There is something so inspiring about a field of bright, yellow sunflowers as they each turn to face the summer sun, and what better place to enjoy them than at Fields of Gold. Tinkess Photo

FINCH – The weather could not have been more perfect for what looks to become an annual event in North Stormont.

The 2024 Garden Tour was devised as a fundraising activity with proceeds going towards the DC Vollraith Park rejuvenation project. Tickets were sold in advance ($25 for adults and $20 for children between four and ten years of age.) In addition to access to some of the most beautiful gardens in the area, tickets included entry to Fields of Gold on Strathmore Road from 10:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., guided tours at Brighter with Blooms, wagon tours at the Avonmore Berry Farm, and specials at the Ole Sugar Barn Ice Cream Shop.

In this, the event’s first year, visitors were provided with a map showing the location of the gardens cared for by the following participating families:

  • Sundborg Family
  • Cheryl and Ian Moran
  • Lesley and Karl Moran
  • Mary Jane and Matthew Leman
  • Brenda Van Sleeuwen and Jeff Johnson
  • Natalie and Pete Jack
  • Karen Bayfield

Fields of Gold is the creation of Jakob and Stephanie Vogel, and the name refers to the lovely fields of sunflowers that are surrounded by incredibly tall fields of corn. They offer a variety of events and adventures (visit their website fieldsofgold.ca for more details) and continue to add to the selection each year. This year, with warm weather and lots of moisture has been both a blessing and a curse.

“The beginning of the year was not good. It was exceptionally wet. We struggled to get everything planted on time,” said Jakob. The first week of sunflowers was a week behind. The second wave was about a month behind schedule, maybe three weeks.” They also have specialty gardens (they planted 2,200 dahlias this year) and several other species which are great to add to the bouquets.

As is the case for anyone who makes their life in agriculture, you must look for the good and deal with the bad. “You know, there’s pros and cons to everything,” said Jakob. So, for the corn or for sunflowers in the big fields, or for the conventional fields, that’s been alright. We’ve gotten rain once they’ve been planted, it’s rained every second or third day, so we’re getting constant water. Hopefully that unlocks a little bit more yield potential. And for the specialty flowers, well, we don’t have to use irrigation, since it rains every second day. So, we’re trying to think on the positive side of it.

Fields of Gold are relying on the growing interest in agritourism in Ontario and have linked with the various tourism agencies in the area to help promote what they have to offer. They also have plans for the future.

“We’re taking down the old dairy barn,” added Jakob. “Yes, you can see it’s still two thirds down one-third still up. That’s being taken down. And our plan is to rebuild or remodel that space into a more permanent store where we’ll be oil pressing, having a bakery, and allowing for a more inclusive experience. It makes sense.”

“The walk to the sunflowers and visualizing the field, seeing the cut flower gardens and joining the corn maze, having kids’ activities like that has been great, but we need that just to finish that circle, if you will. So, we’ll be pressing our own oil and what-not in there as well. Hopefully, that helps.”

Meghan Miller, along with her husband and two sons own and operate Brighter with Blooms, located on Concession 1-2 just south of Finch. It’s their third year in business and they sell flowers from May to October. They grow the flowers, cut them and put them into bouquets. While they do sell individual bouquets, their main selling is done through subscription.

“They’re biweekly subscriptions from May to October, depending upon what program you choose,” said Miller. “Basically, how it works is they come every other Thursday and pick up their bouquet.  They get email reminders for those people with the crazy hectic schedules.

Another big part of their business is hosting events.  “We host and I collaborate with someone else that’s local, with a yoga or paint night, for example, so like artists and such. I have another one coming who does candle making. We will make candles with dry flowers.

“I really like doing my events,” adds Miller. “Basically, they buy a ticket, and events are advertised on my website. And they come, like last Saturday, we did a yoga event, with Angie from Avonmore. We did our yoga and then an hour of bouquet making, but with the bouquet making component, they also get a tour of the farm, and they get a lot of information on each flower.”

Leslie Moran was one of the event organizers and an active participant in the garden tour. She was very pleased with how the day unfolded.

“It is definitely going the way we hoped it would,” said Moran. “We’ve had a great turnout. I think the weather’s helped, obviously, because we did sell quite a few tickets this week. So, I’m sure if people were looking ahead to the weekend.

“We’ve sold 94 tickets, and for a first-year event, I think it’s gone really well. We kind of said if this was successful, it would be something we would do again, we’d hope to get some feedback from the ticket holders as well as what we could do better or what we would or wouldn’t do again.”

After all, there is always something that needs doing where fundraising is important.

“We have a very large, ambitious project for our ball diamond,” said Moran. “It’s going to be, I think, kind of like a three-phase job, because it’s probably close to a million dollars, we might end up spending. That’s our goal and we’re doing lots of different fundraising events and trying to think of some new ideas. This was a new idea for us.

“I think we’re unique in that in this township, each of the recreations are run by volunteers. Nobody’s paid, so we fundraise for our own activities. So, if we want to do this project of the ball diamond, we have applied for some grants, as well, and hope to have some support from the township; they are pretty good when they can do some work in kind.  We were lucky because we run our bar completely with volunteer at the hall. That’s our main source of revenue. And we have a good number of volunteers but we’re always hoping more people will volunteer.”