Pepo Farms is currently experiencing its second blossom of sunflowers, which has caused quite a few passersby to pull over and enjoy an impromptu photoshoot with the glorious yellow crop, situated opposite the farm's Great Alpine Road storefront and working factory at Ovens.

It's been eight years since the farms' Sunflower Project began as a community project to teach visitors the importance of bees in the pollination process and production of food.

Pepo Farms owner, Marcus Warner, said the project has now become something which people across the region look forward to and enquire about when they visit.

"We get enquiries from as far away as Wagga Wagga and Melbourne," he said.

"Over the years, we’ve done a significant number of local school projects with both primary and secondary (year-levels) and they use the flowers as fundraisers.

"We’re really proud they’ve been able to generate significant income for their schools.

"In addition, we donate a significant number of the flowers to residents at the local aged care facilities, to the hospitals and anyone who wants a big bunch of flowers to brighten up their day.

"On a more exciting note, we’ve had a number of engagements in here including some quite famous football players: it’s always quite amusing to watch them nervously hiding in the flowers waiting for their intended to turn up.

"We’ve had a number of vows renewed in them and TV chefs and celebrities who bring groups to walk among the flowers and we get a significant number of other clubs, like car clubs, holding photoshoots in here and other community projects.

"More importantly, we’ve allowed the general public to access this paddock for free.

"It’s proving to be one of those things we can never really let go."

Mr Warner said while they were growing pumpkins in the main paddock, the roadside paddock had always proved to be 'a little bit trickier', so they turned the field into a sunflower crop, which as a byproduct resulted in hundreds of thousands of amazing sunflowers which come up every year.

"That then led us to work out what to do with all the flowers," Mr Warner said.

"Ideally, what we do is leave them to go to seed, which provides winter food not just for the bees, but also ground-birds as they die off.

"The number of native Alpine bee species found on these sunflowers and who live in the valley is quite significant: a lot of them have hives in the nearby redgum trees.

"The Walkabout Apiary in Milawa and Oxley region supply the bees for our sunflowers and we also sell their honey at Pepo Farms."

Tina Lauszuz, who looks after the front-of-house area, said as Pepo Farms is opposite the rail trail, they get a lot of guests who stop by on a whim.

"When people come to visit us in store, they’ll see our delicious pumpkin seeds and we take them through a tasting,” she said.

"We’re the only Australian-grown pumpkin seed producer in the area.

"We'll talk them through how we make our oils as well: we’ve got an artesian press back there [which enables us to] press them and coat the pumpkin seeds freshly on site.

"We have an award-winning hazelnut oil.

"Last year at the 2025 Sydney Royal Show it won 'Best in Show', while our sunflower oil won the gold medal and our pumpkin seed oil won the bronze."

Dan Pusvacietis said Pepo Farms has had two batches of sunflowers blossom this season; the first in mid-January with the current crop appearing two weeks ago.

"It really depends on nature how staggered the blossoming is...this year has been ideal," he said.

"The sunflowers are an extension of the farmgate and shopfront experience at Pepo Farms.

"This is the most Myrtleford-centralised harvest we've ever had.

"Harvest is going on everywhere at the moment...hops have started already and nuts will be harvested a little later."