Sunflowers: A Plant That Brings Joy To Many Species

A Petal Pondering

One plant that you can find in my garden in large quantities every year is the ever-gorgeous sunflower. Not only does its appearance bring me a lot of visual joy, but every critter on the farm over the years has benefited from my fondness for cultivating the flower. With an ice storm of impending doom upon us and a trying day behind me of cultivating the minds of both young and old alike; I thought I would reflect on some of my favorite sunflower-tinged moments.

Goats

We might have been known to wander around the farm with sunflower seeds in our pockets. This wasn't a snack for us, rather our goat herd benefited from our full pockets of seed. During the winter I would take sunflower seed heads out of our cellar and give them to the milk does, it did wonders for their coats and their milk production.

Cornish Cross Broilers, AKA: The Piranhas

For quite a few years we raised pastured poultry in chicken tractors. As anyone who raised these birds knows, they are absolute eating machines. One time I left my grandfather in charge of a batch for a weekend. He fed twenty-five birds 110lbs of food in forty-eight hours. "They acted hungry." was his reply when I asked him where the food had gone. I fed the piranhas a lot of sunflower seeds.

Rabbits and Turkeys

These lucky fellows always get a little bit of seeds on top of their daily ration, spoiled our animals are!

And finally, just a few pictures of sunflowers that I have grown over the years, because spring is coming!

And as always, all of the images in this post were taken by the author on her broken and decrepit old digital camera or her sunflower-chaff covered iPhone.

Written with StackEdit.