‘We’re closed forever!’: How the search for the perfect selfie led to bedlam at an Ontario sunflower farm

There’s one thing the Bogle family wants to make clear off the top: no more pictures.

Their sunflower farm is closed to Facebookers, Instagrammers, Snapchatters (Snappers?) and all the other social-media looky-loos who tromped over their crops and plugged local roads for kilometres around over the weekend.

Closed not just for today, this week or this month.

“We’re closed forever!” Marlene Bogle yells politely to yet another minivan full of sunflower seekers stopping at the edge of her Millgrove, Ont., driveway Tuesday.

“I can only describe it as like a zombie apocalypse,” says Brad Bogle, Marlene’s son.

It started mildly enough. The Bogles opened up their farm to photographers on July 20, charging $7.50 an adult. They had done the same thing three years ago, with a few hundred visitors providing a modest boost to their main business

The apocalypse arrived on Saturday, the 28th. A few pictures of people posing among the roughly 1.4 million sunflowers had gone viral on Instagram. Cars began rolling up the driveway at 5:45 a.m. “We knew then something was up,” says Barry, who called Hamilton police for help.

Hamilton police and the Ontario Provincial Police showed up to help with traffic. Around 2 p.m., they asked the family to shut down the operation and later closed Safari Road, which abuts the field. One officer told a neighbour police had estimated the crowd at 7,000 cars.

That night, the family barely slept as they fretted about the horrors that might await on Sunday.

Brad spent the next day going up and down the road asking people to leave. Some visitors didn’t take it well, telling him he’d ruined their vacation. A few neighbours gave him the finger for the traffic woes.

As of Tuesday, the traffic had died down, but the Bogles were still standing by the driveway like sentries. Many cars simply drove around the corner, where passengers got out on a side road and walked into the fields with selfie sticks, oblivious to the “No Trespassing” signs everywhere.

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