I ran over to on this glorious August Morning to meet some folks in Pena Blanca along with my brother Tom.
They have a plan to put much of the land there into production of Sun Flowers.
Eventually, they would like to see an oil press situated in this village on the Rio Grande below the Jemez Mountains. Certainly, there can be no more beautiful crop with the landscape as a back ground. Pena Blanca residents are planning a Sunflower Festival on August 25th and 26th.
This barn behind the tractor has an interesting story. It is constructed with large beams stacked like bricks. The beams were washed down the Rio Grande decades ago after a severe flood destroyed the bridge they supported. The salvaged wood has been standing as this barn since I was a child.
3 comments:
Alright! Running a few warmup laps with the camera. I'd say you're ready.
Coincidentally, Russia is largely responsible for the sunfowers grown nowadays. It's been a major crop there for a long time, after the Orthodox Church outlawed other kinds of oils. The Czar brought home the first seeds from a trip.
I didn't know any of this, but I remember seeing big fields of sunflowers in France so I looked it up and came across an interesting albeit rather scholarly article.
As it happens it spread to France from Spain.
As it also happens the earliest known instance of sunflowers being cultivated was in 3,000 BC by Hopi Indians. They found evidence for that in northern Arizona but I'd guess they grew them here, too.
This is a Google link to a pdf file of the article:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CGwQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fuqu.edu.sa%2Ffiles2%2Ftiny_mce%2Fplugins%2Ffilemanager%2Ffiles%2F4281709%2F84607_29.pdf&ei=SwweUPbLFci9ywGTx4GYAw&usg=AFQjCNF_Z4iTUevhUT1Lzs4b9uMouTXTUQ&sig2=c17NkaDRrYdE15TA0CwyBw
I love this post, photos, and backstory. Thank you Jim.
Also, Hello Frank!
Nice pictures.
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