You know it's a true small-town festival if you're avoiding manure in the parking area. Dade City's Raising Cane festival checks that box right from the start: on Saturday cars lined up across a part-time cow pasture, without a single parking attendant in sight. Attendees politely threaded their way between patties towards the entrance, drawn by the sweeter smells of chili and cane syrup.
The event, now in its seventh year, revels in an old-Florida ambiance that it richly deserves. Its main event is a grand, daylong "cane grinding" which is a Florida tradition par excellence. The venue is the Pioneer History Museum and its grounds, which were filled to busting with tractors, combines and Stetsons.
But it's not all men in hats: here, frontier women get play, too. A main event was the "Strong Woman Iron Skillet Toss," which is exactly what it sounds like. There's no telling how these ladies developed such skill in hurling cookware, but there were some impressive throws. The event was eventually co-opted by men (typical!), but I made an effort to talk to the women's winner, Mary Clark, 68, of Zephyrhills. She wandered into the festival for the cane syrup, but it just so happens that she is Florida's Senior Games Champion in both shot put and discus. She threw an iron skillet 55 feet.
While cane grinding is the festival's raison d'être, the festival has also recently begun hosting a large chili competition (sanctioned by the International Chili Society, in case you wondered), with entrants from multiple states. Sources told me that this innovation has touched off a fierce internal battle for the heart and soul of the festival — sugarcane or chili, you can't have both! But for the casual festival-goer, five bucks for a bottomless cup of chili samples was a pretty sweet deal.
Wandering the festival and meeting its vendors gave perspective on Florida's endlessly diverse agriculture — from honey to bamboo-like sugar cane to a roving pack of llamas and alpacas (the area's alpaca industry is, apparently, booming). And it all took place against the sprawling backdrop of the Pioneer History Museum, well worth a visit in itself. The 6.5-acre complex is a repository for many historic implements and craft objects, arranged like modern art on the walls.
Many of the museum's buildings were moved to the site from different places around the county. Strangely, some areas were so well-kept that they seemed to be in current use. It's a disorienting scene: the past is never dead, it's not even past — especially when you're still using the same seed sifter.
Away from the rocking music and the smell of ghost peppers, the main event took place next to a swampy stand of cane. A cooperative mule walked wide circles attached to a long handle, powering the sugar cane press. (Some people use lawnmowers now.) A baker's dozen of musicians plucked old-time songs while children large and small asked for turns on the mule's back. The scene had the slightly insular but friendly feel of a small-community event — which is exactly what cane boils have always been.
Wilbur Dew, a retired carpenter, watched over the boiling vat of cane juice. Dew, vice president of the Southern Syrupmakers Association, owns the Zephyrhills house where he was born.
"When I was a kid, people would do this in the neighborhood," Dew said. "But it's an all-day project, and nobody wants to do it anymore," he added, a little ruefully. Yet his view was contradicted by the press of children and adults gathering next to the sweet-smelling vat as it boiled, and clamoring for a bottle of still-warm syrup.
This article appears in Jan 12-19, 2017.