ARGYLE — Patrons at Morning Dew Dairy’s Sunflower Patch get to experience far more than just a field full of sunflowers when they visit the rural Argyle farm.
Owners Don and Samantha Frei try to plant a new crop every year and sunflowers had been on their short list for a while. Initially, Don had wanted sunflowers to press into oil, but after seeing the success of the year’s crop, the couple decided on opening the patch up to the public.
“They were looking really awesome as they started to bloom,” Samantha said. “We just thought we kind of wanted to share this with people.”
With limitations related to the COVID-19 pandemic and political tensions throughout the country, the family thought that the sunflower patch could be something bright and happy for people to enjoy instead, she said.
What started as an idea to try out a new crop has since developed into an eight-acre patch of around 150,000 flowers with a path through the middle including various benches and makeshift camera stands for those looking for an opportunity with the photogenic plants.
Most of the patch’s visitors come from within 50 miles, but the farm has seen visitors from as far as Chicago and Milwaukee. On a typical day, the Freis family will see visitors trickling in from all over the area, but weekends have been when the patch bustles with the most visitors, sometime reaching around 200 people.
Although visitors are drawn to the sunflowers, the farm provides much more than just a stroll through the plants.
At the suggestion of the Freis’ 7-year-old daughter, the family moved chickens and calves near the field for visitors to experience a little more of life on the farm.
“People are being disconnected to agriculture, so to speak,” Don said. “Farms are getting larger and there’s less and less family farms. Less people really have that touch with agriculture.”
At Morning Dew Dairy, visitors have the chance to find a connection with agriculture through seeing just a glimpse of the family’s 550 acres of certified organic farmland which they purchased in 2019 after renting the land for over a decade.
The land and products weren’t always organic, however, Don decided to make the switch when looking for a way to maintain more stable milk prices.
“I was like ‘if I’m gonna stay in business, I need to find a way to have sustainable prices,’” he said.
The Freis then started the lengthy journey to becoming an organic farm, a years-long process due to regulations that land have no prohibited ingredients — pesticides, herbicides or particular seeds — for three years before being certified.
The first year after turning organic, the farm had five acres of certified organic corn. From there, the organic crops grew annually before the Freis were able to ship certified organic milk for the first time in 2007.
“That was a pretty good day,” Don said. “We had a plan, kind of a goal, and we had to try to implement it within them three years. It made a pretty large difference.”
Visitors to the farm can also purchase organic sweet corn from a neighboring farm or view vintage tractors on display.
Visitors may come for the sunflowers, but the mounds of opportunities at the farm are what make it a truly unique place to visit and a perfect place to snap photos.
“They’re big, they’re bright, they’re yellow, they gain attention and I just think the people would enjoy them,” Don said.
