This summer’s drought has been rough on crops, including sunflowers, but there are still places where you can find the brilliant yellow fields – if you don’t wait too long.
On a recent morning, people were already starting to visit Ted Grinter’s sunflower field about seven miles north of Lawrence. The flowers were just starting to open, and across the field, a glaze of yellow topped the green stalks, with a few bright yellow flowers already blooming.
Grinter said the change will happen in the next day or two.
“By the middle of the week,” he said, “this will be a sea of gold, and it looks like it goes on forever.”
Those bright petals don’t last long, though. Grinter predicts the field will be in its full glory by the first week of September, and the countdown will have started.
“We’ve got about two weeks from now,” he said. “You might have three weeks from [Sunday], and that'll be it.”
At that point, the petals will drop off, leaving only the brown seedheads. It’s a short season, but enough to attract hundreds of people a day.
Grinter Farm’s sunflower field started gaining traction more than 20 years ago, but it wasn’t until 2016, a year after the farm started its Facebook page, that cars began lining up the road.
“We called [it] ‘Carmageddon’ here,” Grinter said, “because we blocked I-70 and highway 40 between. It was a three-hour wait to get off I-70.”
After that, Grinter cleared part of a field and a grassy area by his farm to expand parking. The lines of traffic have eased, but the crowds still come. He said the farm gets visitors from across the U.S. and around the world.
“I've had people from China, Japan, Russia,” he said. “A few people from Uzbekistan, Nepal, all over the country. I have a couple that comes from Dallas every year.”
Fifty of the farm’s 2,000 acres are dedicated to sunflowers. The rest is corn and soybeans. The sunflower crop — in addition to being a tourist attraction — is harvested for bird seed.
Grinter Farm also has a small store and bakery with local honey, some impressive cinnamon rolls and lots of sunflower merch. It gives Grinter a chance to talk with some of the visitors.
“I really enjoy meeting people that are from other countries,” he said. “The joy and seeing [the] smiles on everybody's face is really, really fun.”
When the sunflowers are a bright yellow, they’re definitely worth a visit.
But, again, don’t wait too long. They’re only in bloom for a couple of weeks.
