CITRA, FL (352today.com) – The 18th Farmland Preservation Festival was held Saturday, April 11, 2026, at Stirrups ‘n Strides Therapeutic Riding Center, Inc., with a sea of vendors, informational and educational booths, food and live entertainment.
It was a friend who contacted the organizers of the Farmland Preservation Festival and invited Sybil Stoeffler to take part in the festival.
“Were having a ball so far,” said Stoeffler. “We build planters. Some are standard and we customize some. We build delivery boxes and raised garden planters, and we do it out of pressure treated [wood] so it doesn’t rot. We have some trays and mason jar stuff, just whatever’s in our mind we decide to create.
Marion County Commissioner Craig Curry attended the festival. Organizations like Save Our Rural Areas and Horse Farms Forever play a critical role in helping to preserve green space within the county, he said.
“We have a lot of pressure with the growth on the farmland and open areas in the county, and it’s important to have organizations that are constantly on the forefront pushing new ideas, new ways to preserve, showing up at meetings to be in favor of a good idea or in opposition,” said Curry. “I’ve always been a big supporter of SORA and what they’re doing. I was born and raised here, and I don’t like to see all of the development either. It’s coming and we try to manage it the best we can from the commission standpoint. I think they do a great job.”
Phyllis Allen was supposed to be at the 2025 festival, but illness precluded her from participating in the event last year. She will be opening a store in Palatka, a little cottage, where she will sell canned good and things that she makes. They have a social media presence on Facebook under Allen’s Gardens.
“We offer datil pepper sauce, which is really good, all of our friends like it, we have a mustard base and a tomato base,” said Allen. “We have tomatoes. My aunt used to call me up all the time that she had fried pork chops and tomatoes. So, my father in-law, who has passed now, he heard me talking about it. We can do it, and here he comes with three cases of tomatoes. So, I learned how to do it, and now I can everything I can find.”
Allen’s Gardens also offered brownies and makes cakes with edible candles, that are put inside the pound cakes, with a strawberry or blueberry topping. They also make cowboy cakes and they have a garlic candle that goes in those, said Allen. The datil sauce and pickled squash were the most popular items at the Allen’s Gardens booth during the festival.
Scribbles drew a lot of attention–the miniature pony pulls a cart and is a staple at the festival, playing with all of the children, said Angel Feaster. Scribbles is nine years old and has visited nursing homes and schools.
“He’s gone to North Marion High School for Farm Day,” said Feaster. “Jerome Feaster (Farmland Preservation Festival co-chair) is my husband Bo’s cousin. Jerome invited us. My niece Brooke brought her bunnies, so the festival had a petting zoo. It’s events like these that get people interested in homesteading, farmland, and give people an idea of the plants people grow, the food and animals they have because homesteading has becoming extremely popular.”
