Country
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Friday, September 18, 2020
Volume 8, Edition 12
Focusing on Today’s Rural Environment
PHOTOS BY KRISTA SMUDE OF SMUDE PHOTOGRAPHY
The Smudes’ sunflower field sits in full bloom under the setting sun at their property in Pierz.
Sunny
solution Drought sparked new enterprise for Smudes BY SARAH COLBURN | STAFF WRITER
PIERZ – Acre upon rolling acre of Tom and Jenni Smude’s land near Pierz is filled with large, vibrant yellow sunflowers. People come from all around to see the fields and take pictures, some arriving in shorts and T-shirts for a quick jaunt around the farm land while others come for full-fledged photo shoots wearing their Sunday best, and even sometimes, a wedding gown. Though the fields are lush and beautiful and teeming with healthy bees, a sunflower field was never really in the Smudes’ game plan. Today however, the couple’s business transforms 6,000 acres’ worth of sunflower seeds into 12 million pounds of seed used to craft the sunflower oil that they sell across the country under the name Smude’s Sunflower Oil. “I just wanted the byproduct, the feed – we just wanted to feed our cattle,” said Tom Smude. “I wanted to have a feedlot and feed the cattle and put up a protein source for the cattle, I never expected to set
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up grain bins.” But grain bins, he did. Lots of them. A dry year in 2007-08 as the Smudes were raising corn and soybeans, and shortly thereafter adding a feedlot for 400 steers and 60 cows, brought struggles. Instead of wallowing in their loss on a year with no harvest to speak of, the Smudes turned to research. They began looking for drought-resistant crops, and up popped sunflowers. It was a crop that could help offset the tens of thousands they were spending on feed so they dug in – literally. The first year they planted 30 acres, and in 2009 began building a crushing plant, which crushes the seed into oil. The plant came online in January of 2010. Tom connected with a guy who sold oil presses and who guided him on what to look for in a good seed.
This month in the
Tom Smude shows off a bottle of cold-pressed Virgin Sunflower Oil straight from the bottling machine in Pierz.
Sunflowers page 2
COUNTRY
4 Family farm is still here Diane Leukam Column 7 Farewell, brother Freeport 10 Thinning the herd 11 From hunters to ranchers Little Falls
15 A diet for healthy soil New Munich 18 Racing for home: West Union 23 On rural road Herman Lensing 24 Country Cooking
26 Plant bulbs Robin Truat 27 Moonlight vineyard Melrose 29 Thurks feature Cockshutt collection Villard