Folk Festival brings Flagler to its rural roots

Palm Coast Observer
Neighbors

The past came to life Saturday at the second-annual North Florida Folk Festival, which attracted not only Flagler County residents but also residents from all over Florida.

The festival, which was held at the Florida Agricultural Museum, was a celebration of the state’s roots in rural farming.

“These days, people tend to forget about our past because it’s so easy to go to the grocery store and buy food,” said Mary Herron, developmental director for the museum. “It’s easy to forget that agriculture is still the basis of our society.”

To celebrate that tradition, folk artists played the festival’s three stages in organized shows and casual jamming sessions, in which musicians came together to play together and swap songs. Vendors set up temporary shop among the museum’s pastoral lands, including blacksmith Jeff Reynolds and his wife, Deborah.

The couple operates Whisper Creek Traders, a company based in Middleburg that offers items reminiscent of the past, including homemade canned goods and preservatives by Deborah Reynolds and knives and S-hooks hand forged by Jeff Reynolds, a blacksmith.

As guests wandered among the free-ranging flocks of chickens and between the vintage farm equipment and 1925 Ford Model-T cars that spot the museum’s grounds, they were reminded of a past easily forgotten.

“There are times when things are so out of control in the world,” said Barabar Grimes, a Palm Coast resident who came to the festival primarily to hear folk music. “It’s good to just get back to the basics.”