While it operates as a venue for weddings and events, the farm still hosts fresh produce, honey made from the flower garden and, of course, sunflowers. It was very rewarding,” Kelley said.245 Terry Road, Augusta, 31 Located in the heart of Missouri wine country, Sunflower Hill Farm is a beautiful, family-owned event venue that creates a memorable visit for all of its visitors. They said they had fun and appreciated it being an inexpensive thing to do. “It was a shock to both of us for people we didn’t even know to drive-in and get the whole thing started. Sunflower Festival: Nelson and Kelley were overjoyed at the response to their first sunflower festival. After much preparation, Golden Grove Farm hosted its first sunflower festival in July 2017. Kelley contacted the owners who graciously shared with her how they operate a successful sunflower festival. Then while reading a Southern Living magazine, Kelley learned about a farm in Virginia that hosts a sunflower festival each summer. In the beginning, they planted a couple rows of ornamental sunflowers each week in order to harvest as many as 400 sunflowers weekly to sell at local farm stands. Four years ago, they launched Golden Grove Farm in Fair Grove, Mo. Kelley recalled, “Nelson said, ‘These sunflowers are different.’’’ That spurred the Nichols to start researching the ornamental beauties. Nelson had grown sunflowers for years for seed and wildlife habitat at a farm he and his brother own in Golden City, Mo., but he had never worked with ornamental sunflowers. “The one thing that could put a smile on our face was that there was a market on every corner in San Francisco and every one of those markets had buckets of water with bunches of ornamental sunflowers in them,” Kelley explained. Kelley’s adult daughter was undergoing emergency brain surgery in San Francisco, Calif.

History: Nelson and Kelley Nichols developed their dream of an ornamental sunflower farm in the midst of a difficult time.

Golden grove farms