Interesting Neighbors

Heaven and Joe Branco are the kind of couple who finish one another’s sentences.

Both are that in tune with the other’s thoughts.

So when Heaven, who always liked sunflowers, decided she wanted to raise them commercially, Joe didn’t balk at tilling a quarter-acre of their 10-acre spread they call Sunshine Farm.

They amended the soil with the droppings from Heaven’s Oklahoma Sunshine Rabbitry. The droppings, they said, are a “great source of nitrogen.”

Heaven has English angora rabbits which she shaves every three to four months.

She then spins the hair into yarn. A skein of the yarn won first place at the Oklahoma State Fair.

Neither was what you might call a horticulturist or even a moderately avid gardener.

So what might seem at first glance an impulsive spur-of-the-moment decision on Heaven’s part was in fact backed by hours of painstaking online research.

In short, she’d done her homework and done it well.

The couple were given the land by his parents and Heaven always wanted a purpose for the property.

“So I decided we were going to grow flowers,” she said.

Joe was open-minded. After all, their vegetable garden did very well, as did the wild blackberries.

“My main goal was to support my wife and her dreams,” Joe said.

Heaven’s research settled on four varieties of sunflowers.

After preparing the seedbed and making rows, they spent hours every day carefully planting 5,000 seeds one by one.

“It was fun,” she said. “Everything came together.”

Including some uninvited interlopers.

It wasn’t a plague of Biblical proportions, but hungry grasshoppers and rabbits devoured a fair share of the young plants.

Joe concocted a homemade pesticide using garlic, cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar.

That seemed to solve the grasshopper problem.

Sheer volume of sunflower plants handled the bunny incursion.

For next year, they hope to keep the rabbits at bay with ultrasonic transmitters.

They learned that sunflower cultivation takes a lot of water. As the plants grew, so did the water bill.

Heaven and Joe spent most of their daylight hours in the small flower field weeding, watering and watching the hundreds of bees drawn to the flowers as they bloomed.

Depending on the variety, some bloom in 45 days and others take 90 days.

They planted in blocks so the plants could support each other. Their tallest variety was four to five feet, but no staking was required.

So fascinating did they find the bees that adding beekeeper to their resumes is on for 2023.

They harvested the blooms before they were fully open, cutting a long stem and stripping away the leaves. Freshly harvested flowers were placed in a bucket of water before being made into bouquets.

The sunflowers ranged from  3- to 7-inch diameter and were sold in two sizes of bouquets.

One thing they ran into that neither expected was the number of people who think the flowers in their bouquets are fake.

They put back 10 percent from the flower sales to purchase a hive and bees. And they harvested a fair amount of sunflower seeds as feed for Heaven’s English angora rabbits.

Faced with finding a purpose for thousands of sunflowers, Heaven met with Savannah Pyle, who owns Savvy Parke in downtown Purcell.

She agreed to sell all the sunflower bouquets Heaven and Joe could furnish.

The partnership worked so well that the couple realized a small profit from their first crop. It was enough to pay the water bill, pay their investors double what was invested and have cash remaining to purchase next year’s seeds.

All in all, a “very successful” first year, Joe said.

“We didn’t go into it to make a profit,” Heaven said. “We’re definitely excited to do it again next year.”

Plans now are to double or quadruple the sunflower patch next year.

So far, Heaven has a dozen varieties in mind and hopes to add zinnias and snapdragons to the flower field.

And Joe has some big plans, too.

He is excited at the prospect of offering a U-pick option and even a flower festival.

With good success at Tractor Supply’s farmers market, they are looking forward to adding Purcell’s farmers market for retail sales.

They are in the process of rebuilding their chicken flock after a bobcat inflicted heavy losses.

“They don’t free range any more,” Joe said. “We learned a lot of lessons.”

As self-sufficient farmers, they raised and butchered meat birds this year.

Joe works IT for the state and Heaven’s work is taking care of the farm.

“If I had more money, I’d get a cow,” Heaven said wistfully.

Joe, meanwhile, dreams of fattening a pig or two.

They are acquiring a pig in January, but as a pet to add to a menagerie that includes two Great Danes and three cats.