BUCHANAN, Va. – Imagine having half a million sunflowers as your backdrop for family fun this month.
Starting Saturday, Sept. 12 you can walk the more than 20 acres of Beaver Dam Farm in Buchanan for its annual sunflower festival.
For two weekends in a row, you can visit the farm for handmade craft vendors, food trucks, live music and sunflowers.
Changes this year include online ticket sales to make sure the event is meeting safety guidelines. The farm is also suggesting you wear a mask when you’re in close proximity of someone, like when you’re standing in line.
Founder of the festival, Candace Monaghan said when you buy a ticket it’s for a specific time block.
“You can pick which weekend you’re coming to and then you pick what time slot you want. So if you want 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., you can go to that time slot and click how many tickets you want and then there’s a 15-minute break and then the next time slot will start from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.,” said Monaghan.
The farm will have events like dinner, yoga, goat yoga and more. They just ask people not to show up or pick from their farm outside of farm hours.
This sunflower festival isn’t just a good time.
Between all the festivities the festival attracts thousands to the town of Buchanan. Monaghan said last year the two-weekend festival had a total of 20,000 people in and out of the town of Buchanan. That’s not including the people attending events throughout the week.
Online ticket sales are intended to limit the capacity at once, but that doesn’t change the flow of business this festival brings to the entire community.
“We have local restaurants who reach out and say you know we were packed during the festival. There’s a lot of antiques stores and shops who have reached out and said that’s their best days of sales so we’re excited that our farm and family can benefit from this but also others in the community,” Monaghan said.
The festival is Sept. 12 and 13 and Sept. 19 and 20.
To buy tickets click here.