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It's a picturesque rite of spring in the Lowcountry. The perky yellow blooms in sweeping fields of green are symbols of rebirth and renewal.
At one time, their arrival was reason for a Daffodil Daze festival in Beaufort.
But we shouldn't take today's access to the daffodils as a "right." We can thank two families with deep local roots -- John M. Trask Jr. and Caroline Trask in Beaufort and Mary O. Merrick and her children in Bluffton -- for opening their fields to the public.
The Trask fields are on Cane Island, where John M. Trask Sr. and Flora G. Trask planted 40 acres of daffodils in the late 1960s.
The Merricks open their 30 acres of daffodils on their Calhoun Plantation land in Pinckney Colony. About 40 years ago, a Dutchman planted them there, and in the Pritchardville area, for commercial harvest.
For years, the flowers were picked by fields full of workers, mostly women. Then they were iced down and trucked as far north as Boston and as far west as Chicago to bring those poor shivering souls a hint of spring.
John Trask Jr. said most went to Safeway or A&P supermarkets. But commercial harvests ended about 25 years ago. The demise involved international competition, of course, but also the daffodils seemed to always come in around Valentine's Day, when everyone wanted something red. The fields of "King Alfred" daffodils from Holland were a sideline for Trask's parents, along with acres of gladioluses and Dutch irises.
For the Trasks and others, the big business for Beaufort County in that era was in tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, broccoli, winter greens, cabbage and radishes. Earlier, it was in Irish potatoes.
Times have changed. Beaufort County produced about $14 million worth of tomatoes last year, but it's hard to find an old barn or packing shed anymore.
Yet, the daffodils will not go away.
Since those perennial bulbs were buried in our sandy soil, we've planted more timeshares than row crops. Our streets are clogged and we debate a mega mall, but the dear little daffodils refuse to give up on us.
All over the South, daffodils pop up each spring in perfect rows in the woods. They show where home places used to be. Along back roads, their cheery little faces brighten yards of sad houses long abandoned, slowly melting into the earth.
Out West, daffodils stand as secret signals that pioneers in covered wagons wanted to soften their harsh lives.
In England, Romantic poet William Wordsworth described this yearning as a dance:
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.
They aren’t a crop anymore in Beaufort County. They are a dance of the heart.
The Merricks will reap from their pick-your-own operation enough to cover expenses. But their invitation offers a peek into the rural Lowcountry the way it used to be. At the same time, the family practices new ways of doing things, with their land in a conservation easement and the daughters producing certified organic vegetables and flowers for market at their Three Sisters Farm.
The Trasks ask people who come to pick daffodils to make a donation that goes to charitable causes around town. They provide music and urge everyone to bring their families, cameras, buckets and picnics.
Cane Island’s fields were alive Saturday with young mothers filling baskets with their little girls.
Not far away, the liftetime acheivements of John M. Trask Sr. sit silently etched into his tombstone at the Parish Church of St. Helena in Beaufort. He’s noted as a farmer, landowner, businessman, political figure, respected employer, hunter and saltwater fisherman. And then this: “Near the end of his life he grew daffodils on Cane Island and enjoyed opening his fields to the community.”
