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Inspiration

A Family Farm Planted 2 Million Sunflowers to Help Spread Joy

We’re all looking for chances to add a little more joy to our lives these days, right? With everything going on in the world, a family farm recently found a beautiful way to put more smiles on faces with a special new addition to their crops.

Thompson Strawberry Farm, located in Bristol, Wisconsin, included more than two million sunflowers in their fields this summer. As the name suggests, they also had strawberries available earlier in the summer, but it was their first foray into floral blooms that really caught everyone’s attention.

“We had kind of been planning to do it for the last couple years and never got around to it,” Scott Thompson, the farm’s owner, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “We said if there was ever a year the world needed more sunflowers, this was it. We just needed some extra happiness this year.”

No one can argue with that — especially when you get a glimpse of just how gorgeous the sunflower fields look.

The farm, which has been in the Thompson family for just over 70 years, charges $25 for a carload of visitors (up to 6 people), which includes taking home a dozen sunflower blooms. Their website claims there are 15 acres filled with the bright orange and yellow flowers and recommends bringing something to cut the flowers with, plus a vase (they’re happy to provide some water).

As a social distance-friendly activity, the farm encourages everyone to take their time wandering around the sunflower paths. “People can have a picnic or walk among the flower fields,” Thompson said. “You just get to hang out and enjoy the field, and get away to the country.”

The response from visitors has been so overwhelmingly positive that Thompson already plans to make sunflowers a regular part of their farm from now on. “We get all these comments on Facebook, or if I’m out in the field, everybody is like, ‘Thanks for doing this,’ and ‘This is what I needed,” Thompson told CNN. “People are so happy to be out there and have a place to go.”

Those able to make a trip to the farm will also get to see some zinnias, wildflowers, and a particular breed of Mexican sunflowers that are known for attracting butterflies. They currently still have some raspberries available for picking and will have pumpkins just in time for fall.

For those of us who can’t hop over to see the blooms in person, checking out the photos on their Instagram can still give us a nice boost of joy — and inspire us to find similarly uplifting, pandemic-friendly places to visit in our own local communities!

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