[homoe]

Every tradition has a beginning, and oftentimes those beginnings are by pure chance. Take Oregon’s largest tulip festival at Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm in Woodburn, now in its 35th year.

If it wasn’t for a neighbor’s suggestion in 1985 for the Iverson family to open their fields to the public, the Wooden Shoe Tulip Fest might not exist. The family started growing tulips in 1974 after a farmer in Canby, who had been contract growing the flowers, decided to hang up his gardening gloves. In 1980, the contractor they had been working with retired, and the family bought the bulbs to start growing them for the wholesale bulb market.

“It was a struggle, so in 1983, we started Wooden Shoe Bulb Company to try and help sell bulbs to the retail market,” said Barb. “We’d go to all these garden shows and we didn’t sell much. After two years we thought, maybe this was a bad idea. But then we thought, you know Easter’s coming and the fields will be in bloom.”

So after taking their neighbor’s advice to open the fields, they purchased an ad in the local paper and opened for Easter weekend. And 35 years later, Wooden Shoe Tulip Fest has grown into the largest tulip festival in the state and one of the three largest in the Pacific Northwest.