yd Kidwell farm next to the
original school tract which consisted of some 40 acres with several farm
buildings. The Kidwells had owned the property since 1934; their farm
being the very sort of family operation that proponents of the model
farm project hoped to show.[296] Money was still scarce for the farm's
development, however; therefore, most of the land was earmarked for
equestrian use--only a third was set aside for the model farm.
Additional acreage, purchased in 1974 (and again in 1977) and the
acquisition of the Kidwell farm buildings made more extensive and
authentic cultivation possible; the farm was finally established in
1974.[297] Because the land was pieced together from numerous sources,
the farm is presented as a representation of small-scale farming in the
county, not an exact recreation of the Kidwell farm. In its patchwork
composition, it echoes the trends of the county for few farms stayed
intact during the fluctuations of the 1920s and 1930s, but were added to
or diminished depending on the cash flow.

Model farms originated in Scandinavia, where entire villages were
preserved during the late 19th century in order to save the folkways
which were rapidly eroding in the wake of industrial development. In
this country the earliest efforts at such preservation took place in the
1940s. They had only scanty growth until a thoughtful article by Marion
Clawson was published in _Agricultural History_ in April, 1965. This piece
alerted preservationists and historians to the possibility of such
projects and influenced the establishment of nearly one hundred such
"open-air museums," among them the National Park Service's Turkey Run
Farm near McLean, Virginia.[298]

Frying Pan Farm differs from most of these restorations in its portrayal
of 20th century farming, a time and way of working that many older
people can still recall. Rather than show the slow and hand-operated
life of a pre-mechanization farmer, Frying Pan Farm shows the farm in a
dynamic transition. In the words of the supervisory board, it recreates
a time that "had not given up the idea of home-cured meats, home
vegetable gardens, home orchards, apple butter, sorghum molasses ... but
it was considering the use of farm tractors, milking machines, and
tractor-drawn equipment...."[299] The farm thus portrays crop and
pasturage rotation, and some mechanized activity with a 1940 tractor,
yet the farmer harvests his grain with a horse-drawn binder. Mos