Down-Home Family Fun at the Copper Creek Farm Sunflower Festival

Earlier this week, my daughters and I headed with our good friends to Calhoun, Georgia, about an hour north of Atlanta, to Copper Creek Farm to check out their Sunflower Festival. This was our first time in Calhoun, and we had no idea what to expect. Calhoun is a small town off Interstate 75, and, when we pulled into their parking lot and paid about $18 a person for admission, we weren’t sure what we had gotten ourselves into.

We were all pleasantly surprised! We paid an extra $10 for a huge Copper Farm plastic vase, which comes with a knife, to cut 15 sunflowers from their expansive fields (if you return your knife upon leaving, you got a $1 back).There was so much to keep us occupied that it took us a few hours to get around to cutting flowers.

Our boys and girls, aged 6 to 13, all enjoyed zip lining past the sunflowers, petting the goats and horses, riding the giant slide, and taking a bumpy hay ride. Their overall favorite was the mechanical bull, which you can ride for free and get thrown off an unlimited number of times.

For younger children, there is a splash pad, bubble station with wands where you can blow bubbles to your heart’s content, and huge jumping trampoline (wear socks if it’s a hot day!). There’s a pig race not to be missed, but it happens fast, so make sure to get there right before the start time.

Their cute gift shop sells bee pollen and local honey (they have a bee hive next to it that you can check out), goat soap, candles, and homemade pottery, whose mugs are each named by the potter. On our way out, we waited for the candy canon to go off, which shot out candy and a few t-shirts into the courtyard’s gaggle of kids. The candy was swept up in an instant, but it was a super fun way to end the day.

Tips:
-Bring cash- they charge extra if you use a credit card.
-Go during the weekday when parking is easy and lines are short.
-There is food but offerings are limited, so bringing a cooler with food in your car is not a bad idea. They also have a homemade ice cream stand.
-Gem mining costs about $10-30 extra, depending on the size of the bucket. Rock painting, which my kids desperately wanted to do, is also $7 extra, so manage kid’s expectations if you don’t want to pay!