Photographic oral history session with north Florida peanut farmer, Gary Ward. “We plant around May 10. But it used to be, the older people, before my time, would plant on a ‘dark night’s April.’ That's like the 15th to 20th of April. That was the old belief - the Old Farmer's Almanac. They would say we've got to get our peanuts out by the ‘dark night's April.’ That's when they planted.”
Patrick Millender: "I’d go out and oyster with my mom and dad. I would skip school saying I was sick, but there was no sick day at the house. We’d go out oystering. About 2:30 or three o'clock, I'd see the school bus go by and think, I can go home now and do what I want to do. But when that sun crests on the bridge, that's when we go home. That was four hours later."
We have two stories left to complete about old Florida cooking and food production for the Florida Soup project. One of our most recent photographic oral history sessions was also one of the most memorable. Home-cooked meal on an old wood-burning stove at the Panhandle Pioneer Settlement in Blountstown.
