NOKESVILLE — It’s been a tough year for tulips.
Nobody knows that better than Leslie Dawley and her son, Mike, who both run Burnside Farms in Nokesville, one of the world’s few places you can stroll through a vast field of tulips and pick your own.
The Dawleys planted about 1 million bulbs in the ground last year, in preparation for this year’s annual tulip festival at the farm. Half of them didn’t make it due to a combination of harsh winter temperatures in January, followed by a brief drought, and then a deluge of rain that caused water to pond in their fields for weeks.
The lackluster crop of flowers this spring forced Dawley to cut her season from four weeks to just one. The farm finally opened in late April and by the time you’re reading this, she says, the best tulips of this year are probably already gone.
Last weekend, Burnside Farms was bustling with activity, despite cloudy skies, as tulip-lovers strolled through the rows of flowers with their families, posing for photos with small children. There was a bounce pad, and live music from Bach-To-Rock school in Bristow.
“Everybody loves this festival,” said Dawley. “We are devastated by this year’s crop, but we’re hopeful for next year.”
Hoping for the best in the new year is something the Dawleys have been doing for the past five years. They lost their original lease on a farm on Haymarket Drive in Haymarket, where Burnside Farms began.
Since then, the two have moved locations multiple times, each time finding fields to till and plant, and soil with unique characteristics. It’s a process Mike Dawley details in a post on the farm’s website.
On the business side, the farm’s margins are tight. The farm sells about 10 percent of what it plants, charging $1 per each tulip picked and $1 more if want to keep its original bulb. There’s also an $8 admission charge at the gate, which goes to cover the cost of the bulbs.
“If we didn’t charge the admission fee, we couldn’t do this,” said Dawley.
And, because the start of the tulip-picking season is based on the weather and can vary between late March and late April, it’s challenging to plan special events and downright impossible to schedule weddings, which could bring in more revenue for the farm.
Burnside got its start seven years ago when Dawley happened to be working with a bulb supplier from whom she purchased Amaryllis bulbs. The supplier was going out of business, and Dawley bought 500,000 tulip bulbs for planting at her old field in Haymarket.
As the popularity of her farm grew, so did the desire of those who wanted to move to western Prince William County. The landowner sold, forcing Burnside to find a new home.
Today, they’re located near Patriot High School on Kettle Run Road. Dawley is working with this landowner hoping this could be a permanent home for her flowers. However, this land also lies in the sights of housing developers, she said.
The Dawleys hope to recoup some of their spring losses at two more festivals this year — a summer sunflower festival and a fall pumpkin patch. The events are planned at the farm’s current location at 11008 Kettle Run Road.
This summer, she’ll plant 30,000 varieties of sunflowers on the field, and build two mazes built of sunflowers. It’s something she’s done for years, and it’s one of the biggest annual events for the farm.
That, along with a pick-your-own pumpkin fall festival, will help the farm rebound.
“It’s going to take us years to recover,” she said.
