new tonight you ever drive by something
and you wonder that's kind of cool but
what is the deal with that what is it
why is it there well I was on my way out
to West Texas and then Mexico when I saw
a whole bunch of these turns out I
wasn't the only one stopping to take a
closer look as I'm driving up I saw the
yellow and you know inquiring minds want
to know what what's the yellow and
sunflowers oh how glorious a few weeks
ago these fields full of sunflowers in
bloom just west of San Antonio were an
awesome photo-op to south of Highway 90
near Castroville there are five hundred
acres of these sunflowers are the
happiest flower in the world but I had
to drive on before I could find out who
was growing these or just what happens
to them so this week I went back but
they look look real pretty but if you
take him home and put him in a vase they
make a big mess they're not they're not
a rose
I talked with Alan's inspire as right
now he's harvesting the sunflower crop
he planted back in February his family's
been farming here for more than a
hundred years mostly corn and cotton and
he knows what can hide in these beauties
those head moths there are certain kinds
of worms in them sometimes they're stink
bugs some beetles and sometimes ants I
mean they're safer idea bugs that so
they're photogenic yeah I take pictures
but cutting them down is probably not
always in your best interest about ten
years ago since Meyer started putting
some of the acres they usually plant in
corn or cotton into what's called
confection sunflowers that means the
kind you can eat the seeds of directly
that's different than the oil sunflowers
they have smaller seeds that are either
processed into oil or meal or birdseed
confection sunflower and what this
machine will do it'll cut the head off
and then it'll Thresh it and it'll put
just the seeds just the seeds in the
grain in the grain tank both sunflowers
are actually grown in the Upper Midwest
in the Dakotas with dry weather and
drought here means you may see more and
more of this cousin of the why
well we had picked them when we were
little kids I got to pull them and pull
the weeds out of the fields you know and
the weeds were all sunflowers so we
weren't really too happy about it but we
were in a situation we started planting
them to where none of the you know had
been a long drought none of the other
crops were yielding enough to you know
return on investment was close to zero
so we started playing sunflowers the
inputs were low in the they take quite a
bit less water so on a year when there's
limited amount of irrigation or limited
amount of rainfall sunflowers is a
pretty fair crop for us this year they
did have to irrigate before they planted
but then the rain we had helped and
they're doing pretty well they can now
plant another crop of something in this
same field this year maybe corn or more
sunflowers but they don't usually plant
sunflowers two years in a row so if you
see them get your pictures quick it does
make me happy absolutely just it looks
like the Sun look at it glorious thank
you glorious and this is a dried
sunflower and it sounds like a so these
are just packed without again these are
all c0c
raised right here they're mmm they're
not hold yet like you can get them you
can buy them either way it's not roasted
or salted either like they're bees or
what they end up with they sell them as
kernels this is company Sun Optive eight
they actually the closest processing
plants in Kansas City they sell on to
Minnesota
they'll go up to Minnesota in on a truck
we tried these earlier and they're very
good yeah yeah they're you want to get
rid of the husk maybe but it's they're
still pretty good
yeah very good that's so neat I don't
think many people have seen where the
seeds look like in the in the flower I
didn't either
yeah good stuff I see that on highway 90
all the time and it's just you're gonna
get to a lifetime though you know I know
now I know more than I knew a couple of
weeks ago when I saw that stuff out
there that's great hey we've got
ourselves a pretty good forecast for the
first half of the weekend