iPhoneography Monday in the Skagit Valley Tulip Fields

Posted on

by Lisa

I know I said Thursday would be my last tulip photos for a while but since Sally’s mobile photography challenge is on vacation until May 5th I thought I’d share one more post from the Skagit Valley.  The annual Tulip Festival is a favorite with photographers as well as fun day trip for the family but it’s important to remember that along with the beautiful display gardens and $5 off-road parking these beautiful fields belong to working farms and tulips are big business.

While paying visitors slowly walk around the perimeter of these large bulb fields the hired pickers work long shifts carefully selecting almost opened stems to bundle for sale in the gift shops and flower stands through the valley.  Greenhouse grown tulips and daffodils are available year round but field grown flowers are prized for their longer length and deeper colors and are only available for a few weeks each year.  This group of pickers quietly worked through their Sunday morning shift morning filling wood crates with perfect stems and though I noticed most people tried to avoid including them in their photos I thought the crews hard work should be noted as part of the tulip story.

 

 

Published by

Lisa

41 thoughts on “iPhoneography Monday in the Skagit Valley Tulip Fields”

      2. There are a few fields left but they are going fast! The festival runs the whole month of April but the peak times depend on the weather. Tulips.com should have a good map of the fields still in bloom.

        Like

  7. They have a “tulip field” they say in Holland, MI but the field is so tiny. Except for that the Tulip Festival there is a must see and enjoy. I would love to see this – so beautiful!

    Like

  11. glad you shared another tulip post – especially because they are all so rich! In this post, I really like the ones lying down – ready for transport! 🙂

    Like

  12. I’m not tiring of these tulip photos one bit. They’re so bright and cheery, every stalk of them a star in their own right. Very nice of you to acknowledge the pickers. I hope a lot of them like their job 🙂

    Like

    1. Thanks Sue! I wanted to show a view of the fields that is new to people who might only get to see them through photos and this looked like a good place to start. 🙂 Not as funny as your Mojave Desert/Turtle dodging adventure though. 😉

      Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.