There were sunflowers, parked cars and people as far as the eye could see when pulling into Maize Valley Winery & Craft Brewery on Aug. 22.
Thousands of visitors stopped by the annual Sunflower Festival and Market, held each year over two weekends in late August at Maize Valley Winery & Craft Brewery. The first weekend of this year’s festival was Aug. 22-23. The second festival weekend will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Aug. 29-30.
“We usually see more than 3,000 people the first weekend and then close to that for the second weekend,” said Michelle Dakan, co-owner of Maize Valley. “We have been holding the festival for 10 years. We usually have about 10 acres of sunflowers planted each year.”
The festival features four different fields planted with blooming sunflowers in shades of red, yellow and orange. There is an admission fee to view the fields, take photographs and cut flowers to take home.
“The sunflowers we have left over will be sold to Hartville Elevator for birdseed,” Dakan said. “Sunflowers are really popular right now on some of the online sources such as Instagram. People really enjoy coming out to see the fields, and they also like to shop the vendors and eat at the food trucks…