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A Unique Horse Riding Experience at the Florida Agricultural Museum It’s prime riding season, and horseback riders looking for a unique experience can ride the trails at the Florida Agricultural Museum near St. Augustine. There Barn Manager Cheryl Carl offers guided trail riding with a small team of horses, one of them a 12-year-old Florida […]

Growers Looking to Diversify with Alternative Crops Some small farmers are looking to hydroponics to meet increased demand in direct-to-consumer markets. At this summer’s Florida Small Farms and Alternative Enterprises Conference, hydroponics was a hot topic. “People can do it on a small scale and they don’t have to dig up their whole yard,” explains

The Grazing Management School will hold its Sixth Annual Event this October For two days in October, local cattle producers will be updated on the latest news in cattle grazing during the Sixth Annual Grazing Management School. The two-day session will take place at the Polk County Extension Service’s John Brenneman Auditorium in Bartow from

A New Eco-Friendly Venture Hopes to Make Big Impact on Florida’s Economy As the population grows, so also grows the need for food. In 2010, research showed that 1.5 billion pounds of shrimp was consumed, and the demand this deep sea delight continues to grow. Bringing ocean farming to land is one way to help

Growers Continue to Study Pomegranate as an Alternative Crop Growers are continuing to experiment with pomegranates as a potential alternative crop, with test patches from North Florida to Homestead. And a new $190,000 study by the University of Florida’s Gulf Coast Research and Education Center in Balm offers the hope of more solid information by

A More Convenient Option for Supporting Documents During Intrastate and Interstate Travel For many Florida horse owners who travel from county to county and state to state, there is a more convenient way to keep your paper shuffling and wasted time to a minimum. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services offers two different

A Look Back at Citrus Variety Development and Disease Management Citrus varieties have changed through the years with intricate and thoughtful cultivation. Prior to the Great Freeze, Dr. H.J. Webber and Mr. Walter T. Swingle of the United States Department of Agriculture founded the Subtropical Laboratory at Eustis, Florida in 1892. There they implemented frost

Q&A on Cowboy Mounted Shooting Cowboy mounted shooting is a popular equestrian sport, which is gaining popularity. It involves shooting, 1880s style, with two single-action 45-caliber revolvers while mounted on a horse and racing against the clock. The riders fire at balloon targets using five rounds of special, blank ammunition. They are scored on the

Local Hunters Share the Appreciation for their Sport and the Skills Involved Pokey Rogers, foreman and hunting guide at Rocking W Ranch east of Wauchula, prefers to shoot quail with a shotgun. “They [shotguns] don’t do too much damage to the meat,” he says. “If you shoot a quail with a bow, you’ve got to

A Look at Irrigation Methods and Cold Protection from Past to Present The northeastern citrus productions never fully recovered from the Great Freeze, and during their rehabilitation another damaging freeze occurred in 1899. The crippling devastation forced growers and orchardists to relocate to Central Florida and southward, seeking out warmer climates in what is known