Sunshine out in the field

On September 8, 2025October 15, 2025 By dinajohnstonIn flowers and plants, Tampa bay sights2 Comments

Even though I had a few sunflowers blooming in my front yard I still made the trip up to Brooksville to Sweetfield Farms for their sunflower festival. There is something therapeutic about walking around a big sunflower field and then clipping some to take home. I had not been to this farm for the last 2 sunflower seasons, only stopping at a closer farm that doesn’t have events to quickly cut sunflowers.

This farm is very Instagram worthy. Lots of great photo ops here and they have lots of activities for little ones.

But the sunflower maze and fields are the main attraction.

Along the back fence the sunflowers were towering way over my head.

There were lots of fun critters here including grasshoppers. I saw a ton of them on this trip.

I think these are strawberry fields amaranth flowers. They were really pretty.

They had rows of zucchini and squash and many still had the blossoms on them.

The baby chicks are always a popular.

A picture perfect barn. Inside were just-picked vegetables to buy.

Some of the goats were eating the grass on the roof.

There are a lot of bees here. I didn’t get too close and was using my camera. They fly away if you get close and are picking the sunflowers. We need the bees so it’s better just to let them go. This is a big fundraiser for this farm to sustain their business without outside help. It gets really crowded on the weekends (I went on a Friday) and luckily I think they only had one rain day. I picked a few sunflowers, a few zucchini and a ton of zinnias to take home but more on those later.

Linking to A Stroll Thru Life.

“Farm livin is the life for me”

On June 23, 2022March 22, 2024 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography6 Comments

Every year I can’t wait to visit Sweetfield Farms in mid-May (although I missed 2020 for obvious reasons). Besides the sunflower fields, the farm has a lot of animals and activities going on during their festival.

They have rows of zinnias in all of the colors. You can pick them for $1 and I brought home a handful of them.

The one thing I noticed was there was a lot less butterflies here than last year. Maybe it was timing. Or lack of rain or too many pesticides? I was 2 weeks earlier than I went last year.

I’m not sure what these are but they were growing in the vegetable garden.

I know these yellow flowers are zucchinis. You could pick these as well and I took home a big one to saute in my spaghetti sauce.

I was watching the horses at the farm next door run around.

It’s always fun to feed the goats.

Just a boy and his turkey! He brought out some of the turkeys for people to pet. They were friendly although they don’t look like it.

But the main reason to come here is the sunflowers. I took a ton of pictures so more on those later.

Also linking to Your Moment Blog Hop.

Ghost town on the beach

On December 6, 2018November 14, 2018 By dinajohnstonIn Florida animals, Tampa bay sights6 Comments

A nice clean beach after Park supervisor Jim had scooped up all of the dead fish from the red tide algae bloom that lands on the beach during high tide. This morning in late October, Jim had told me that they had just cleaned up 6 miles of beaches, trying to keep it clean so the tourist can enjoy the beach. Even in late November, we were still getting some dead sea life but not as bad as it was in October.