Beaver Dam Sunflower Festival celebrates 10th anniversary

BUCHANAN, VA – Sometimes you have to take your mind off things – try something new because the old ways aren’t working.

In 2015, Frank Preston Wickline III decided to plant 30 acres of sunflowers on his dairy farm in Botetourt County. Like many dairies, Beaver Dam Dairy was challenged by a market in which operating costs were far outpacing any gains in milk prices (and in many years, milk prices were flat or down).

Wickline planted sunflowers “just to see what would happen,” his daughter Candace Monaghan recalled. “I was totally skeptical at first. I had so many questions. But he said ‘I like sunflowers and want to plant them.’”

That first year, they harvested the sunflowers and sold the seed as birdseed at a local store and to a regional chain of Northwest Hardware stores. While the sunflowers were in the field, a couple of neighbors stopped by to take photos.

In 2016, Preston decided to plant sunflowers again because the birdseed from the previous year had sold out. Two weeks before the sunflowers were to bloom in 2016, Monaghan had an idea: “If people pay to walk through fields of corn in a corn maze, surely they will walk through fields of sunflowers.”

She planned a one-day event. Monaghan reached out to the local newspaper, started a Facebook page and contacted a Roanoke meteorologist who was a high school classmate of hers. He came out and did a story on heliotropism (the directional growth of a plant in response to sunlight) for the TV station.

The family hand-painted signs and set aside part of the farm for parking. The local FFA was on hand to sell hot dogs and water. There was a goat to pet and a borrowed pull-behind train attached to a tractor for a kiddie ride. The entry fee was $5.

“We were hoping 300 people would show up,” Monaghan said.

On the day of the event, Monaghan’s brother, Bradley Wickline, was supervising parking. He called his sister and reported, “Cars are lined up down the road to get in here!”

That was the first sign that more than attendance was on track to exceed expectations.

“We were all standing there with our mouths open,” Monaghan recalled.

As the parking area filled, the family found new places on the farm to park cars. The FFA kept returning to the grocery store to buy more hot dogs and water. In the end, 1,600 people visited.

At the end of the event, Preston said to his daughter, “I guess you’re going to want to do this again next year.”

Candace Monaghan with her husband Patrick and their children, Ella and Brennen. Photo courtesy of Beaver Dam Farm Sunflowers

Since then, the Beaver Dam Farm Sunflower Festival has grown to nine days across two full weekends. The attractions during the festival have grown as well. This year, there were 18 food vendors and over 120 craft vendors. The petting zoo has grown and a hayride has been added. There’s also face painting and a children’s game station.

Last year, attendance totaled 21,400. The festival includes special events such as sunset yoga, goat yoga, sunset dinners and a festival flyover, in which you can depart from the local airport to fly over the farm to take in the sunflowers and the surrounding area. The special events are pre-sold and typically sell out.

There are over 700,000 sunflower plants in the field, along with numerous booths for photo opportunities. This year the farm grew colored sunflowers as well as standard black oil-seed sunflower. There is a one-acre patch of sunflowers reserved for guests to purchase cut flowers, but the remaining land is still harvested, typically in mid-December, to be sold as birdseed.

While the festival has grown, the dairy closed its doors in 2019. “It was hard for my dad to have to make that decision,” Monaghan said. “His grandfather had started the dairy in 1927 and it had been in the family, run by his grandfather and father and himself, all along.”

Today, Wickline still farms beef cattle along with Bradley. Monaghan’s sister Kristi Porter helps with the sunflower festival. Wickline’s wife Linda also was involved with the festival until her passing in 2022.

The help at the festival is all volunteer, and typically numbers more than 80 people. “It’s huge that the community is behind us,” Monaghan said. Dinners are prepared and served by a local church, which shares in the proceeds of the meals.

Aside from the sunflower festival, visitors now are coming to the farm at other times of the year, thanks to a wedding venue they opened in 2023.

The next time you find yourself in a difficult situation, take your mind off things and try something new – you never know where it might take you, just like Beaver Dam Farm Sunflowers.

For more information on the farm and its Sunflower Festival, see beaverdamsunflowers.com.

by Karl H. Kazaks