FAMU Farm Fest returns to Brooksville with tours, food and music

Brooksville’s Chinsegut Hill Historic Site filled with farm tours, wagon rides, food vendors and live entertainment as FAMU Farm Fest brought agriculture, history and community pride together in one free daylong event.

The festival ran from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, May 16, with gates opening at 9 a.m. and the day beginning promptly with a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation and a processional to the festival. The Tampa Bay History Center partnered with Florida A&M University’s Brooksville Agricultural and Environmental Research Station, known as BAERS, for the fourth annual gathering at 22271 Chinsegut Hill Road in Brooksville.

The event was tied to Florida Emancipation Day, which marks the May 20, 1865, formal announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Tallahassee. That connection gave Farm Fest a purpose beyond entertainment, linking Hernando County’s rural heritage to a broader public memory of freedom, labor and civic change. In a county where development continues to press against remaining farmland, the festival put local agriculture in front of residents as something that still shapes jobs, land use and community identity.

BAERS itself is a 3,800-acre FAMU site in Hernando County that was transferred from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in 2015. FAMU says the station supports agricultural and natural resource research, beginning farmer and rancher programs, youth development and alternative agriculture demonstrations. The university also said BAERS secured $1.6 million in Florida legislative support for its research and extension programs in 2021-2022, a sign of the public investment behind the work happening in Brooksville.

FAMU has said the festival is meant to raise public awareness of how land-grant institutions uplift communities through education, innovation and engagement. That mission came through in the event’s mix of field-based learning and family programming, giving visitors a chance to see where research, outreach and farm education intersect in Hernando County. In a 2025 version of the combined Florida Emancipation Day and Farm Fest event, FAMU said the gathering drew families, farmers, producers and neighbors from Hernando and surrounding counties and featured keynote remarks from Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson and author Natalie Kahler.

Vonda H. Richardson called Farm Fest a “FAMUly Reunion,” a phrase that captured the event’s dual role as both a celebration and a civic meeting place. For Brooksville, it was also a reminder that free public events can carry real economic and educational weight, especially when they connect local residents to the land, the people who work it and the institutions trying to keep it productive.