Sunflower patch draws buzz to You Farm
A sunflower patch west of Loxahatchee Groves is attracting more than the usual buzz of bees.
About 20,000 sunflowers cover about 2,000 square feet at You Farm, a 5-acre working farm on Rembrandt Road off Seminole Pratt Whitney Road just north of Southern Boulevard.
These are table sunflowers, not the towering ones you see on postcards. And they’re picture-perfect — as evidenced by swarms of people who have come to the farm over the past week to pick and take photos with the stunning yellow blooms.
Stefan Horbonis and his wife, Shelby, started You Farm in 2016 and have built it into an agricultural and event space. It was 5 acres of dirt when they bought the land, but now has a farmhouse, event spaces, barns and buildings that house hydroponic growing equipment.
“Everything you see here was built by our hands,” Stefan said.
The farm specializes in leafy greens, with five kinds of lettuce and a variety of herbs growing on-site. There are rescued farm animals, including goats, horses and chickens. Visitors can buy farm-fresh eggs.
You Farm offers farm-to-table dinners and popular goat yoga sessions that Stefan said sell out in the blink of an eye.
The sunflower field wasn’t intended to be a draw for visitors. Instead, Stefan said his family planned to harvest the sunflowers, then till back into the soil any remaining plants. “I wasn’t expecting a big response,” he said.
But once the flowers began to grow, people took notice. Passersby stopped to take photos, and Stefan saw an opportunity. They posted about the sunflowers on You Farm’s Facebook page and the blooms have taken off from there.
“Everyday we have families that come in to take photos and pick flowers,” he said.
Sunflowers grow yearround and “put a lot of nutrients back in the ground,” Stefan said, so he plans to keep a crop rotating at the farm throughout the year.
At 18 months old, Caroline Scaggs was just barely taller than the closest sunflowers as her mother, Sarah Scaggs, took photos of the tot Friday. Scaggs saw the sunflowers while driving by, then saw a post about them on Facebook and decided it was the perfect opportunity to get some sweet photos of Caroline.
“We tried yesterday and she wasn’t having it,” Scaggs said, laughing.
Caroline seemed enchanted by the sunflowers, plucking petals as her mother and aunt cooed to get her attention. Scaggs’ son and niece joined them at the farm Friday, and she said the children had a great time. “They loved all the animals,” she said. “Yesterday they got to pick their own eggs.”
The farm offers plots for rent to grow fresh produce, Stefan said. The farm also is launching a new project to build farms in old freight containers that then can be shipped to countries in need.
Want to pick your own sunflowers? They go for $5 for six or $15 for 24. The sunflowers should be around another one to two weeks, Stefan said.
The farm is at 16651 Rembrandt Road, Loxahatchee. For more information, go to www.facebook.com/youfarm fresh or call 561-315-7410.