Candace Monaghan, the woman behind Beaver Dam Farm Sunflowers in Buchanan and the annual sunflower festival, has won the 7th annual Gauntlet Business Program and Competition.
Courtesy of Candace Monaghan
art of Monaghan's prize package includes a week-long billboard ad.
The 7th annual Gauntlet Business Program and Competition came to a close last Thursday evening. After 10 grueling weeks, Candace Monaghan, the woman behind Beaver Dam Farm Sunflowers in Buchanan and the annual sunflower festival, emerged victorious.
“I’m still shocked and surprised by the outcome,” she says.
She originally planned on entering the program last year, but decided that the timing just wasn’t quite right so she delayed her participation until this year. Monaghan went into it with the plan to explore different sunflower-related products and expanded festival offerings.
Just like with last year, the COVID-19 pandemic complicated this year’s program. All of the classes were offered in a virtual format. Luckily, Monaghan and several other participants from Buchanan formed a small group that attended class together and supported each other on assignments.
“I knew it would be intense, but I had no idea it would be as intense as what it was. There is homework every week. You get out of it what you put into it,” she says. She ended up spending over 50 hours on her business plan. “I don’t have a business background at all, so I wanted to be able to further my business knowledge.”
The most beneficial piece of advice she gleaned from her time in the program was to network and connect with as many business professionals and community members as possible.
Surprisingly, Monaghan hasn’t always harbored ambitions of launching a highly visible business around the concept of sunflowers. Her education is in communication design. For 14 years now, she has worked as a freelance graphic designer, including work related to logos and magazines. Additionally, she has hosted paint nights and art camps throughout Botetourt County for years.
Beaver Dam Farm Sunflowers is an extension of the farm that her family has maintained since 1900. From 1900 to 1927, the farm was a tomato canning factory before becoming and staying a dairy farm until 2019.
Back in 2015, her father happened to plant sunflowers in a field on the farm that didn’t have any other crops planted in it, which started the sunflower craze. All throughout the time that the flowers were blooming that year, passersby on Wheatland Road stopped to take their pictures with the stalky, vibrant sunflowers.
As it turned out, the sunflowers provided more than just joy for motorists. The family ended up harvesting the seeds and selling them for birdseed. With the knowledge that the seeds would bring in a modest sum of revenue, her father planted the sunflowers again the following year.
Courtesy of Candace Monaghan
Candace Monaghan was named the winner of this year's The Gauntlet Business Program and Competition last Thursday.
It wasn’t until two weeks before the flowers were set to bloom in 2016 that Monaghan realized that they could be monetized in another, perhaps more lucrative way. “I told him I thought we could charge money for people to see the sunflowers,” she remembers.
Not surprisingly, her father balked at the idea of having strangers traipsing through the farm. But Monaghan wasn’t deterred. She continued to push the idea until he finally relented. With his approval, she quickly spread the word on Facebook that the field of sunflowers would be open to the public. Her hope was that 300 people would come for the one-day event that costed $5. She was shocked when 1,600 people flooded the farm.
“Everybody that came got a free sunflower and the James River High School FFA sold hotdogs and waters. That was it,” she remembers.
Armed with the confidence that people were willing to drive out into the country and pay to see sunflowers, Monaghan made the decision to expand the festival into a weekend-long event in 2017. Activities were also expanded that year, including more vendors, a hayride and a farm animal section. Continuing the trend from the year earlier, her expectations were exceeded when 8,000 people showed up.
“Each year since, we’ve continued to expand things. Starting in 2019, we’ve grown to two weekends. We now have events during the week, including sit-down dinners, yoga, goat yoga, paint nights and vendors,” she explains.
In 2020, 15,000 people attended the festival.
This year’s festival will be even bigger than last year’s. Monaghan has 17 food vendors and 53 craft vendors lined up.
Courtesy of Candace Monaghan
Beaver Dam Farm Sunflowers is located on Wheatland Road in Buchanan.
When considering the success of the festival over the past five year, Monaghan says that it came along at just the right time for the farm. Unfortunately, the dairy aspect of the farm wasn’t covering all of the operating expenses.
“The goal with the festival was to turn around and give the farm the money so that my brother and father could continue farming the land that has been in the family since 1900,” she says. “Knowing that I’m contributing to keeping all of that in the family when otherwise we might not be able to is a huge accomplishment that I feel.”
She cautions that the example of how her family’s farm pivoted to maintain relevance in the modern world is something that every traditional farmer should take note of. “We’ve got to be able to adjust to things happening around us,” she advises. “It pained my dad to have to close down the dairy operation, but you can’t continue to go down a road you aren’t going to be able to recover from when you can switch gears and shift your plan of operation. Sunflowers worked for us, but there are so many other things in the agricultural realm that other people can get into.”
With that being said, all of the revenue the festival generates doesn’t just go to keeping the farm’s beef cattle herd and hay and straw operation afloat. Money from the festival is used to provide two high school scholarships for local students and two community scholarships for area non-profit organizations.
Monaghan’s hefty prize package includes 8-12 hours of desktop mapping services utilizing ArcGIS mapping software from Cowden Family Farms, four hours of business resource strategy and commercial planning from COEUD Research, press release distribution package from The Advancement Foundation, a spot on Daytime Blue Ridge on WSLS 10, three months of business partner acknowledgements on The Journey, five hours consulting to confirm what can be shared on The Journey along with production time, 30 and 60-second commercial spots from Fox Radio, drone photography, videography and mapping from Kasper UAV, three months of leadership training from RippleFX, copy and script package for brochures or press releases from BF Consulting, a one-year membership to the Botetourt County Chamber of Commerce, a one-week billboard ad from Lamar and $8,500 in cash.
She plans on using some of the cash to purchase a cold press to start offering sunflower oil, upgrades to the barn on the farm so that private events can be held there and an educational app that visitors can use to identify bugs on the sunflowers.
Learn more about Beaver Dam Farm Sunflowers at their website here.
About the Author:
Aila Boyd is an educator and journalist who resides in Roanoke. She holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University.