Those who are new to our program would have a hard time imagining it, but our settler's farm in may ways was once the center point, and springboard, for many of our educational programs. Initially it was constructed to serve as a picture frame to go around the Corolla Breed Conservation program.
People are thrown for a bit of a loop when they learn that Spanish horses were the horses of early colonial Virginia, that we still have wild horses of that breed on the Outer Banks, and that this was once the frontier on the very edge of the fledgling British Empire. The buildings that made up the settler's farm put all of those things in perspective.The settler's farm lead to the expansion of breed conservation program into other breeds of heritage livestock. The smokehouse was fully functional.
The settler's farm with its simple benches for visitors served as an important point on our tours of the horse lot for both family size groups of visitors and much larger groups. Living history programs were conducted there along with discussions of the culture of the people of Tsennacomaca who were ruled by the Powhatan, who was the father of Pocahontas.
Jackie has maintained a spectacular garden of colonial plants but otherwise the area has fallen from use as the buildings aged.
It is not going to stay that way. As the virus leaves us construction of a new settlers home will be a top priority. Perhaps the following year we will add a smoke house.
In any event, we will be restoring what was once the most important part of the horse lot and we will restore our educational programs to what they once were.....
and then, of, course, we will expand them to much more than they have ever been.
Life is not static. When growth ends, decay begins.
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