The Roanoke Star

6th Annual Beaver Dam Farm Sunflower Festival To Be Held In Buchanan

Close your eyes and imagine walking through a field of 600,000 sunflowers, a slight warm breeze blowing through the air and a sea of yellow as far as you can see. That’s what visitors can experience at The Beaver Dam Farm Sunflower Festival, September 10th through the 19th, in Botetourt County. Visitors to the festival will enjoy over 20 plus acres of sunflowers, over 80 hand-made crafters, children’s activities, food vendors, live music and more.

Beaver Dam Farm Sunflowers, LLC offers a unique experience to visit the working farm and enjoy access to the first and largest sunflower festival and artisan show on the East Coast. At the end of the year, the sunflowers are harvested, and seeds are bagged for black oil sunflower birdseed and sold locally.

 Beaver Dam Farm Sunflowers invests thousands of dollars back into the community each year and continues to be an economic driver in Botetourt County, attracting tens of thousands of people to the area.
Founder and owner Candace Monaghan is proud to promote agritourism to the area and help support more than 80 small artisan vendors at the festival. In 2020, vendors reported that an average of 42% of their yearly sales income came from the Beaver Dam Farm Sunflower festival.
“The economic impact the festival has on the community is tremendous,” said Monaghan. “I had a new vendor from 2020 share they did approximately $5,600 in sales at the Sunflower Festival and $25,000 overall for the year. They also said the majority of their sales after the Sunflower Festival weekends were driven by their presence there.”
Each year Beaver Dam Farm Sunflowers provides two $500 scholarships to area high schools and two $250 scholarships to the community. In addition, sponsored activity books designed by Monaghan were given out to more than 2,000 local elementary school children this year. The farm waives vendor fees for local non-profits, church groups and school groups at the sunflower festival.
More information visit www.beaverdamsunflowers.com .