Sorry - no "little machines out there" for shelling sunflowers that I know of. Vegetarian sustainability isn't always easy - lol!!

That said, are you vegetarians now? If so, have you read up on what you need to grow/eat to keep yourselves healthy in that kind of lifestyle? The combinations you need to consume complete proteins? Because quite frankly, sunflower seed isn't going to really be "protein versatility" in a way that's going to be ultimately healthy for you.

Also, have you seriously researched what is hardy for you in Zone 4? Especially with reference to winter gardening? I only ask because Apricots are normally considered hardy in Zones 5 thru 8, & wonder why you would consider growing them rather than something that might be more successful - especially for a starter garden. Trying an Apricot might be fun as an "experiment", but if I were you with your plans, I'd be growing fruits & vegetables that I'm pretty much assured of getting a crop from.

Also - crops like "winter wheat or rye" in your area are considered cover crops that are grown to prevent weeds & provide "green manure" for turnover in the spring. You won't get a wheat crop from it.

Not trying to burst your bubble - just trying to provide some food for thought.

Let me correct myself - there are some Apricot varieties that are supposed to be hardy in Zone 4 - so if you like 'em, by all means try them. My mistake.

Our experience has been that sunflowers won't reseed, probably because the birds will happily harvest any leftovers all winter. The seeds are bound quite tightly to the heads, so they don't all fall out on the ground if you don't get them harvested right away. We grew a lot of oilseed sunflowers last year as an experiment and it was a pain to hand-thresh them (get the seeds off the heads), never mind to shell them!

Katey

chickens are the best way I know of to process sunflower seeds. They turn them into wonderful, healthy eggs. I do seem to get quite a few volunteer sunflowers each year but I don't consider them pests.

David

Can you grow soybeans in your climate? I would think that would be more efficient than growing wheat... easier to harvest and process too. Wheat is so cheap, I think I'd rather buy it. You can always grind it yourself if you want to get the feeling of doing it yourself. Buy it in big bags.

I would grow lots of fruit, as that is what is most expensive in stores... lots of fruit trees (do some research about best varieties in your area), and lots of bush fruits like blueberries, raspberries, blackberries ect... They taste so good, are easy to grow, and are so much cheaper at home. I about die every time I see the price of berries at the store! Of course, apples are good, and cherries (think cost again!). I love plums and pears as well. I've been planting several of each on my property. Also nut trees (like your Butternut)... what kinds can you grow? I've planted hazelnuts so far, but I want more kinds.

And in your garden, you might want to try some Heirloom varieties that are open pollination so you can save the seeds year to year. Also, try varieties you won't find in the store. There are some fun things out there. I buy my seeds from Territorial Seeds. You might check out their site even though they are not for your location. They offer a lot of variety, and are good about offering lots of open pollinated varieties and not just sterile hybrids. They also cater to our area, so we know almost everything in the catalog will grow here. Maybe you have a similar company in your area? I'd look around because a good garden starts with good seeds.

If you eat eggs, chickens are a wonderful blessing to have around. Not only do they provide eggs, but they also help weed and eat lots of insects. They are also fun to watch. And they cost little to keep if you let them free range and feed themselves most of the time (you still have to feed them high quality feed... just not as much!).

Cold frames or a green house will extend your growing season, or allow you to grow some things you wouldn't normally be able to.

I'm not a veggitarian, but I think these are some good suggestions...

Oh, and see if there are any native plants that are edible around your home, or that you can introduce.

At my place, we have wild growing blackberries, salmonberries, huckleberries (the red kind, not the blue), and fiddle heads to name a few that we actually eat now and then. There are other things around that I know of, but these are the only ones we have actually eaten. I know a lot of folks here gather mushrooms ( I would too, if I thought I could tell them apart!). I have Bass in my pond, and Salmon spawn in the river every year (since I do eat meat... although some veggitarians eat fish). There are some places with wild strawberries and blueberries also... and oregon grapes, sumac, thimbleberries... I swear we live in wild berry land. On the coast it would be almost impossible to starve (if not for the Red tide in many spots) since there are clams, muscles, crabs, and many kinds of edible seaweed...Just along the shoreline.

So check out your natural enviroment as well.

And if you are able to (if you eat honey) you might want to eat honey. If you think that is wrong, you might put up mason bee houses, as they will help pollinate, without making any honey (since they are not really bees). They are also native in most places in North America...unlike honey bees.

wow, thank you everybody for all the thoughtfull responses. We are vegetarian and I have three varieties of beans I'm going to grow. I just get tired of beans all the time. I am planning on getting a few butternut trees. They are z4 hardy and seem to be the only nut trees that will grow up here that are appetizing to me. We have chickens, with more eggs than we can handle. I want to have a bee farm, but we have to round up supplies for a solar electric fence (to fend off the bears) before we get started. We have a greenhouse but we need a larger one for the amount of gardening I want to do up here. There are wild raspberries up here so I want to collect some seeds to grow a variety that will absolutely thrive. I save all my garden seeds, Especially after a dry year. I like to think that I'm developing varieties that are suitable to our environment. It is such a pain gardening up here. It is snowing right now. It could even snow in June. Sometimes I wish we would have moved to the lush green south, but it's too crowded and biased for us. We have so many plans and not enough time with two small children and not enough folks willing to move out of the city to live a life without all their junk.

So I'm thinking that attracting birds to my garden might not be such a good idea. And shelling all of those sunflower seeds hurts my hands to think about. So I guess we'll stick to earthy beans and stinky eggs
It's a bummer about the wheat tho' I always wondered if we could harvest the grass seeds oout here and grind them into flour. I bought indian rice grass to grow but I think you cook those like rice.

I doubt you can grow peanuts there. They are planted in April or May and harvested in September or October in Alabama.
Don't know why you couldn't grind the grass or Indian rice seed into flour.

YOu don'tneed to grow raspberries from seed. Just take a division of a wild plant (cut the root ball in half with your shovel; leave half and take half). They spread, so in a few years you can divide your own.

What is your land like? Soil type? Slope? Sun exposure?
YOu ought to be able to do some grain on a family scale. Oats, for example, are quite hardy. So is barley. Find a copy of Gene Logsdon's "Small Scale Grain Raising" (way out of print, but maybe a library could get it for you. He does an amazing amount with hand tools and grows several years' supply in one year.

Katey

Are you vegetarian in a way that allows eggs? If so, I definitely second (or third) the suggestion of chickens. I raised mine completely for eggs. Although I do eat chicken, I draw the line at eating anything I've looked in the eye & given a name to - lol!! Once my older birds stopped laying - around the age of 8 years, believe it or not, I still kept them on as "pensioners" - they deserved it - lol.

Home-raised eggs are THE BEST!!! You'll find it hard to EVER go back to supermarket eggs.

Not to mention that my chickens took care of all the kitchen scraps, & several very tame heavyweights (which can't fly) got to accompany me to the garden while I worked. They loved following me around while I weeded - eating weed seedlings & any bugs I'd scare up. Of course, since I'm an organic gardener I didn't have to worry about them eating any chemicals that might harm them.

And chickens make great entertainment. I had a lovely cedar-shingled coop & covered wire run in NY surrounded by beds of herbs.

I put out 2 chairs & a small round table nearby. Have to tell you that after a long day working in Manhattan, it was damn nice to come home, pour myself a drink or glass of wine & sit outside watching my chickens enjoy being chickens. Very relaxing.

So glad to know that I can just dig up (half) a raspberrie plant. That sounds easy to me. We have really great soil for living in the rocky mountains. We have beautiful mountain prairie (I hate to dig it up, so any of my leftover soil goes to the compost heap or in a planter) with a slight eastern slope. Nothing drastic, tables just aren't that level. Our soil doesn't have very much nitrogen, but it's very loamy.
I don't really want to grow oats to harvest. It seems like too much work, but maybe I'm just misinformed. I will definately check out that book though!

There are varieties of hull-less oats that involve a lot less processing. Penuda is the name of one such variety, I think. Try Fedco's website.

Katey

Subshinelovegirl,
You are on the way to sustainability. As long as we live close to the society I think we will never get to a complete sustainability. Maybe we do not need to. And sometimes do not want to.
Our bodies require basically protein, carbo, and fat. So if you choose to eat much vegies, you still need to maintain those three things to your body. Soybean and its products (tofu) will insure the protein you might need. You can grow soybean if your weather permits. But you can always buy dry sb in bag of 60 LBS. Where I live it costs around $26 for that size of sb. It lasts 4 months in my case. Rice, wheat, bread will help for your carbo. I think you are doing fine. You'll live longer with this (vegie) diet and have more control on body weight. :)
Cheers.

The actual shelling of the sunflower seed is by no means easy but getting the seed off the head is no big whoop. I hang cut heads, allow time for them to dry out, then simply scrap the heads across welded wire like rabbit cages are made of. The seeds simply fall through and if you have an old sheet under the screen its easy to collect.
I use old welded wire this way for seed scraping and another to screen compost through.
Mike

And again - if you practice a vegetarian diet that allows eggs - do think about chickens. They're relatively easy/cheap to keep, provide good material for garden compost, & quite frankly, are just darn fun to have around. I had a little table & a couple of chairs set up next to my coop, that I had lanscaped nicely with herbs & flowers. After a long hard day it sure was nice to sit out there with glass of wine & just watch the chickens enjoying being chickens.

I would recommend a cold frame for winter gardening, spinach etc. Easy to build from old windows.
I also read how this indian tribe hulled the sunflowers. I will be trying it this year. First they hung a piece of material from the 4 corners by 4 sticks, like a tent. Then they layed the sunflower heads face down on that piece of material. the sun dried the backs causing the seeds to fall out. And when the sun heated them enough many seeds came out of their shells. The book goes into detail that they obtained more oil from the later smaller seeds than the first harvested batches.And with that information they would use the seeds differently.
I think sunflowers are a great addition to your sustainance garden. Think "Protien" when deciding what to grow. Some bean varieties are loaded with protien. And mix them together gives an added complimentary protien fix.
Good luck
Marie

You may want to read my posts on zero input gardening in the permaculture and organic forums.

I read about a way to process dried beans that involved a clean garbage can (maybe putting them in and stepping on them? Beating them agains the inside of the can?

Well anyway--perhaps that would work with the sunflower heads. I'm growing crop of them to feed my chickens. I'll just store the dried heads in garbage cans in the barn.

I've heard amaranth is easy to grow and pretty to look at. Easy to harvest too.

I'd make every vertical surface available for things to grow up. Add some perennials each year like asparagus and the butternut trees you have now.

I may be way off, but can't you dry grape seeds and don't they have some protein in them?

Soybeans are good to rotate with other crops to add nitrogen to your soil. You may want to use those eggshells in your garden to keep snails away from seedlings and later to become good nutrients for your soil.

Did someone talk about goats for cheese. If you could tie them up some a fallow garden (i.e. switch active and non active sides of your garden) they would eat what's left and fertilize the soil for next season. Although their manure is not not manure like chicken. You would have to sell the males since you don't eat them, but there is a market for them. You could make cheese (some are very simple) for protein.

We have pecan and walnut trees and they are very hard to process.

I always suggest looking at the Path to Freedom website to get ideas about overall sustainability. It can be done.

http://www.pathtofreedom.com/pathproject/index.shtml

I guess "hard to process" is in the eye of the beholder. We have walnut trees for all our nut supply and they're not so bad at all once you get used to it. I'd like to try hickory nuts; they grow wild in a lot of Indiana. Wheat is very nice to have but I'd think very difficult on a small scale. If there are farms nearby and you notice the combines moving in (watch for the wheat to turn golden), take a gallon jar and beg to hold it under the chute. Offer a couple of bucks (which will probably be pooh-poohed) and you'll have a bargain for sure. Cooked wheatberries are a nice addition to cereal and yogurts, and they grind nicely too. These will already be dry enough to store and a gallon will last a pretty long time.

I'd like to make a slight correction. Someone wrote that hybrids are sterile. They are not sterile. They will produce seed, but the seed will produce plants that are not likely to be like the parents...Ann

Wow the link posted by mid tn mama shows just what a determined person can do...If you didn't or haven't checked it out, I think you will find it interesting..

Here is a link that might be useful: Pathtofreedom

You can also just take cuttings from a raspberry plant and stick them in soil and they should root...do it in the fall and by spring you will have nice roots and a new plant.

Wheat is grown in Montana, so why not Colorado? I used to live in Oklahoma and the big farmers there would take their combines down to Texas and follow the harvest North, ending in Casper Wyoming for the big rodeo in July, I believe. Not sure if it was winter or spring wheat, but you could find out by talking to the Wheat Montana folks. They grow, direct market whole grains, as well as flour, and bakery goods.

My thoughts concerning this post, is about sustainable agriculture without the use of chemicals or animal dung, unless that isn't a problem. I would highly recommend the book, "Joy of Gardening", by Dick Raymond. He calls it, "My never fertilize-Eternal yield." He says he tested it for 10 years. The idea is several small gardens that you can rotate crops on. He lays out the whole plan...and it is mostly green manuring, but with a twist. He plants one whole garden to green beans...broadcast solid...he lets them make one huge picking and then tills them down for green manure. He was gardening in Connecticut...not sure how that zone compares to yours. Anyway, lots of good information in it.

What is the maximum length of your gardening season?..it would help folks come up with ideas.

I would research all the permanent plantings I could think of such as asparagus, Rhubarb, plums, etc. so you will have something coming in every year leaving more time for annual crops.

I agree with the book by Dick Raymond. Saw in library and bought thru used books at Barnes and Noble. Forget peanuts absolutely; your growing season is too short. We have blackberries here and they are fantastic. Look into the hardiest varieties; we have triple crown (outstanding berry machines) and chesters. Both are thornless. Raspberries would be a good idea too. Once again go for the hardiest types. Definitely look into homemade cold frame. Survivalforum forum under gardening haas lots of info - especially look into heading about hulless oats. Your zone would involve short season, cold tolerant grains; rye? Some of the amnaranths can take some cold and have shorter seasons; Greek brand of amaranth has growing period of 55-70 days, available in Seeds of Change. All the others too long growing per. Altitude important, too. Fall gardening is my favorite; beets, swiss chard, greens, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage (have the easiest sauerkraut recipe in the world). Can you grow potatoes there? Good keepers along with carrots and corn, especially dried corn. Good luck to you and keep us posted on successes, OK?

I would think hard about growing potatoes. They're pretty easy and they'll be a break from beans. ;)

I don't have a homestead yet, so I grow them in barrels. As long as they get some water they're fine, and they look okay in the front yard - people don't see "a vegetable" they see a "white flower."

Rutabagas are love it/hate it veggie. I like them but many can't stand them. If you agree with me and not them, rutabaga seed is REALLY cheap.

Daylilies are an easy-to-grow edible flower that's perennial. I usually am too lazy to cook 'em, and just eat the day-old crumbly flowers while I'm out in the yard, but you can also stir-fry them, they're a traditional Chinese food.

I highly reccomend finding several good gardening books. There is so much to learn and this 'common sense' will allow you to understand everything so much better. I have never found one book that'd do, I have a shelf full.
Expect big setbacks- and always plant lots of extra. It takes time to get the hang of it, don't starve while you're learning! And extras are great gifts for neighbours, it's good to be on speaking terms with them- they'll look out for you.
Good idea on the electric bear fencing. I use "electric poultry mesh, 165' lengths. Expensive but ideal so far.
Enjoy yourself, it's a idealistic yet achievable lifestyle, it just takes determination.

I would forget apricots as they are the first fruit tree to bloom in the spring and will frost. In fact most all of the fruit and nut trees will frost unless you take precautions. Fruit trees need to be sprayed, but if you are isolated from other fruit trees there are ways to get around spraying. but it is not cheap. You might try Surefire pie cherries which are very late blooming. Email me for other suggestions.
I also would try grain amaranth and quinoa and corn and winter squash. I liked the potato idea greatly.
You need to make a root cellar and a small, cheap, pitset greenhouse using recycled windows and such. You won't be able to use it all winter, but you can get, in effect, a longer growing season.
When our German forebearers came to this land the first thing they did was plant cabbage. hence the perjorative term, "Kraut". Well, they knew what they were doing.

I myself am a vegetarian, a few thoughts concerning the health end.

I have heard from some sources that unfermented soybeans can block nutrient uptake in humans. I don't know the truth, but there are enough people saying it to give it some thought Also soybeans require alot more cooking then other beans and don't have alot of taste.

You might consider lentils, which require no presoaking when dried for long term storage. Are tasty and nutritous. Just grow some grains as well for balanced protien.

Cooked potatoes are higher glycymic foods, unless eaten with some fat and protien.(you can eat them raw, not very tasty though) So mix potatoes with other foods and not by themselves. They are also very easy to grow large quantities of. Might consider sweet potatoes/yams which I believe are more nutritious.(not that regular white potatoes aren't)

Collard greens are a good source of calcium I hear, if you don't have a cow to produce milk. I myself love the slightly buttery taste of romain lettuce, which is also a decent source of calcuim.

Oh, you might also try sprouting your seed crops (like lentils etc) to maximize nutritional uptake. Even nut crops can be sprouted for increased nutrients.

Garlic is a excellent item to grow, very nutritious, adds lots of flavor to food, and helps keep out pests in your garden.

Dandelions are also said to be very nutritious and obviously easy to grow. All parts are edible, roots leaves and flowers and have different uses. If you get them young, before the flowers have budded they will be less bitter. The younger they are harvested, the less bitter the leaf. Those sold in market tend to be long in the tooth.

http://www.gardensablaze.com/HerbDandelion.htm
Also, another website mentioned it has the propensity to bring up nutrients deep below ground to help revitalize poor soil.

I'm starting to wonder what yield we'll get from our 60 row feet of sunchokes. They seem to have established themselves, although I don't know how well they'll overwinter. This is our first year growing them. They're a relative of sunflowers, have a low glycemic index, and are moderately invasive. They're a bit harder to clean and peel (if you peel) than potatoes, but have similar uses, are more or less trouble free and perennial in many places. We put ours where, if push comes to shove, we can fence in a pig to clean them out.

Dan

Well one webpage for dandelions mentioned growing them in containment (pots etc)

You could build a barrier around them and a little into the soil to prevent their expansion. According to one site, they are not so much invasive as hard to get ride of in a particular spot after they establish themselves because any piece of the root can turn into a whole plant.

Well its the first I've heard of sunchokes, they sound like a intriguing food. Please let us know how it goes and how it tastes.

for zone 4 gardening you should have no problem getting sunflower and spring wheat to grow. winter wheat may make also. Grains are a total waste of time in my opinion since they can be purchased quite cheaply and are seldom sprayed with chemicals to produce. some is treated with insecticides for storage. Corn and soy are 2 exceptions and are routinely sprayed in fields for both insect and weeds. When deciding what to grow i think herbs for tea medicinal and culinary use should rank quite high as they are easily grown and quite costly to purchase. fruit, berry and nuts next then vegetable. grain just about last. Peanuts will need at least 160 frost free days apricot will not withstand late frosts as they bloom extremely early. apricot seldom make here in zone 6 ks due to late cold snaps. peas a quite nutrituous and like cool wet springs which i suspect you get. for some ideas on the sunflowers a wire brush in a drill will knock seeds off pods. Some experimenters have tried gluing a piece of in innertube rubber on the face of a metal corona mill and setting loose to shred the hulls i have never tried it. most combiners do not hull only remove the whole thing and complain the sunflower is full of sap that gums up the combine. I hope you do well and would love to see much more idea exhange and development done on small scale processing of the food crops such as pressing sessame sunflower soy or peanut or even corn oils shelling peanuts. much cheaper and homemade flour milling, livestock feed mixing grinding etc.