Summers Farm opens new location in Middletown with sunflower festival

Aug. 28—One of Frederick County's most well-known agricultural tourism businesses is back, in a new location.

Summers Farm, formerly located along Mount Phillip Road in Frederick, kicked off its 26th season of activities Saturday at its new location along Hollow Road near Middletown.

Saturday's opening of the farm's Sunflower Festival came after about a year of preparations, said owner Teresa Summers.

They started planting more than 35 varieties of sunflowers in late May, creating a variety of sizes and colors, she said.

Jennifer Bream, of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, returned from the sunflower patch with several blooms in a vase, which she said would go on her kitchen table.

She never had a fresh-cut sunflower bloom before, she said.

The picking process was "awesome," Bream said, with the different varieties to choose from.

"It's amazing. There's a lot of sunflowers," her husband, Chuck Bream, added.

He heard about the festival on the radio, he said.

They had never been to the old location, but now that they knew what was available, they planned to bring their 9-year-old son and a friend some other day.

Kim Malloy of Crofton said she had never been to a Summers Farm event before, but saw the Sunflower Festival on Facebook and decided to come.

The festival is a good weekend family activity, with lots of activities, she said.

Holding a sunflower bloom and an ice cream cone, Malloy said she might come back to the farm during pumpkin-picking season.

The farm's fall festival begins Sept. 17.

At the old location, they would add a new activity or two every year, but this year, they had to do everything at once, Teresa Summers said.

It was hard to leave the old location, where she had grown up milking cows, and opened the farm for corn mazes, pumpkin patches, and other fall activities 25 years ago on land leased from members of her family.

"That was my home," she said.

The old property is planned to be developed with up to 310 single-family houses and townhouses.

But they were lucky to find the new location in Middletown, and she designed the layout of the different activities herself.

The old farm had 100 acres, while the Middletown property is 165 acres, Summers said.

The old location had been laid out in a circle, largely by accident because that's how it fit on the area of land her father had set aside for her, she said.

She's laid out the new location in a circle, as well, trying to spread out activities for all age groups and provide something for everybody.

Joanna Chacko, 4, of Washington, D.C., knew her favorite activity on Saturday.

"We played with the ducks!" she shouted, referring to a game in which players pump water down a tube to push along plastic ducks.

She also played on bouncy balls, went down a slide, and saw goats, sheep, and other animals.

They went to the old location last year and enjoyed it, and decided to come back before Joanna starts pre-kindergarten next week, her mother, Becky Chacko, said.

"It's worth the trip from D.C. for us," she said.

Follow Ryan Marshall on Twitter: @RMarshallFNP