Among the Sunflowers at Lee Farms

Lee Farms Sunflower Festival
Lee Farms, Tualatin, Oregon
Sunday, August 16, 2026 | 10:15 am

The sunflowers were busy.

Honeybees and bumblebees moved across their dark centers, disappearing among hundreds of tiny florets before lifting off toward another bloom. Around them, visitors followed narrow dirt paths through the field, stopping for photographs beneath an August sky that was becoming warmer by the minute.

I was one of them.

Every August, Lee Farms in Tualatin holds its Sunflower Festival. Billed as “Oregon’s Largest Sunflower Festival,” Lee Farms describes it with an invitation to “frolic in the sunflower fields” and, perhaps more importantly, “take alllll the pictures.”

I could do that.

After checking in, I headed into the farm toward the Sunflower Patch. I hadn’t made it very far before the opening notes of Dolly Parton’s Jolene began playing across the grounds.

Of course.

Walking farther into the farm, I half expected a Rex Allen-like voice to start narrating the morning.

Into the Sunflower Patch

The entrance to the sunflower patch looked almost like a doorway into another place. Beyond a pair of wooden doors painted with sunflowers, narrow dirt paths disappeared between rows of yellow and orange blooms.

Some of the sunflowers stood well above my head. Others leaned heavily to one side, their enormous flower heads bowing toward the ground. One particularly ambitious specimen towered above nearly everything around it.

Small signs identified some of them along the way. One was ProCut Orange Splendor, appropriately described by its marker as having deep tangerine-orange petals around a dark center.

The field wasn’t arranged merely to be observed from outside. You walked into it.

Paths twisted between the plants. An old red-and-white camper appeared half swallowed by sunflowers, with upholstered chairs sitting outside.

Elsewhere there were wicker chairs, a fringed parasol, an antique-looking settee and an enormous yellow umbrella that almost looked like another sunflower rising above the field.

It was a little strange, a little theatrical. It felt like a stage had been set among the sunflowers, waiting for actors to appear.

Among the Bees

I wasn’t alone among the sunflowers.

Honeybees and bumblebees were everywhere. They seemed remarkably unconcerned by the humans wandering through their breakfast.

Bumblebees crawled across the dark centers of the flowers, occasionally disappearing almost completely among the tiny florets before moving on to the next bloom.

Decades ago, I probably would have been nervous standing among that many bees.

Now I found myself trying to photograph them.

A sunflower, I later learned, is essentially a very large collection of tiny flowers. What looks like a single dark center contains hundreds of disk florets offering pollen and nectar.

For a bee, the Sunflower Festival must have been less a festival than an enormous food court.

The workers certainly seemed busy.

There was also a small detail I particularly liked: the worker bees I was watching were female.

A women-run farm, with female workers quietly moving through the sunflowers.

Nothing profound needed to be made of it.

It was simply a nice thing to notice.

Beyond the Sunflowers

Eventually I started photographing things that weren’t sunflowers at all.

That was when Lee Farms itself became as interesting as the festival.

There were red farm buildings and old machinery. Flowers surrounded a weathered Farmall tractor until the machinery seemed almost incorporated into the garden.

Jolene wasn’t the end of the country soundtrack. Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire and others eventually joined it over the farm speakers.

And there were signs everywhere.

Some looked painted, assembled or repurposed. A weathered board welcomed visitors to Lee Farms. Another instructed them to “Enter Farm Through Market.” The sunflower patch had its own wooden gateway.

Those details gave the farm personality. Everything didn’t match. Everything didn’t need to.

It looked like a place that had accumulated things.

That made sense once I started noticing another thing printed and painted around the property:

Since 1869.

Seven Generations

Lee Farms describes itself as a seven-generation family farm.

Its history in Tualatin reaches back to 1869, when the Jurgen family settled in the area. Over succeeding generations, the Jurgen, Martinazzi and Lee families became intertwined with the property.

Today, fifth-generation Craig Lee owns the farm, with his children involved in different parts of the operation. Annie runs the farm market and bakery. Her sisters Kara and Teagan manage the outdoor festivities, including the Sunflower Festival.

Lee Farms makes that family connection unusually explicit in its own description of the event: “Annie’s sisters; Kara & Teagan are hosting the annual sunflower festival here at Lee Farms!”

Suddenly, seven generations felt like more than something printed on a sign.

The family was still here.

So were some of the places where earlier generations had gathered. Lee Farms’ Grain Bin occupies a barn built in the early 1900s, where the farm says generations of locals once gathered and square danced.

People still gather there today.

More than a century later, people still gather there.

Agritourism

Lee Farms also taught me a new word:

agritourism.

Naturally, I encountered it on a liability warning.

The sign explained the inherent risks associated with participating in an “agri-tourism activity,” which made wandering through a field of sunflowers sound considerably more perilous than it had moments earlier.

But the word described exactly what was happening around me.

Lee Farms is still a farm, but people also come here to experience the farm: sunflower fields in summer, pumpkins and harvest activities in fall, Christmas trees in winter, along with the market, bakery and other seasonal events.

The farm’s own history describes that evolution. U-pick strawberries brought visitors into the fields by the 1960s. The pumpkin patch followed. The market and bakery expanded. Seasonal festivals became another way for later generations to keep the farm operating.

Agriculture had become something visitors could participate in.

Including me.

It’s Always Donut Time

Then there were the donuts.

I had seen Lee Farms’ apple cider donuts before coming and had already decided that leaving without trying them would constitute some sort of violation of the farm experience.

The bakery did little to discourage this conclusion.

Inside the market, old tools, baskets and signs covered the wooden walls. A chalkboard advertised ice cream, milkshakes and made-to-order sandwiches. Bags of donuts filled a rack beneath the BAKE SHOP sign.

There were apple cider donuts.

There were marionberry donuts.

I considered the marionberry.

I chose apple cider.

Lee Farms makes its apple cider donuts by mixing cider directly into the cake-donut batter, then frying them and coating them in cinnamon and sugar. Six came in a bag.

They were made right there in the farm bakery.

And they were good.

Very good.

I took the rest of my donuts outside with a strawberry lemonade—another unexpected success, considering I’ve never been particularly interested in lemonade—and sat at a picnic table with the sunflower that came with my festival admission.

By then the August sun had become considerably less charming than it had been earlier in the morning.

It was time to head home.

A Sunday at the Farm

By the time I left Lee Farms, the August morning had become hot enough that home—and air conditioning—were sounding increasingly appealing.

I had my photographs. And beside me was a grease-spotted paper bag containing six apple cider donuts.

Country farm life isn’t exactly my natural habitat.

But Lee Farms had won me over enough that I was already wondering what the place might look like during its fall festival.

Apparently I like visiting the farm occasionally.

Especially when there are donuts.