Crones Cradle spring seedling festival March 22

Crones Cradle spring seedling festival March 22
March 1997

Crones Cradle Conserve is hosting their annual spring seedling festival on Saturday, March 22. The festival includes workshops on organic gardening, pond-making, wild edibles, as well as music, basketweaving demonstrations, and a wide selection of spring vegetable, flower and herb seedlings, whether you want to start a whole garden or just grow a couple of things in pots. There will also be food, prizes, and much more. The rain date is Sunday, March 23.

Crones Cradle Conserve is a 722 acre privately-owned ecological preserve and education center located in Marion County, thirty-five miles southeast of Gainesville near Citra. Its primary objectives are to promote environmental awareness, activism and earth stewardship through an ever-evolving mixture of workshops and events designed for the general public but with an emphasis on its own local community. Sustainability, whether it be agricultural, urban, or cultural, is the underlying theme of all the Conserve's endeavors.

As part of its educational and community projects in sustainable living, CCC inaugurated a subscription garden service in the spring of '96 which currently serves families in Gainesville, Ocala, Hawthorne and Micanopy with weekly bundles of fresh organic produce. Susan and Pat Ross, the Farm's gardeners, emphasize that this project, above all else, symbolized the true spirit of Crone's Cradle Conserve. "Providing food for ourselves and our community--in many ways that's what it's really all about."

The Spring Seedling Festival is just one of many activities held year-round at the Conserve. They hold intensive day-long workshops in organic gardening, writing and self-publishing, wildcrafting herbals, traditional crafts such as quilting and canning, as well as outreach events including evening performances of traditional African-American storytelling, the Marion County Earth Day celebration, and sponsorship of the only herbal apprenticeship program in the region.

The Conserve seeks to retain in its natural state as much of the flora and fauna within its own confines as possible. Less than 100 acres is used for human ends. Having launched ecological restoration projects in the xeric, upland pine and marshes, the Conserve is more in the business of protecting and appreciating the earth than any of its "people-related" ventures. This approach, CCC emphasizes, is the only approach toward sustainability, both for humans and the planet.