Sunflower Harvest nearly complete

The harvesting of our Sunflowers is nearly complete. We achieved excellent yields this year under conditions which were almost ideal for Sunflowers.

These pictures show the development of the sunflowers on various farms at Sandstone Estates. This year we had an outstanding crop with some flowers really defying the norm.

Our picture gallery below refers.

These sunflowers start to hang their heads.  The seeds are fully formed and they are starting their drying out process.

Lefu, one of our 20-year veterans at Sandstone Estates, 
has done this job many times before

These pictures show the harvesting programme.
The plants look very different when they have dried out.

Because these sunflower spikes are so sharp they damage the wheels of the agricultural machinery so we have a special rig called a stubble cruncher that flattens them, as you can see in the foreground.  This enables the machines like the offset disc harrows to come in and work without damaging the tractors.