Being the first day of spring for 2010 and a lovely day, it was a perfect day to make a short trip to Puyallup, Washington to visit the Daffodil Fields.
The name Puyallup, pronounced pough-allup is credited to the local Puyallup Indians whose name is translated to mean generous people. The town was named Puyallup so as to be different from any other town in the United States. At the time, there were many difficulties with mail delivery and there was not another town name Puyallup in the nation nor is there now.
Puyallup was planned out by Eezra Meeker, Champion of the Oregon Trail in 1877. The Puyallup Indians had resided and formed their culture in the area for many years. The area was rich with salmon, berries and fertile soil deposited from the banks of the Puyallup River and spilled from Mount Rainier.
The first crop to be cultivated in the 1865 the Puyallup Valley was hops. Although the hop industry made a few millionaires, the hops did not fair well in this damp climate and the crop failed to hop aphids and mildew around 1890.
The next crop to be introduced was the daffodil bulb. The Daffodil industry flourished and once there were over 1,000 acres of daffodils and 40 farms. The success of the growth of daffodils was credited to the mild climate and deep rich soil of the area. The blooms could be harvested up to two to three weeks before imported daffodils
Today there are less than 400 acres planted with daffodils largely due to commercial and residential development. Once there were 400 daffodil farms and now there are five.
Visiting the fields is still quite a lovely experience. There are rows and rows of long green stalks with thousands of daffodils of many varieties. A faint sweet aroma welcomes the visitor when they pull over to witness the majesty of a sea of yellow. The fields are best visited in mid to late March.
When one visits, one can almost hear Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Daffodils wafting through the air as the daffodils flutter and dance in the breezes.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed-and gazed-but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
