in this video i'm going to harvest a mammoth sunflower that grew with a stalk about eight
feet tall when they're that big there's lots of material in the stock i'll harvest the center of
the stock make flour explain the other uses of it make char stock for fire starting and show you how
to make a fantastic sunflower stock and oat flour cookie that's healthy for you gluten-free probably
the healthiest cookie you'll ever eat i'll also try and bake bread with it i wasn't able to find
anyone who has ever processed the sunflower in this way for these specific purposes so this will
be a first that we will have to see together how well it works let's get into it please consider
subscribing to our newsletter by clicking on the link in the description and comment section below
if you enjoyed this video please subscribe and click the like button to help the channel grow
if you could grow just one plant as a prepper it should without a doubt be sunflowers
they grow fast and strong they've been used to pull radiological waste out of the environment
after chernobyl and fukushima the large stalks can be used to build structures like tepees
the stalks are very fibrous so you can use them as kindling when dried you can pound the strands of
fibers out and make paper or even rope sunflower seeds and flour are gluten free it's also grain
free nut free paleo and keto friendly making it an excellent choice for almost any dietary lifestyle
sunflower seeds are rich in healthy fats vitamins and minerals just a quarter cup
of them has 14 grams of fat 5.5 grams of protein 6.5 grams carbs not only are the easy to grow and
beautiful additions to your landscape but every single bit of the plant is also usable and edible
from the petals to the seeds the stock and even down to the root i'll repeat that
every bit of the plant is edible harvesting of the dozen or so mammoth sunflower seeds
that i planted i was able to grow just one massive sunflower i let the birds eat the
seeds i tend to do that if i'm not going to process the seeds give them a little easy food
every bit of the sunflower is edible the seeds roots stalk leaves and petals every bit of it
for this sunflower i am mainly interested in stock inside the flower stalk just like
artichokes or any other large flower is a fibrous material that is mainly fiber super absorptive
and with multiple uses you can use the dried stock center for insulation in structures or clothes
molding containers for putting around plant roots to absorb water for starting a fire or as i will
do here for making sunflower flower and char stock for lighting fires to harvest it i simply sawed it
down cut it into two foot pieces i could work with then i split it and used a spoon to remove the
spongy center my eight foot or so stalk yielded a large bowl full of sunflower stock center the
easiest way i found to extract the pith was with a simple spoon but anything you could scrape the
stock against would work for this process don't waste the outer stock though these i just cut
down into smaller pieces and i'll let them dry out completely they're fibrous and burn hot and fast
they make some of the best kindling you'll ever find it's the center part of primarily pith and a
little xylem that we will use to make our products but i will emphasize again that the entire
plant is completely edible the whole purpose of this part of the plant is to transport water and
nutrients up to plant stock the outer shell provides the rigidity to keep the plant erect
as such it's great at absorbing liquids drying it out i dried mine on the lowest setting of my oven
175 degrees after giving it a quick rinse i simply spread it on parchment paper lined cookie sheet
and put it in the oven if you take it out too early or dry too slow the moisture will cause some
of it to oxidize and brown a little like a banana it's all still perfectly edible and i believe this
deepens the sunflower flavors which are minimal in the pith to begin with when it's completely dry it
will take on a styrofoam texture and feel you can use sunflower pith as a natural insulation if you
keep it dry i placed mine in the oven and dried it completely for almost a full day at 175 degrees
since i was making flour out of it i wanted it to be bone dry but you can use it after just general
dehydration and when it takes on a consistency of styrofoam milling to flour once it is completely
dry it is easy to grind down to flour you could probably break it apart roughly with just your
hands you could definitely mill it down by rubbing it between two rocks or in a mortar and pestle
i use my vitamix blender to easily mill it down to almost a pastry flour lightness
of all the grains i've ever milled down in this manner this sunflower pith was clearly the easiest
it became a fine dusty powder in a very short time i was impressed by the overall yield it was
more than i expected char stock and activated carbon because this dried pith was so fibrous
i had a hunch it would make good char cloth or in this case char stock you may have heard of
charcloth the production of char cloth occurs when organic cellulose-based fibers undergo
pyrolysis char cloth is a form of biomass termed biochar char cloth is a result of incomplete
combustion as oxygen is a limiting region in the reaction due to the limited oxygen let into the
tin during the production process it is typically made from cut up pieces of all cotton t-shirts
what char cloth or stock means to us is that it will easily take a spark burn slow and hot and
allow you to add other materials to get a raging fire if you have ever just used the flint and
steel method you know that the drier the tinder the better to make charts stock i used a metal
tin that i poked a hole in the top of you want to vent off the gases of the material inside
and the hole will let you know when the char cloth or in this case stock is done
when the smoke is stopped and the flammable gases are no longer producing the flame on
top your char cloth is done i put the container in my gas fireplace and hit it with a low flame
after a while it was smoking really well there was even a small wick like flame coming through the
hole i finished it with a strong flame until all the smoke and flames out the hole had completely
stopped when you remove the contents you have to be very careful it's extremely fragile
it's a microscopic matrix of carbon atoms that will take and cuddle whatever spark you give it
store it in its own ziploc baggie and put that in a hard container or the tin you just used
it took the spark with relative ease but it was harder to tell that it was lit than it is
when using char cloth i think that char kloss flatness and the woven matrix are better for
this purpose but the char stock will work keep it dry and moisture free and you'll be able to
start a fire in all kinds of conditions it's also excellent activated charcoal in this state
as such it is a highly porous substance that attracts and holds organic chemicals inside it
it will attract and absorb volatile organic compounds like benzene tolein xylene chlorine and
some oils absorb is when two materials chemically combine adsorb is when one material sticks to the
surface of another in this case volatile organic compounds stick to the surface of the char
stock activated charcoal so they adsorb you can use the sunflower stock activated charcoal as a
critical layer in your water filtration system with both the char stock fire starting and the
water filtration capabilities this is a great addition to your prepping supplies as one of the
lightest substances eight times lighter than cork you can tuck away quite a bit in your prepping
supplies and not feel the weight of it using the sunflower flour for cookies and bread there is
almost nothing written at all about using the pith as a flower for baking so i'm completely
in new territory here i will also let you know as you will see here i'm not much of a baker still
the cookies i made came out quite tasty and held their form well enough i found that the sunflower
flour didn't really take to yeast there aren't enough starches and sugars in there for yeast
to really have a go at it but i tried to make a loaf of basic bread with it as well for this
first baking experiment i wanted to try sunflower and oat cookies to stay as true to the original
ingredients as possible my sunflower easily yielded about four cups or more of superfine flour
so i decided to use three quarters cup of it to make a simple sunflower butter cookie i will tell
you now i'm not a baker but i was surprised at how good these were here's the recipe you will
need 3 4 cup sunflower pith flour half cup 1 stick unsalted butter softened 1 4 cup sugar half cup
sunflower seed butter 1 ounce oil of your choice coconut or vegetable half teaspoon kosher salt
2 3 cup ground milled steel cut oats ground finer or flaked oats 1 egg half cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda in a large bowl cream together butter brown sugar
white sugar and sun butter until smooth beat in egg until well blended
combine the flour baking soda salt and oatmeal
stir into the creamed mixture here i should have refrigerated my mix for a few hours so
it would keep its form better i didn't so all my cookies melted together into a sheet cookie
that's fine though cooking is always an experiment for me so i just cut them
like i would sheet cookies cook in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes
transfer to a cool surface to let them cool and harden here you see because i didn't refrigerate
the mix they didn't hold their form when cooking and i ended up with some sheet cookie
i told you i'm not much of a baker that's fine i cut them as is and they still were quite good
they were delicious for the bread i wanted a comparison to a regular loaf of white bread so
i pulled out my bread machine and used the most basic recipe i could find i didn't have enough
flour left over so i ended up using half sunflower pith flour and half regular bleach flour i used
the dough setting to give it more time to rise then i set it for a 58 minute loaf the end result
was an edible somewhat nutty loaf but it was very dense if it's what you had to survive on and you
were stretching your supply of flour or wheat berries as far as you could then yes this might
be a way to do it i think the only rise i was able to achieve was owed to the flower that i used i
don't think the pith flower has anything the yeast can really eat in there if sunflower pith flour
was all you had you might try to make it like an irish soda bread that would rise without the use
of yeast if you want these recipes they will be at cityprepping.com forward slash sunflower
a brief history sunflowers or helianthus is a genus of about 70 species of annual and
perennial plants in the daisy family they range from jerusalem artichokes cultivated
for their roots to mammoth sunflowers prized for their seeds and beauty they are native to north
america and central america it grows throughout the summer and into fall domestic sunflower
seeds have been found in mexico dating to 2100 bce indigenous american people grew sunflowers
as a crop from mexico to southern canada as early as 5 000 years ago the seeds were eaten
and the stock would often be used as building material the first crop seeds were brought to
europe by explorers in the 16th century they were first cultivated as a food source with early
americans using the seeds to crush into flour for bread sunflowers weren't just used for food
sunflowers were extremely popular around europe russia and ukraine in the 1700s by the early 19th
century russian farmers had grown over 2 million acres of sunflowers when the russians cultivated
them to extract the oil for cooking new cultifers came back to the americas there you have it
one plant you absolutely need in your prepper garden is the sunflower
i've only shown you a couple of uses for it here utilizing just one part that is often discarded
whether it's aerating your mulch pit feeding your chickens filtering your drinking water
removing radiation from the environment used as a construction material kindling harvested for
seeds pressed into oil or used to build a raft the list of options for this easily grown food source
are perhaps without limit if you could take with you or have with you just one plant make sure it's
the noble sunflower i've shown you just a few uses of one part of it do you know of another
leave a comment and let us know how you use your sunflower plant is there another plant i should
grow and show you how to use if you want to see a printed version of this video along with recipes
and procedures i outlined visit cityprepping.com forward slash sunflower if you have an idea
that you would like to see in a future video please leave a comment there and let me know