This farmer from Wisconsin found the perfect way to make people smile during this difficult year-at least he hopes to achieve this with these 2 million planted sunflowers.
Scott Thompson is a 4th generation berry farmer and said how it was his wife’s idea to add sunshine blooms on their farm as well.
With the pandemic, they knew they wanted to help people, particularly the ones in the nearby urban areas, who can escape from the urban busy lives in nature and get away from the daily worries.
Sunflowers, not a Better Way to Put Smiles on People’s Faces
Over the period of 5 weeks, Thompson was progressively planting sunflower seeds throughout 22 acres of land.
The number of 2 million wasn’t in his head at first; however, the result allowed the visitors to see and photograph a 6-8 week bloom rather than a typical 10 to 14 day stint.
Thompson said that the sunflowers captured the hearts of so many and every day was busier and busier.
Their strawberry farm is located an hour drive from Chicago. They offer ‘pick your own strawberries, raspberries, pumpkins, and now sunflowers’ option.
You also get to walk through these stunning fields. Thompson explains that depending on the weather, the sunflowers will last somewhere until the end of September.
He considers it a major success as it’s a naturally and socially-distant activity. People really want to spend time outdoors and feel some kind of normalcy in our lives.
The sunflower planting had a major positive influence. No matter if they make money out of it or not, they had a lot of fun while planting them, said Thompson.
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