Living-history festival to be held Saturday

On Saturday, Gainesville residents can come together to spend a day in the 1870s.

At the 15th-annual Cane Boil and Fiddle Fest, members of Morningside Nature Center will dress in traditional clothing as they demonstrate how to boil sugar cane and create objects from iron and wood.

The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 3450 E. University Ave.

Sally Wazney, the event manager at Morningside, said the festival has become a Gainesville tradition for many, but it began by accident.

“Yearly, we would boil the cane, and it began to draw a crowd,” she said.

Since then, the event has evolved to include the demonstrations, wagon rides and a fiddle contest for children, Wazney said.

In past years, she said, more than 1,000 visitors have attended.

While others listen to music and watch demonstrations, farm manager Bricky Way will be tending to the sugarcane juice as it boils, which can prove to be a stressful task. Cook it too long, he said, and it comes out hard like taffy. Don’t cook it long enough, and it spoils quickly.

Prior to the event, Way will help cut and press sugarcane stalks to yield 55 gallons of sap, which will be boiled, bottled and sold Saturday.

“There’s a certain point when you have to decide when it’s ready or not,” he said. “It leaves you with a little bit of anxiety.”

Wazney said the event will give attendees a chance to leave behind the technological trappings of the modern day and connect with the past.

“It’s important to learn about history,” Wazney said. “We want to show people, instead of tell them, what life was like then.”