we didn’t plant it in our garden – it just appeared. i assume it came from one of the bird feeders that we fill with black oil sunflower seeds. it’s gigaaaaaaaaantic. it never occurred to me that you could plant the seeds ( duh! ).
i might have to plant more than one on purpose next year.
it’s august which means it’s time for yet another photo of the high-oil sunflowers that are pressed for biodiesel for an organic valley sustainability program. some might recall my photos from last year and a few might even recall the original, popular sunnier side of biodiessel photo from five(?!) years ago.
this year is extra exciting because nestled amongst the sunflowers you can now see the two wind turbines that are part of wisconsin’s first community wind farm that were put up in a partnership between organic valley and gundersen health system.
the two wind turbines are expected to generate about 5 megawatts of energy which more than offsets organic valley’s cashton distribution center and our la farge headquarters.
on the Last Day of Kindergarten his teach, Miss Shannon, gave odin the The Gift of a Sunflower Seed.
it’s now in full bloom in our garden and it makes me realize i want more sunflowers. many more sunflowers. they make me smile.
we should be good to go since each head contains 1,000 to 2,000 seeds and it looks easy enough to dry and harvest them!
just a few photos of some of the high-oil, organic sunflowers suitable for use in the production of biodiesel. the field is owned by cropp ( organic valley ) and is near our distribution center in cashton, wisconsin.
the sunflowers are part of cropp’s sustainability program ( you can view a few of my other sunflower pictures from years past on that page ). cropp farmers who plant on the farm benefit from the high yield of oil (80–110 gallons per acre) as well as the 1200–1500 pounds of feed meal per acre as well. we even have a mobile press that can travel to a farm and produce oil from a harvest ( yes, that’s another of my sunflower shots on the side of the press. ).
feed and fuel from the same field!
i believe this field will be converted to biodiesel to provide fuel for company tractors and trucks.
i don’t really know why i haven’t uploaded more of my sunflower shots over the years, since folks seemed to enjoy the original “the sunnier side of biodiesel” photo.
so, here you go internets! maybe someday i’ll get around to uploading all the other photos.
trust me, you’ll want to view this panorama large, in the lightbox.
i’m a little less pleased with this panorama, but hey, sunflower panoramas are like pizza.
even when they’re bad, they’re good.
( pssst, lightbox edition. )
ah yes, time for another photo of one of the high-oil sunflowers that grow in and around cropp/organic valley this time of year to be pressed into biodiesel. some might recall the sunnier side of biodiesel or odin crossing over into or from another space/time in middle of a field of sunflowers. some of sunflower shots have even ended up on the side of mobile biodiesel press.
this year i decided to “go small” and caught a little bee of some sort improvising as it attempts to collect pollen. if you look closely you can see it’s resting its feet on a floret as it streches to gather The Good Stuff.
bonus points will be awarded to anyone who can tell me what kind of bee it is.