Every year at the end of August, the Green Pig Country Market in Salisbury, New Brunswick hosts the “Sunflower Festival”. This year, Greg and I decided to check it out and see what it is all about – and we were not disappointed!
The Sunflower Festival
Admission to the festival is $12 per person, and included in your admission is a sunflower per person that you get to pick and cut yourself (sheers to cut will be provided), as well as getting to enjoy all the things there such as the corn maze too – not only the sunflower fields! You can also choose to take home even more sunflowers at an additional cost.
Greg and I had prepaid for our tickets online, but you can also purchase tickets when you arrive. The Green Pig Country Market has hundreds of thousands of sunflowers and has over 6 acres of sunflower fields, it really is spectacular to see!
Greg and I started by strolling through the sunflower fields. They had lots of great areas for photo opportunities as well, such as swings and couches surrounding by the sunflowers. They also had a tractor pulling a wagon to take you on a ride around the fields as well. Greg and I spent almost an hour in the fields taking photos (and videos for our vlog!) and picking out our two favourite sunflowers to take home with us.
Once we were done in the field, the Green Pig Country Market had everything all set up so that you could put your flowers in a plastic bag full of water so that the flowers would be okay for your drive home! They also provided us with a bag of sunflower seeds to grow some of our own sunflowers to help save the bees.
If you are interested next year, also check back to see if the Green Pig Country Market is offering Yoga in the sunflower fields again. This was something that they were offering on Saturdays and Sundays in 2020.
The Corn Maze
After we enjoyed the beautiful sunflower fields, Greg and I decided that we were going to check out their corn maze. This was actually my first time ever in a corn maze! This year the field was in the shape of the year “2020”, and I was determined to get to the middle of the maze where the “2020” was located. We grabbed a couple of photos on a big bridge overlooking the cornfield (another great idea as so many people stopped here for photos!) and then started making our way through the maze.
I’m 99.99% confident that Greg was trying to get us lost on purpose, we spent 57 minutes in the maze and somehow found ourselves back at the exit instead of making it to the middle. It was so much fun, we really enjoyed ourselves and it was quite a challenge! Not everyone was as adventurous as we were and we found most people were looking for the exit, when Greg and I were just determined to get ourselves more and more lost in the maze on purpose. We wanted to see how far we could go!
Throughout the maze they had all kinds of little information signs to help you learn facts about New Brunswick, this was great and we made sure to stop for every sign that we came across (these also really helped because if you see the same sign twice you then knew that you were there before!)
Other Things to Do
Even apart from the Sunflower fields and the corn maze, the Green Pig Country Market seemed to have all sorts of fun things going on for kids and adults to enjoy. There is also a smaller section of the corn maze more targeted at children (I wonder if Greg and I would’ve been able to complete that one instead haha!), as well as lots of little tent shops selling local and beautiful, handcrafted items. They had lots of fun games for kids, including an obstacle race, a teeter totter, and photo ops in giant chairs. They also have their market as well featuring all local products, and the Little Red Rooster Cafe where they serve breakfast and lunch (and supper on Friday and Saturdays). Although we didn’t eat at the Little Red Rooster Cafe on this visit, it smelled absolutely delightful!
Social Distancing
As we know, the world we live in today is so much different than anything that we’ve seen before. The Green Pig Country Market has also adapted to our “new normal” and implementing lots of new social distancing measures:
- Wagon Rides are at 50% capacity from 10 am to 5 pm
- The clippers used to cut your sunflower are sanitized before use
- Open longer hours to ensure less crowds – 10 am to 5 pm on weekdays, 10 am to 7 pm on Friday and Saturday
- Masks not required, but recommended in times if you are not able to social distance
- Plexiglass screen at admission counter and debit machines are cleaned after each customer
- Recommendations to visitors to always keep 6 feet apart from other guests
While Greg and I were visiting, we felt safe the entire time. The sunflower fields and the corn maze are all outside and even on this past Saturday (which was a very busy day!) we did not have any problems whatsoever keeping our distancing (way more than 6 feet) from other guests.
We had such a great time enjoying the beautiful flowers and we had so many laughs together in the maze. We can’t wait to go back again to the Green Pig Country Market later this fall, and check out what other things they have!
Maritime Meg & Her Sidekick Greg 