Open this photo in gallery Tourists wander through Bogle Seeds in Millgrove, Ont., on July 31, 2018. Visitors flooded the farm to see its more than one million sunflowers, forcing the family to close its unlikely attraction ‘for good.’ J.P. MOCZULSKI/The Globe and Mail 
 
 There’s one thing the Bogle family wants to make clear off the top: no more pictures. 
 
 Their sunflower farm is closed to Facebookers, Instagrammers, Snapchatters (Snappers?) and all the other social-media looky-loos who tromped over their crops and plugged local roads for kilometres around over the weekend. 
 
 Closed not just for today, this week or this month. 
 
 Story continues below advertisement 
 
 “We’re closed forever!” Marlene Bogle yells politely to yet another minivan full of sunflower seekers stopping at the edge of her Millgrove, Ont., driveway Tuesday. 
 
 Open this photo in gallery Marlene Bogle of Bogle Seeds is pictured on July 31, 2018. The Bogles opened up their farm to photographers on July 20, charging $7.50 an adult. J.P. MOCZULSKI 
 
 “Forever?” says the startled driver, who drove an hour from Toronto with a vanload of kids. 
 
 “Yep, for good,” she says. 
 
 Add the majestic sunflowers of Bogle Seeds to the list of good things spoiled by social media. The same fate has befallen some of the world’s most renowned attractions. Tourists taking Instagram-ready selfies have clogged up Santorini, Greece, with its distinctive blue rooftops, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Great Wall of China. 
 
 Now, they’re taking over the family farm. 
 
 Open this photo in gallery Sunflower farmers Brad Bogle, left, and dad Barry. J.P. MOCZULSKI 
 
 “I can only describe it as like a zombie apocalypse,” says Brad Bogle, Marlene’s son. 
 
 It started mildly enough. The Bogles opened up their farm to photographers on July 20, charging $7.50 an adult. They had done the same thing three years ago, with a few hundred visitors providing a modest boost to their main business of farming sunflower, corn, millet, oats and barley, as well as selling various kinds of birdseed from their big red barn, which remains open for business. 
 
 Story continues below advertisement 
 
 Story continues below advertisement 
 
 This year, they hired eight staff at $22 an hour and rented some porta-potties to accommodate the crowds. Their parking lot holds 300 cars. For the first week, it was never more than one-third full. They met families from as far away as Dubai, New York and Australia and learned that many cultures consider the sunflower good luck. 
 
 “Everyone was laughing and having fun,” says Barry Bogle, Brad’s father, of that first week. “Then all of Toronto showed up.” 
 
 Open this photo in gallery Sunflower tourists wander through a field at Bogle Seeds on July 31, 2018. J.P. MOCZULSKI/The Globe and Mail 
 
 The apocalypse arrived on Saturday, the 28th. A few pictures of people posing among the roughly 1.4 million sunflowers had gone viral on Instagram. Cars began rolling up the driveway at 5:45 a.m. “We knew then something was up,” says Barry, who called Hamilton police for help. 
 
 By noon, the hordes were coming from all directions. People were parking as much as a kilometre away. The crowds started ignoring the overwhelmed farm staff, strolling into the fields without paying. Police told the Bogles that parents were crossing four lanes of traffic with strollers, people were getting in fender benders – one driver had his door ripped off by a passing car. One officer told the family they would be fined. 
 
 The Bogles tried their best to ward off the trespassers. “We asked one guy to leave, and he said, ‘Make me’ and wanted to fight,” Brad says. 
 
 Others were nicer. One man came out of the field holding an armload of garbage he’d picked up. 
 
 Story continues below advertisement 
 
 Open this photo in gallery At one point, police told the Bogles that parents were crossing four lanes of traffic with strollers and people were getting in fender benders. J.P. MOCZULSKI 
 
 Hamilton police and the Ontario Provincial Police showed up to help with traffic. Around 2 p.m., they asked the family to shut down the operation and later closed Safari Road, which abuts the field. One officer told a neighbour police had estimated the crowd at 7,000 cars. 
 
 That night, the family barely slept as they fretted about the horrors that might await on Sunday. 
 
 Brad spent the next day going up and down the road asking people to leave. Some visitors didn’t take it well, telling him he’d ruined their vacation. A few neighbours gave him the finger for the traffic woes. 
 
 As of Tuesday, the traffic had died down, but the Bogles were still standing by the driveway like sentries. Many cars simply drove around the corner, where passengers got out on a side road and walked into the fields with selfie sticks, oblivious to the “No Trespassing” signs everywhere. 
 
 Open this photo in gallery The Bogles won’t know the extent of the damage until they harvest the plants in late September or early October. J.P. MOCZULSKI 
 
 “It reminds me of the Yayoi Kusama exhibit in Toronto,” says Chelsea Caruso as she emerges cheerily from the field on Tuesday. “It’s Instagram that brought people here. It was a top post. There’s such good vibes here.” 
 
 The sunflower is a notoriously fragile crop. If the lower leaves are damaged, the plant becomes far less resistant to drought and disease. The Bogles won’t know the extent of the damage until they harvest the plants in late September or early October. 
 
 Story continues below advertisement 
 
 The same weekend the Bogles were overrun, a Winnipeg-area farmer said around two thousand people showed up at one of his fields knocking over flowers in search of the ideal shot. 
 
 “I used to love these flowers,” says Marlene, waving a Tesla away from the driveway. “Now I can’t stand 'em.” ||||| This is a story about a good idea gone awry. 
 
 Two weeks ago, a Canadian seed farm in Hamilton, Ontario, opened its gates to visitors, allowing them to wander through 70 bucolic acres of towering, buoyant sunflowers. Provence may have its pastoral lavender fields. But Hamilton, which is an hour outside of Toronto, has its picturesque bloom too. 
 
 “For years, we’ve had people stopping alongside the road to take pictures,” said Brad Bogle, who, along with his parents, harvests sunflower seeds for bird food on their farm, Bogle Seeds. In the summer of 2015, the Bogles invited tourists to roam through the fields. They had such a swell time — and it was such a success — the family decided to welcome guests for a visit last month. 
 
 What could go wrong? 
 
 On July 28, eight days after the first tourists arrived for the season, the Bogles demanded everyone go home after selfie-taking guests ruined the experience for everyone. Amateur photographers came with selfie-sticks and ladders that they clambered atop to get the best shot. Plants were trampled. Sunflower heads were plucked from their stems and used as props. People, too, ventured in between narrow sunflower rows for the perfect cameo. 
 
 The horde — which Mr. Bogle estimated at 7,000 people that Saturday — left behind garbage and a host of angry neighbors who found the road in front of their homes closed after the police arrived and the festivities were shut down. The Bogles have vowed never to let guests return. ||||| For the people still bothering to drive to the Bogle seeds farm in Hamilton to snap a selfie with a sunflower, Barry and Marlene Bogle have a message — 'Go home. We're closed.' 
 
 The Bogle's have 1.6 million sunflower plants on 68 acres. And for more than a week, you could roam part of their field and take a picture before you head home. It cost $7.50 per adult, parking included. 
 
 It was a great idea for eight days. Then it became too great. 
 
 Everything went wrong. People were coming in, trespassing, knocking down our plants, stealing the heads. It was just chaos. - Barry Bogle, Bogle Seeds 
 
 "Up until Saturday it was just another wonderful day at Bogle Seeds here," Barry Bogle said, "but soon as Saturday came it's just been so stressful." 
 
 "People started coming in from every direction in the farm and just thousands of people walking past our ticket booth." 
 
 Barry says some people cut the heads off the sunflowers, didn't bother paying for tickets, left garbage and " just basically took over our farm." Some, Barry says, even went as far as bringing a ladder into the field. 
 
 His son Brad, the sixth-generation of Bogles farming the land since 1874, described Saturday as a "zombie apocalypse." 
 
 Bogle Seeds, a farm offering people the opportunity to take photos with their sunflowers was forced to close on Saturday after far too many people showed up. They say photo opportunities are likely closed forever. (Laura Clementson/CBC) 
 
 Police arrived 
 
 The farm's parking lot holds about 300 cars but even that wasn't enough and people were parking where they shouldn't have. 
 
 Visitor Donald Morgan posted to Bogle Seed's Facebook page saying "I was there Saturday morning at about 9 a.m. and stayed until 11 a.m. The scene was chaotic. All roads backed up with traffic, people parking on the side of the highway, people trying to cross the highway ... even saw a fender bender while leaving." 
 
 The wild bird seed farm is in the Hamilton area of Flamborough at Highway 6 and Safari Road — a busy and often dangerous stretch of highway. 
 
 Everything was fantastic for those eight days, but then as soon as Saturday came somehow everybody from Toronto found out about us and they just descended upon the farm. - Barry Bogle 
 
 Traffic was so bad in the area that Hamilton police and OPP were monitoring traffic and assisting with parking concerns. 
 
 "Police arrived and thank goodness they kind of helped out and put the massive traffic jam under control a little bit," said Bogle. 
 
 At around 2 p.m. the Bogles decided to shut things down. 
 
 "We decided that we just could not do this again for safety sake on the road and safety on the farm here. We had way too many people on our farm," Barry said. 
 
 "Everything went wrong. People were coming in, trespassing, knocking down our plants, stealing the heads. It was just chaos." 
 
 Barry Bogle, a farmer at Bogle Seeds say sunflowers are very susceptible to different diseases and if someone goes through the crop and breaks a leaf off, that opens up an area on that plant where a disease can enter. (Laura Clementson/CBC) 
 
 People from Toronto 
 
 Barry says people from as far as New York and Dubai have visited his farm in the past and enjoyed talking about the flowers. He says various guests told them in some cultures sunflowers are good luck. 
 
 "Everything was fantastic for those eight days, but then as soon as Saturday came somehow everybody from Toronto found out about us and they just descended upon the farm," he said. 
 
 There were so many, Bogle says, that their website crashed. There were over 8,000 hits in one day. He said "Everybody knows about our farm I'm afraid." 
 
 Boggle says they've allowed photos before, about every three years, but doubts they'll ever do it again. 
 
 "I really doubt if we'll ever do this again because we don't want to get into a similar situation to this," the farmer said. 
 
 He says some people were even walking through poison ivy, ignoring the signs not to trespass. 
 
 ​Sunflowers, Bogle says, are a crop that's very susceptible to different diseases and if someone goes through the crop and breaks a leaf off, that opens up an area on that plant where a disease can enter. 
 
 "We could lose our whole entire crop if people walk through the whole entire farm." 
 
 Bogle Seeds is still open for those looking to purchase their wild bird seed, but not for photos. 
 
 Bogle Seeds sells wild birdseed. The family is in its sixth generation on the farm. (Laura Clementson/CBC) 
 
 laura.clementson@cbc.ca
– The invite promised a "spectacular sight"; the reality was a spectacular disaster. For eight days at the end of July, all was fine as tourists flocked to the Bogle Seeds sunflower seed farm in Hamilton, Ontario. They were there at the invitation of the farm's owners, who'd decided to open the farm up for two weeks to picture-taking visitors, some from as far away as Australia and Dubai, per the Globe and Mail. But on July 28—what Brad Bogle now calls "Crazy Day," per the National Post—everything went awry, when about 7,000 selfie-obsessed sightseers converged upon the farm, per Bogle's estimate. The day-trippers started showing up shortly after dawn, the parking lot that could hold 300 cars was filled before 10am, and the scene soon degenerated into "utter chaos," per the CBC. Included in that chaos: people not paying admission, littering, and enraging the farm's neighbors. "One of my neighbors told me that he caught two people going to the bathroom in his front yard in his bushes," Bogle, who runs the farm with his parents, tells the Post, adding to the New York Times: "They were knocking down sunflowers and taking flower heads with them. … [It was] a zombie apocalypse. … We went from a week of amazing to that." What had spurred the giant crowd, unbeknownst to the Bogle family: viral photos of their sunflowers that had spread on social media. Now, a huge black banner scrolls across the Bogle Seeds website declaring: "All photography of sunflowers ... [is] now closed for the season!" That hasn't stopped the curious from still trying to make their way onto the farm, yelling at Bogle or flipping him the bird when he turns them away. "I'm a farmer," he tells the Times. "I just want to be in the dirt."