Six Acres of Sunflowers

We had tentative plans to attend a lasagna cook-off in Hernando County this afternoon. But I wanted... no, I needed... to go somewhere interesting to take photos even more. I looked through the Happenings section of yesterday's Chronicle and couldn't find anything. Then I thought Hmm, let me look for Facebook events near here and see if I can find anything interesting. Look what I found!

This sounded perfect! Because it was in Hernando County, we  could look at sunflowers and then eat lasagna! Off we went.

Sweetfields Farm was a little bit further away than I imagined in my mind, but it wasn't too bad a ride. It was very easy to find. I realized once we got here that I had no idea how much this event was going to cost. Relief washed over me when I realized we didn't have to pay. The entrance fee was $9.50 plus tax for adults and $5 per child. Having no idea what to expect, I had no sense of whether this was a good price or not. There was a reasonable crowd - and I love taking photos of sunflowers. Seemed reasonable enough.

Very easy to find!

This was the view from the "parking lot."

Once you're thru the entrance, you need to walk through a market to get to the rest of the farm. The market was very quaint. They sold produce and sunflowers that was grown on the farm. Yellow squash, cucumbers and green beans were available for u-pick. They sometimes have u-pick blackberries but that was suspended since the ripe berries had been mostly picked over already.

Once we were outside, WOW! 

The sunflowers were amazing!

After taking some photos of sunflowers, we started walking towards the sunflower maze. 

Lots of rules and instructions before we walked in.

We'd been given this list of numbered questions. The idea was to find the numbers along the path, answer the question and then go in the direction written next to the correct response.

Okay, that didn't work! We got to number 1 - and quickly got lost. We tried backtracking and quickly ended up at the location for the final question. Yes, we skipped questions 2 through 6 and were at question 7. We made a wrong guess there, walked towards a dead end, then turned around and walked the other way. And in less than 20 minutes, we were out of the maze! We seriously did plan to walk through the entire maze, but once we found ourselves outside, I took it as a sign that we should be doing something else!

Outside the maze, we explored what else was available. And there was lots! Lots for kids but plenty for adults!

There was a rubber ducky race with water pumps propelling the duckies.
The kids whose hand is in the lower left cornerof the photo
was a master! He had those duckies flying!

Rosie Moo Moo
Kids & adults had the opportunity to feed her and her pal.

Huge tree house

Snacks
Besides kettle korn, there was wood fire
pizza and ice cream.

And lots of sunflowers!

 Against beautiful blue skies!

In addition to the maze, the animals (cows, pigs, goats, chicken, turkey) and the tree house, there were pedal tractors, pig races, arts & crafts and much, much more. We only had about 2 hours to spend here but you could easily spend 3 to 4 hours at the farm if you're without children and many more hours if you're there with children.

Included in the admission was a hayride. It wasn't the most exciting hayride but we were able to get a better sense of how large the farm is (19 acres), how much space is devoted to sunflowers, and what types of things they had growing.

The building where produce is sold as seen from the hayride over the
blackberry bushes.

I would have loved to pick blackberries.
But as you can see, not too many were ripe!

The u-pick fields

We picked green beans. 

This is the final weekend of the Sunflower Maze. The first weekend was in late April. This is something I'd definitely go back to again.

In the fall, there is a hay maze and special activities for Halloween. There's a pumpkin patch... but I think the pumpkins might be brought in as I believe it's too warm to grow pumpkins down here.

Sweetfields Farm is a small, family-run organic farm. The owners are a young family so lots of what is available to do at the farm is geared towards other young families. I highly recommend visiting this farm when you want something a little different to do.