I'm outside of Anderson, South Carolina speaking
with Danielle Roberts who is the proprietor or Sol
farms and boy what a field of sunflowers, we have. Thank
you. Thank you. We have about five acres right
here. This started out in the backyard in town, I think.
It did. Tell us a little about your story. Well we just
had a little family, backyard garden and we
grew lots of the things tomatoes and cucumbers.
But we also always wound up with a nice big long
row of sunflowers, just for the fun of it. And it
just sort of was maybe the beginning of
something much larger. Well originally I think
your daughters used that as a way to help
fund going to college and things like that. Tell
us how they started getting these flowers to
the market. Okay well they did.
We built them a little garden of their own and
we helped them learn to grow the sunflowers and
they would harvest them and take them to our
local farmers market. And they got a little pocket
change had a little money to take with
them to college and learned you know a valuable
lesson in hard work and it turned into something
that we all loved. But those girls have gone on to
careers. And you had an interest in local
organizations that were supporting families and
children issues and I believe your husband was
on a foundation that you thought maybe you could
help support. That's right. We've always been
very involved in the community. And we love
where we live. So we wanted to do something to
sort of give back. You know, we like it here. We raised
our children here and it was just a thought that
maybe we could do something on a larger
scale to return a little bit of that back to our
community. And you're right my husband does sit
on the board of the Foothills Community
Foundation and it was a great place for us to
put the money so that it can go out into this
community and do the most good for the most number
of people. And that supports three counties I
believe. That's right. Anderson, Oconee and
Pickens County. And the goal of Community
Foundations is to encourage people to
support local charities that where you can really
see where the effect is going to be made. That's
right. Well how do you market these flowers or
take donations for them? Okay, well we have a
Facebook page, Sol flowers of Anderson and we did
most of the marketing just through Facebook.
We don't do a lot of advertising very little
advertising of any other kind. But the Facebook page
opened us up to all kinds of publicity so not only
were we reaching a number of people with our
Facebook page we are also gaining some interest
from newspapers and news
stations who would come out here and do things and
and it really helped the word spread and again you
know just with very little paid advertising.
I believe two weekends of the year people are
invited to come out here. That's right. We plant the
seed late in April because we know that's how long
it will take them to come in right
around the fourth of July, which is the week we like
to have the event out here. We have people come
out on the weekend before and the weekend after.
They're invited to come out, take pictures, stroll
through the fields and just enjoy all these
gorgeous sunflowers. And you have people helping
you cut the flowers and a station there ready for
people to trade for a donation to the
foundation. That's right. We'll cut the flowers and
bring them up out of the field. And then they'll be
cleaned up real nice and bundled up and prepared
for people to take them home. How much should
you have been able to get to the Foundation.
Well, to date and we don't know what this year's proceeds
are yet. But in the prior three years that we've
done this we've raised over 30 thousand
dollars. And this is because people allow you
to use the land at no cost Someone helps you
with the equipment, planting. That's right, we
have a family that allows us to come out here in
use their land. And we have some great farmers that come
out and help us with the planting and with their
equipment and get the field looking real nice
for us. Now this is not a forest type sunflower.
There are some advantages to that for you. That's
right, Amanda. These are production sunflowers.
And by production I mean these are used typically
for sunflower oil. But the advantage to me is
that they are less expensive and they're
great pollinators. The pollinators out here are
just phenomenal. It's so exciting to see them. You see
butterflies and all kinds of bees and different
things on them. And then of course, one the things
is that most people think sunflowers follow the sun,
but because this is such a big strong sunflower
tell me how it acts. Well, early on, you may see a
little, a little bit of wavering. Yeah
while the plants are young and tender, but as they
get more and more established, this
particular variety is gonna all face to the east.
And that's because they have such a great
big flower head full of seeds, they really have to have
a strong stem to support that. That's right. What do
you do about...? I don't see irrigation. What do
you do about water? We just, we depend on rain.
Luckily we've had some great rain this year.
We had a nice amount of rain
right after we planted and then a few more smaller rains to
come through. The rain has everything to do with
the height. The flowers look good no matter how
much water they get. But if we can get some
good rain, we can get some nice height. I think people
like to come out and take photographs too. Don't they?
We have lots of people that come out the family photographs.
Moms bring their iPhones.
We have professionals that come out and do
professional photography out here. So we see a lot
of that. Danielle if people want to know more about you and
what your family's doing out here what's the
best way to get that information? You can go to our
Facebook page: Solflowers of Anderson, South Carolina
and that's S.O.L.
flowers. Also you could go
to the foundation's website, which is
FoothillsCommunityFoundation.org
Thank you for what your family's doing
to support good causes in Anderson, Oconee and
Pickens County and thank you for sharing your
story with us today. You're welcome. Thanks for
coming out today.