Article: Iowa family's project means picking ragweed

MARY NEUBAUER Associated Press Writer
AP Online
08-18-1998
AFTON, Iowa (AP) _ It was, they admit, a crazy-sounding idea: Someone wanted to pay them for picking the flowers off a weed.

``People will stop by and look and wonder about it. They're curious,'' Doug Jones said.

``But we've tried to keep it kind of quiet because we didn't want everybody doing it,'' his mom, Lucille Jones, adds.

For a second straight summer, the Jones family in Afton will spend about three weeks out in pastures, fields and empty corrals around their southern Iowa community, picking the flowers off ragweed plants.

They are after the ragweed pollen, an irritating substance that can bring on sneezing ...

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