There is a time to every season, and in-between seasons is time to have fun.

I just LOVE the Sunflower Festival. Even after six years, it is just the most fun, positive, happy event. I still head out to the field some mornings to marvel at the flowers that remain.

But… It’s time to mow them down. What?! That’s so cruel and sad! Well, to be honest, life moves forward and moves on. Some staff said, “We could have been open another weekend with flowers!”

Yes, we could have been, but it wouldn’t have been the festival, but simply a waning field of “almost enough flowers to make a festival,” and I WON’T HAVE IT!

We didn’t start the festival to “halfway do it,” to have it “Be good enough”; we do the sunflower festival to be A-MAZE-ING, and after three weekends of amazing – It’s over.

Life, fruit, beauty, and magical moments are fleeting; they perish and cannot be extended or captured even with the best of cameras.

Either you are there to see it, taste it, feel it, experience it, or you are not.

So, as there was a time to plant, build, and create, there is also a time to tear down – in this case, mow the sunflowers, say goodbye, and plant a cover crop to protect the soil over the winter.

There is good news as we have been working and creating the NEXT big experiences for you. Just as the door to sunflowers closes, so, too, opens the door to Fall Harvest, and this weekend is a pretty fantastic weekend on the farm.

In one trip, you can:

• Pick freestone peaches
• Pick Fantasia nectarines
• Pick HoneyCrisp apples
• Visit Maize Quest’s Alice in Wonderland Corn Maze
• Eat donuts at the bakery
• Get local ice cream, scooped the minute you order it
• …and even taste wine as you relax at the farm market.

I’m sure you have plans to do something this weekend, but maybe you could sneak up here with some friends & family for part of a day to take advantage of this magical weekend with so much to do.

I promise I won’t be driving the skid steer around the farm:-)

See you on the farm this weekend,

Farmer Hugh