IN 2,500 SQUARE FEET, a family of four can grow each year enough sunflower seed to produce three gallons of homemade vegetable oil suitable for salads or cooking and 20 pounds of nutritious, dehulled seed -- with enough broken seeds left over to feed a winter's worth of birds.The problem, heretofore, with sunflower seeds was the difficulty of dehulling them at home, and the lack of a device for expressing oil from the seeds. About six months ago, we decided to change all that. The job was to find out who makes a sunflower seed dehuller or to devise one if none were manufactured. And to either locate a home-scale oilseed press or devise one. No mean task.Our researches took us from North Dakota -- hub of commercial sunflower activity in the nation -- to a search of the files in the U.S. Patent Office, with stops in between. We turned up a lot of big machinery, discovered how difficult it is to buy really pure, unrefined vegetable oils, but found no small-scale equipment to dehull sunflowers or press out their oil.
The key to success, however, was on our desk the whole time. In spring 1977, August Kormier had submitted a free-lance article describing how he used a Corona grain mill to dehull his sunflower seeds, and his vacuum cleaner exhaust hose to blow the hulls off the kernels. A second separation floated off the remaining hulls, leaving a clean product. We'd tried it, but because some kernels were cracked and the process involved drying, we hadn't been satisfied. Now we felt the best approach was to begin again with what we learned from Mr. Kormier and refine it.Staff Editor Diana Branch and Home Workplace Editor Jim Eldon worked with a number of hand- and electric-powered grain mills. While the Corona did a passable job, they got


2,500平方尺，一個四口之家每年可以長到足以產(chǎn)生三種葵花籽國產(chǎn)蔬菜沙拉或烹調(diào)油和20磅的營養(yǎng)豐富，適合脫皮加侖種子 - 與遺留養(yǎng)活一個冬天的產(chǎn)值，破碎的種子鳥類。用向日葵種子的問題，迄今，是他們在家里的脫皮困難，一個設(shè)備，表達(dá)從種子油的不足。 大約六個月前，我們決定改變這一切。 這項(xiàng)工作是找出誰使向日葵的種子脫皮或制定一個，如果沒有被制造。 而且要么找到一個家規(guī)模油籽按或設(shè)計(jì)之一。 不小的任務(wù)。我們研究了從北達(dá)科他州我們 - 向日葵在全國商業(yè)活動的中心 - 一個在美國專利局的文件搜索與站間。 我們轉(zhuǎn)向了很多大機(jī)器，發(fā)現(xiàn)是多么困難買真純，未經(jīng)提煉的植物油，但沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)小規(guī)模的設(shè)備向日葵或按他們的石油。