourist destinations in Jacksonville well into the twentieth century, but other cities had them, too. There was a farm in St. Petersburg in the early part of the century, where the Wells family raced French ostriches and sold egg and plume souvenirs. Today, there are few ostrich farms operating in Florida. Bird races never really caught on and are seen locally only in old photographs and vintage postcards.

The American Ostrich Association has some interesting facts and figures available on its website -- for instance, did you know that an ostrich's brain is approximately the same size as its eyeball?

(Circa 1910 photograph of Henry Jackson Bond on a stuffed ostrich in Tallahassee, Florida, courtesy Florida Photographic Collection, State Archives of Florida.)