Sentinels of summer

HOFFMAN —  Scott Anderson and his son, Colin, grow a variety of crops on the 2,500 acres they farm near Douglas, Grant and Pope counties. There is one crop, though, that brings more smiles than most: the oilseed sunflowers that span a portion of the fields and are used for crop rotation.

“We get hundreds of people every year who come out to our fields to take photos amongst the sunflowers,” Scott Anderson said. “It’s been really fun to see everyone out and about and enjoying them.”

Anderson farms corn, soybeans, wheat and alfalfa on land he and his brother, Joey, own as well as some rented land. But people don’t come out by the hundreds to visit those fields, Anderson said. He and his son work together to plant, tend, harvest and eventually, haul the year’s sunflower seed yield.

“We planted 180 acres of sunflowers in our fields this year,” Anderson said. “A typical field will yield approximately 2,500 pounds of seed an acre, so we haul roughly 450,000 pounds to Fargo by semi-truckload. Colin and I will usually each haul two loads a day.”

Anderson plants the sunflowers around the same time he plants the corn and soybeans in mid-May, and as the heads ripen over the summer, the seeds get fatter.

There are two types of sunflower varieties grown for agricultural crop production: oilseed and confection. Oilseed sunflowers are grown to then be crushed into high-oleic oil, which is a high-quality oil rich in monounsaturated fats and vitamin E. It is essentially a high-quality vegetable oil, with a good commodity, Anderson said. Confection sunflower seeds are grown to be roasted and consumed.

The father-son team plants their sunflower crop at 24,000 to 26,000 seeds per acre. After 12 years of planting the crop, Anderson said he’s got it down to a science, but it has been a learning process.

“The thicker you plant the seeds, the smaller the head,” Anderson said. “We like to pack them thick so the heads on the flowers stay smaller. If the heads get too big, they don’t dry out and it makes it harder to harvest.”

After the sunflowers have ripened throughout the summer, the Andersons let them dry in the field. Once everything has dried and gone black, harvesting is a quick process. They combine using a special header attachment that harvests the heads by cutting them from the stalk three-fourths of the way from the ground. When the heads are completely dry, the seeds fall out and are then augured into the semi, Anderson said.

The harvest is usually dried out enough that the Andersons can haul it straight to the elevator in Fargo, North Dakota, where they will accept the yield at a 10% moisture level.

“We planted sunflowers the first year because we had a really wet spring and you’re able to plant them later than most crops,” Anderson said. “We found out that they do really well in our rotation on our lighter ground, where we were struggling to grow corn and soybeans … We had purchased the equipment, so we’ve just continued on since then.”

This year looks a little different than most, with a second flush of sunflowers that began blooming in September.

“It’s been kind of a crazy year for them,” Anderson said. “Mid-June, we had hail out here … The crop was probably 6 inches tall, and they just got wiped out … Then within a week, they were up again and made a comeback. It has been especially neat to see all the monarch butterflies visiting the sunflower patch as this second flush has bloomed.”

Usually by the first of October, Anderson said he is combining the sunflower fields.

“It’s timely; you have to hit them just right,” Anderson said. “A nice freeze makes harvesting the crop actually a much easier job … all the plants die off at the same time and you’re not left with any green heads. If you let them go too long, then you get blackbirds out here landing on the sunflower heads, and then all your dried seeds get knocked out and end up down in the dirt.”

As an independent seed salesman as well, Anderson stays busy throughout the year even when he is not actively farming. Anderson runs Northland Seeds, selling Channel Seed to local farmers. Winter for Anderson can be just as busy, he said. Seed storing and selling starts once the crops have been harvested. Spring comes quickly, and then he is back to getting seed delivered to his customers and planting his own fields.

Anderson grew up near Kensington with his brother, Joey, and parents, Ken and Judy. After he married, he bought a farm of his own a few miles away from the family’s homestead. When Judy moved off the farm last winter, Colin was given the opportunity to move onto the homestead. Colin now raises a small herd of beef cattle on the farm, drives trucks for a few neighboring farmers and helps his uncle, Joey, with sweet corn.

“We all have our own things, but family is important, so we work together, and it works out well for everybody,” Anderson said. “When Colin and I first started growing sunflowers, Joey was growing sweet corn … We all wanted to do something fun for the community, so we hosted the Anderson Bash in 2018.”

Sunflowers were the perfect backdrop and Peppa & Poppy’s Market provided homegrown food, Anderson said.

“We had a lot of people that enjoyed it, including us,” he said. “It was a lot of fun and a lot of work, but 2023 was our last year.”

While corn is still a more profitable crop, Anderson said the enjoyment factor has made sunflowers an asset.

“It’s just a neat crop,” Anderson said. “When we had sunflowers planted closer to Alexandria, we put out a guestbook and one year, we had signatures from all over the United States … It’s been fulfilling, people really enjoy them.”