"It's hard to be unhappy in a sunflower field."

Mark Cournoyer, agriculture teacher and FFA club adviser at Auburndale High School, has said it so often that it has almost become a motto. Through the years, he's led annual efforts to plant sunflowers on a field in the Auburndale School Forest, and he's found it to be a particularly gratifying experience. People from all over come to enjoy the field, he said, and they are almost always happy if the sunflower crop is at its peak and showing its vibrant colors.

Cournoyer particularly enjoys going out to the field during sunrise.

"There is no one there that early, you're sitting there with God and sunflowers," Cournoyer said. "If you have rough time in your life, a sunflower will cheer you up."

Here are five Wisconsin sunflower field desti

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