MAPLETON – In 2017, Matt Ottens planted a field of sunflowers as a surprise for his wife Leona and the rest of their family.
Now, the Ottens family invites the community out to the farm every year to enjoy the flowers’ beauty and raise money for causes such as the Palmerston and District Hospital Foundation or the Canadian Cancer Society.
This year, the Mapleton Sunflower Festival will take place on Aug. 17 and aims to raise enough money to purchase an electric stretcher for the Palmerston hospital.
The fundraising goal is $8,000, the approximate price of the stretchers.
“We always like to buy an item, so people can see exactly where their money went – it’s tangible,” Leona Ottens told the Advertiser.
“With an electric stretcher the staff are protected from heavy awkward lifting and the patient can get around smoothly.”
The festival launched in 2020 and was formerly known as the “Shine Your Light” Sunflower Tour – a phrase Ottens said is still printed on the back of event T-shirts, as the words are important to the family.
“Our family has been through great tragedy, and through it we managed to continue shining our light thanks to many friends and neighbours,” she said.
“We would like to encourage those in situations like us to keep going, even when you are healing.”
The first sunflower tour took place just after Matt Ottens celebrated five years of cancer remission in 2020.
But the following year, the event went ahead without Matt, who died tragically in an incident on Conestogo Lake on June 13, 2021.
Matt died while assisting a child who fell out of a boat from which the family was swimming. The child was pulled safely from the water, but the 33-year-old never resurfaced.
Leona, left, and Matt Ottens hosted their first Sunflower Festival on Aug. 15 and 17, 2020. Advertiser file photo
Since the festival launched, the Ottens family has raised over $100,000.
The festival will include live music from the Moore Band and Cara Smith, a craft market, games, a cornhole tournament, yoga, ice cream, coffee, and hopefully food from the Drayton Kinsmen.
Ottens said attendees are welcome to come any time throughout the day and listen to music and stroll through the sunflowers.
Registration for the cornhole tournament, which starts at 1pm, will take place on the morning of the festival.
The yoga session will start at noon.
Festival parking is at the front of the farm by the barns, and a tractor and wagon will drive attendees to the back of the farm where festivities are taking place, Ottens said.
The tractor and wagon will also bring guests back to their cars when they are ready to leave.
There will also be a “Sunflower Run,” starting at 10am, with a free 2km option for children, and five and 10km routes for a $35 registration fee.
Registration is open until the day before the festival and includes a T-shirt for every runner, and medals made by a local blacksmith for the first, second, and third place male and female winners of each route.
Ottens said participants are welcome to walk or run, and it’s a good race for all experience levels.
There will also be paths through the sunflower fields that people are welcome to wander through.
Arien Nagel pushes her one-year-old daughter Danielle along a pathway bordered by swaying sunflowers at the 2021 Shine Your Light Sunflower Tour in Mapleton on Aug. 16. Advertiser file photo
Leona and Matt launched the festival as a way for people to come together with community safely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
They took small groups of people for wagon-rides around their property as an opportunity for people to get out again after pandemic lockdowns, she said.
And the following year, after Matt’s death, the family was unable to “have a proper funeral” due to pandemic restrictions, so it included a memorial during the festival for people to honour him.
“It was nice that we could respectfully have a proper time to remember him,” Ottens said.
“There’s a wall in the barn for everyone to come and sign,” she added.
And now the festival has become an annual way for Matt’s family, friends and community to continue to remember him.
Ottens said the people who organize the event and drive the wagons are Matt’s closest friends.
Matt wasn’t boastful, Ottens said, so he wouldn’t want the festival to be named after him, “but he would like to have the community continue to come to the farm and share this with everyone,” she said.
Leona Ottens said her late husband Matt’s parents, Marlene, left, and John Ottens “have gone above and beyond for this little idea.” Submitted photo
Ottens said one aspect of being responsible for the land on which her farm resides is sharing that land with others.
She said the annual festival is a joyful day that has become a part of lots of children’s childhoods – “doing the run and getting a chance to see each other in the summer.”
She said the market was initially started because so many people were crafting and making things during the pandemic, and she and Matt wanted to give them an opportunity to sell some of the things they made.
“That stuck,” she said, so now the festival always includes a handmade market, with “all kinds of items people can purchase for Christmas, or themselves, or whatever.”
She described the market as having a “kind of cozy feel.”
Ottens said she’s hoping for a turnout of at least 800 people this year.
The festival takes place at Snetto Farm: 8563 Concession Road 6, near Moorefield.
To register for the Sunflower Run, visit raceroster.com/events/2024/79377/mapleton-sunflower-run-2024.
