Brunner Family Farm celebrates "explosion of blooms"

The flower field at Brunner Family Farm is exploding with color right now, rows of dahlias, zinnias, sunflowers and dozens of other varieties packed tight and ready to be picked. Peak bloom season has arrived in Fieldbrook, and co-owner Sarah Brunner says this year’s growth has outdone every season before it.

“My flowers have never looked so good,” she said in an interview with Redheaded Blackbelt. The U-Pick did not exist before 2020. When the pandemic shut down farmers markets and most of the ways Brunner normally sold what she grew, she still had flowers in the ground and no way to move them. Around the same time, people stuck at home started asking if they could come pick a few for themselves.

“I started getting phone calls and emails of people who were just desperate to get out of the house,” Brunner said. “They said, would you mind if I just came and picked some flowers on your farm? I’ll stay masked and distanced.”

That grew from one-on-one appointments into occasional pop-up open days the following summer, then into a regular weekly schedule by the third year, as more people kept asking to come back. Brunner said the U-Pick has since become one of the main ways she sells flowers at all, alongside farmers markets and wholesale accounts.