Alderson welcomes inaugural West Virginia Sunflower Festival

ALDERSON, W.Va. (WVVA) - Sunset Berry Farms’ owner Michelle Gilkerson said her farm is typically known for its strawberries. This year however, she and her husband welcomed thousands of guests for the inaugural West Virginia Sunflower Festival.

“We are blown away by the attendance. We had several thousand people here yesterday, we opened at 12:00 and cars were lined up way down the road,” said Gilkerson.

And while the festival, set to last from Sept. 3 through the 11th, is a new venture for the Gilkerson and her husband, it’s not the only new development they’ve seen in recent years.

“We are actually a strawberry farm, and 2 or 3 years ago we lost our entire crop of strawberries, maybe $200k worth of strawberries. So to recover from that we decided to throw out sunflowers in the strawberry field and it was a huge hit,” said Gilkerson.

Gilkerson added she hopes to see the festival act as a community building project, along with helping draw traffic to businesses in town.

It’s become an ideal spot for photographers in the area to set-up shop as well.

“The sunflowers itself just makes everything beautiful,” said Michelle Dillon, a photographer from Princeton, W.Va.. “Mother nature is wonderful and she creates the best backdrops and the sunflowers here are just going to keep blooming as the week goes.”

You can find out more about this year’s festival at Sunset Berry Farm’s Facebook page.