Texas Agricultural Education & Heritage Center celebrates 20 years

Just like in the movie, Field of Dreams, Guadalupe County has seen its own dream crop up the last 20 years – a dream that unlike the fictional film is a real testament that “if you build it, they will come.”

For the past two decades, the Texas Agricultural Education & Heritage Center has worked extensively to preserve Guadalupe County’s deeply rooted agriculture community. Created in October 2023, the center, popularly identified with its Big Red Barn has continued to maintain its mission of educating the public especially the youth on the importance of agriculture and has worked to promote the heritage of farming and ranching in Texas.

In celebration of its history, the non-profit organization is taking a look back at 2003 and the strides that have since been made.

Sharing that initial vision that is now planted on the Cordova Road property is Founder Wildred Bartowskewitz. It was Wilfred and his wife Betty, fifth generation farmers, who donated the land for the center.

“I was monitoring the Farm Bureau Program of Ag in the Classroom in the different counties and I came up with the idea that I thought it would be good to have a place that all kids would come to and all of the times of the year, all ages and so, that is what brought me to the idea of trying to put this together as a corporation, non-profit 501c3. Then it became time to fix the charter and board of directors and try to come up with the board and we have a nine-member board and as we progressed through that, then I decided how do I go about getting this across to the extension service,” Bartowskewitz said.

Wilfred says once the idea was put on the table, it didn’t take long for folks from all over to come on board and show their support.

Not only did it garner support from the extension office as he had hoped but he says the idea quickly collected support from those in the Texas Farm Bureau including Mel Grones who at the time was the president of the Guadalupe County Farm Bureau. He said the collection of farmers and ranchers saw the Ag Center as an investment and were able to see the benefits – the same benefits that have been proven 20 years later.

Soon after the first barn, now known as Main Hall was built, the group in October 2023, began to implement its programming. The first of which was the Agriculture Awareness Fair. The fair invites students from surrounding counties for a field day in which lessons in Ag 101 are provided.

Kay Willmann, operations manager and a member of the center’s board of directors, says the tours are a huge part of the center’s vision to preserve, protect and educate the public on the importance of agriculture.

“These events that we have with the children, I guess officially, was called the Agriculture Awareness Fair. I call it Agriculture Awareness Days because to me, it makes a little more sense because we are not having fair type of events but years ago, before we did this, the county fair did Ag Days with kids, and I think they still do some things there but it’s not quite to the extent that we do it. We are running kids through 12 different sessions here every day. We have water, gardening, horses, farm animals or barnyard animals, poultry, cotton, GVEC is here to teach about electricity; we have some wildlife teaching going on. We have field crops going on, dairy cow, obviously, nutrition and pecans,” Willmann said.

In fact, Willmann’s father-in-law Charlie was among the first volunteers who spoke to children during that first Ag Awareness Fair in 2003. Today, she is proud to continue that family tradition and dedicates her volunteerism to the entire operation of the non-profit center.

Bartowskewitz says it was the instant success of the fall program that promoted the expansion of the Ag class with another round of Big Red Barn tours in the spring.

“The spring came and that’s when the smaller children wanted to come, the smaller classes so that’s when we put in a program with coloring books and different educational books for the pre-k, K, first grade and second grade and third because the fourth grade is in the fall,” Bartowskewitz said.

Among those enticed by the Ag Fair offerings was Jenny Siltmann, a current member of the board of directors. Siltmann, a longtime cheerleader of Guadalupe County’s agriculture community, says it didn’t take her long to find her way to the Big Red Barn.

“I got involved with the Big Red Barn with the school tours and then was invited by Marilyn Altwein to help with the Pecan Fest. That was probably in 2013. The school tours gave me an insight of what the Red Barn was about — teaching the kids about agriculture and where their food and clothing come from,” said Siltmann.

As the Guadalupe County extension agent and 4H and youth development coordinator, Matt Miranda says he has had the privilege to partner with the Ag Center for more than half of those 20 years. He says the uniqueness of the center alone illustrates how the public has benefited generation to generation.

“There’s no other facility in the county that can do that not with the effectiveness that the Big Red Barn has. It’s just a really special thing that we have in this county that the board and the Bartowskewitz’ Family donated to make this happen because you look at lots of other counties around the state, they don’t have a facility like this. They don’t have an agriculture wing. They don’t have a farm where they can go and teach. It has to be done at the fairgrounds or at somebody’s house or just at the extension office. There’s nothing else like this,” Miranda said.

In fact, visiting the Ag Barn as a child according to Miranda has become a rite of passage, of sorts, for the youth of this community.

“I’ve had a whole generation of 4Hers come through the program since I’ve been here, and they all remember coming to the Red Barn and learning about agriculture and still remember the things that they learned here 10-15 years down the road and that’s really cool. We are even getting parents come back now that came through Ag fairs here 20 years ago and remember coming to the Ag Fair and that’s a cool thing. That’s something that a lot of counties don’t have,” said Miranda.

Today, all programs and displays have been developed to give visitors information and experiences in rural agricultural life as it existed and as it exists today.

These programs run well beyond the school tours and include a plethora of other programs. Among the list of annual events are Pecan Fest & Heritage Days in October and Country Christmas in December. Pecan Fest & Heritage Days held at the end of October is an extension of the city of Seguin’s celebration and was created to celebrate the Pecan Industry. Helping to enhance that celebration is the Pecan Museum of Texas which a few years ago became a part of the Big Red Barn and is the site of the World’s Largest Pecan. Today, it houses the history of pecans in the area as well as memorabilia, nutcrackers, equipment and all other things pecan.

Each second weekend in December, families are invited over to the Big Red Barn for an old-fashioned Christmas celebration featuring Santa, smore’s, hayrides, a nativity scene and other fun holiday activities.

Country Christmas in December, however, has also come a long way since that first year of hosting the holiday event in 2004. Reminiscing those first initial years is Linda Formann, Bartowskewitz’ family member and founding member of the Ag center.

“I just laughed because we had lights on everything and I said if you stand still long enough, we can hang lights on you probably. Oh, we worked (on it). I mean it was meager. We used some – I’m going to use the word – junk to decorate with. Some of it was about to fall apart, “Formann said.

While the Big Red Barn is the prominent fixture on the property, it is no doubt the Heritage Village which has become one of its most featured attractions year-round. The rural village, which includes at least 15 buildings and one garden, invites the public back in time – opening doors up for visits to a blacksmith shop, a general store, justice of the peace building, and a Texaco service station just to name a few.

In addition to launching the Heritage Village, the Ag Center added an education wing. The classroom space is home to displays, videos and games showing the “various aspects of farming and ranching and their importance for production of the world’s food and fiber supply.” The center has grown over the last few years to also include another barn that “houses antique farm implements and carriages as well as the Koehler Tool display.” The display chronicles the history behind tools and their evolution in building and farming.

Despite the housing and commercial developments that today continue to inch closer and closer to the 35 acres of land that was deeded and gifted from the 1850s working farm, the Big Red Barn today stands strongly rooted in the heart of Guadalupe County. Afterall, the cultivation of that idea 20 years ago by the Bartoskewitz’s continues to prove that knowledge is powerful, and that those lessons gained in the Ag classroom are what will continue to feed, clothe and protect our families.