C ONCORD, N.H. — This is prime time for the Sunflower Seekers.
They’re not as well-known as the Leaf Peepers, who invade New England in fall, but they just might be happier. Sunflowers are joyous and so are their fans. Here at Sunfox Farm , after admission to the annual Sunflower Bloom Festival, you can borrow scissors and select your favorite sunflower stem for $2 a piece.
Take home a sunflower and its immediately the star of the room. A leaf? Not so much. Sunflower Seekers are easier to please than the weirdly named Leaf Peepers.
Just give them a field of gold and let ‘em loose. Leaf Peepers can drive 200 miles looking for the perfect red maple tree near a white church steeple. Sunflower Seekers never complain about past peak colors, or old couples driving oh-so-slowly.
Sunflowers easily make better selfies. Advertisement Greg Pollock was touring Italy in 2018 when he saw a huge sunflower field that was dried out and brown. “I could just imagine how beautiful that was during the bloom.
So, part of me really just wanted to see it.” Fast forward to his own personal Field of Dreams, Sunfox Farm, home to a half million sunflowers set on 20 acres within sight of the State House. Together with his wife Amber, who is pregnant, they exude sunshine and bring joy to the nearly 12,000 people who visited before the fields closed for the season.
Chef Amber is a Johnson and Wales University culinary arts-trained dietician and also a farmer from New York. At the festival, she occasionally served a seven-course gourmet meal for 30 lucky guests amidst towering sunflowers at sunset. At this year’s festival, there was live music, artisan vendors, food trucks, and sunflower oil for sale.
This earthy couple can share a wealth of knowledge about sunflowers. “Well, a common myth about sunflowers is that they follow the sun. (But) once they’re bloomed (matured), they actually stop rotating.
Another fun fact is that they can be used to clean up radioactive waste,” says Amber. After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, sunflowers’ roots extracted radioactive elements surrounding the disaster site. This year’s sunflower crop is excellent, but that’s not true everywhere.
A recent festival south of Pittsburgh was cancelled when deer ate 20 acres of sunflower tips before they could flower. Advertisement Greg says that by October there will be a chill in the air, and the sunflowers will shrivel and bend over like old men on their way out. Does he get melancholy? “I don’t,” he says.
“I get excited, because maybe the flower is dying, but the seeds are maturing, and that’s what we’re after. We’re looking for those mature black seeds that’s going to produce this great oil. It is a nice, heart-healthy oil.
It’s actually higher in monounsaturated fat than olive oil and higher in vitamin E,” he says. Out in the farms’ meandering sunflower paths, there’s love. Felipe Cruz of Manchester N.
H. thinks he’s all alone when he starts kissing his girlfriend, Scarlet Mateo. They are surprised that a photographer has captured their kiss from one of two elevated wooden observation decks with a view atop the east facing sunflowers.
Nineteen-month-old Dylan Rose sits atop her uncle Scott Sanborn’s shoulders. He can see all the way to the golden dome of the state capitol. “It’s pretty cool being so close to a city and seeing all these flowers.
Having that view of the State House is really awesome,” says Sanborn. In recent years, sunflowers, famously depicted in art, have also become an international symbol of beauty and resistance. Sunflowers are the national flower of Ukraine, normally the world’s top producer of sunflower meal, oil, and seed, according to the U.
S. Department of Agriculture. But Putin’s evil invading Russian Army have disrupted production.
In a viral 2022 video, a Ukrainian woman cursed Russian soldiers and urged one to put sunflower seeds in his pockets. Advertisement “Take these seeds, so sunflowers grow here when you die,” she said. Sunflowers also were recently in the news.
The two “Just Stop Oil “activists who were arrested in 2022, when they tossed Tomato Soup at Van Gogh’s iconic “Sunflowers” appeared in a London court last month. The painting was undamaged behind glass. According to the BBC, Judge Christopher Hehir told Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland to be “prepared in practical and emotional terms to go to prison” when they are sentenced on Sept.
26. Van Gogh did a series of five sunflower paintings. He wrote that they communicated “gratitude.
” Greg Pollock says he’s now a sunflower farmer for life. He’s grateful for the love that flows here. “Once you get up above the flowers and you can just take it all in, it’s magical,” says Pollock who proposed and married Amber amidst the sunflowers last year.
“I feel like it’s just serene.” In Case You Missed It: For folks who missed this festival, there are still plenty of opportunities to view sunflowers. Colby Farm in Newbury estimates its sunflower fields will open in early September The Massachusetts Horticultural Society’s Sunflower Spectacular happens at The Garden at Elm Bank in Wellesley until Aug.
25. Meghan Connolly of the MHS says the 100,000 sunflowers in bloom inspire smiles. “It’s really about joy and just brightness,” she says.
“It’s a reminder to appreciate what’s right in front of you and appreciate the beauty in everything around you.” For a more complete list, see Our Sunflower guide UP NEXT Stan Grossfeld can be reached at stanley.grossfeld@globe.
com ..
