Deer and drought kill Schwirian Farm Sunflower Festival

Days before the popular Schwirian Farm Sunflower Festival was set to begin, deer ate about a half-million sunflower blossoms at the farm, which gave organizers no choice but to cancel.

Leslee Schwirian, who owns the Forward Township farm alongside her husband, Jay, said there were only about 10 flowers left standing.

“They ate them all,” she said. “We cried a lot; it was hard.”

The farm made a post on its Facebook page announcing the news July 28. The festival was supposed to run from Aug. 2-11.

Schwirian said she and her husband estimated about 30 deer munched through the farm’s sunflower supply because of drought conditions in June and July. She said she believes the lack of food caused the deer to come into their fields more than usual.

“All they took was just the little blossom of the flower,” Schwirian said. “The whole field is green, but there’s no flowers there.”

The blossoms on the sunflowers were just getting ready to open to be fully grown sunflowers, she said.

“They don’t grow back,” Schwirian said, as there’s just one flower that blooms per sunflower plant.

Deer have never bothered the farm’s sunflower plants before, she said.

“All we can figure is they developed a taste for them,” Schwirian said.

Once the couple noticed a few sunflowers had been eaten close to their house, Schwirian said her husband drove their truck around at sunset to try and deter the deer from coming back.

“They only did it at night,” she said. “They must’ve come while we were sleeping.”

Economic impact

From the roughly 500,000 sunflowers lost, Schwirian estimated the couple lost about $10,000. And from canceling the festival itself, she estimated around $50,000 was lost.

That doesn’t include the impact it had on the at least 10 vendors and 12 food trucks that were set to attend the event.

“I don’t know how to estimate that — they’re hoping to make income at the festival also,” Schwirian said. “It impacted a lot of people, unfortunately.”

The 10-day festival usually brings in about 20,000 people. The Schwirians have been prepping since February.

Schwirian said she’s gotten about 10 calls an hour since the festival was canceled from people who usually come to the festival.

“They’re devastated,” she said. “It’s important for the community that we do this.”

Though Schwirian was able to use sunflower oil from last year’s flowers, and she still has lotion, beeswax, lip balm and other products from last year, now there won’t be any oil collected this year. And in the winter, she and her husband knit wool socks with proceeds from the festival.

“We use the festival to get us ready for our wool socks,” she said. “So, now that’s gone.”

As of now, she’s not sure what kind of impact the incident will have on next year’s products.

“I’m trying to get over the fact that there’s no festival going on,” she said.

The Schwirian Farm will still operate its small farm stand for people interested in stopping to purchase any of their products.

In order to deal with the deer problem, Schwirian said she called the Game Commission.

“They’re going to help us control the deer population,” she said. “Hopefully, that’ll work out for next year.”