PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Visitors now have an extra week to stop by and enjoy the blossoms at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival after the Woodburn farm announced it will extend the event until May 7.
Originally, the 2023 Wooden Shoe Tulip Fest was scheduled to close April 30, but farm officials said that could change depending on the weather.
The cool, wet weather the Willamette Valley has experienced in the spring of 2023 has kept the flowers closed for longer than the farm expected.
Photos of the farm in early April of this year compared to the same time in 2022 are vastly different. In 2022, the fields were splashed in color with almost all the tulips open. At the same time in 2023, most of the buds were still closed, waiting for a warm day and sunshine.
“It has been the slowest spring we’ve experienced in the last 40 years,” said Emily Iverson, whose family owns the farm.
She said the weather has been frustrating.
Every year, the farm predicts its opening date based on weather patterns of years past and when they think the tulips will bloom. The frigid and rainy spring of 2023 caught them off guard.
The farm usually opens the third week of March. This year, they had to push the opening date back to March 24.
Photos of the farm taken April 16 showed much more color than two weeks earlier.
The farm said it currently expects the best bloom to take place around April 20-30.
“We expect peak to last into May at this point, with only a few nice days in the future forecast. Come on sunshine!” the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm wrote in a social media post. “Just when we thought it couldn’t be any worse than last year, it was. This year has been a learning curve for our family and farm.”
The farm joked that at this rate, they might have tulips blooming all year long.
The farm said it will run until May 7th and will re-evaluate its end dates again at the end of April.