Throughout the next week, over 20,000 visitors will come to Botetourt County for the 10th season of the Beaver Dam Sunflower Festival and Vendor Show’s to experience the beautiful scenery and family-friendly fun across 21 acres.
Beaver Dam Farm offers the East Coast’s largest sunflower festival and vendor show thanks to the over 600,000 sunflowers and over 115 craft and food vendors. Over the last 10 years, the festival has grown from a weekend event to a nine-day experience offering hay wagon rides, live music, goat yoga, catered sunset dinners, photo booths, field trips and this year, even more.
“We have so many new things we have added for this 10-year celebration including our sunflower beer, 300 butterfly release on opening night, a signature coffee and stickers of all our past T-shirt designs,” says Beaver Dam Farm Sunflower Festival Founder Candace Monaghan.
While the growth of the festival is apparent, reminders of where the family and farm started are intentional throughout the farm, which was purchased in 1900 and first utilized as a tomato cannery in 1916. When the tomato blight swept through Botetourt, the farm transitioned to a dairy farm in 1927 until 2019 when it sold out of the dairy industry and focused on beef cattle and hay and straw operations.
In 2015, as a way to take advantage of an open field and diversify income, Candace’s father suggested planting sunflowers, simply because he liked them. Interested passerby’s stopped to take pictures and the following year, on a whim, Candace suggested creating a sunflower festival with one vendor and the goal of bringing in 300 people — 1,600 people later, the family decided to make the festival a tradition.
“One thing that amazes me each year would be how the community continuously shows up for us, year after year, helping make an event grow larger and larger each year,” Monaghan says.
Exemplifying the continued growth is the record number of visitors who attended last year, surpassing 21,400 guests. From this number, the festival’s vendors brought in $518,300 in total sales.
“Sitting back and looking at that number, knowing that it was going back into the pockets of other small businesses like ours is a fantastic feeling,” Monaghan continues.
Commemorating the farm’s 10 years and keeping up the spirit of adding more and more to the farm, Monaghan created a children’s book, “From Seeds to Sunshine: Our Farm’s Journey.” The book was released on Saturday, August 30.
Visit the farm’s website for the event schedule and ticket purchasing. Note the various field trip opportunities for preschoolers, senior citizens and individuals with special needs. “From Seeds to Sunshine: Our Farm’s Journey” can be purchased on Amazon.
