Filed neatly within the seemingly endless rows of corn and soybeans, and between the neatly gridded county roads that surround the small town of Converse, a field of sunflowers dries under the September sun. They no longer stand tall, bright and yellow, following the sun through the sky. Instead, the sunflowers look toward the ground and dry as they await the next step in their journey — a cold-pressed sunflower oil known as Healthy Hoosier Oil.
Mark Boyer is a sixth-generation farmer, and the owner of Healthy Hoosier Oil. Although he is the face behind the business, growing sunflowers was not his idea – he credits that to his late father, Craig Boyer.
“About 12 or 13 years ago, agriculture was looking kind of scary. Commodity crop prices were pretty scary, and we were looking for an avenue to diversify our crops and provide security for generations to come,” he said. “So we grew some sunflowers in a small plot, and we were at least successful enough to try and continue that and scale up.”
They were one of the earliest producers that joined the Indiana Grown initiative, which was founded by the Indiana State Department of Agriculture in 2015 to promote agricultural products made in Indiana. After expanding operations to include storage and manufacturing facilities, the initiative helped them connect with other vendors and take their product to the next level.
“We engaged in [the Indiana Grown] program not really knowing where it was going to take us. So, we started doing food shows, and got to meet great Indiana-made, local products that in many cases I didn’t even realize existed,” he said. “We got to rub shoulders, and kind of compare notes, and that was tremendously beneficial in establishing a market for our product.”
One of the unique parts about the initiative, according to Boyer, is the eagerness for collaboration between vendors. Through the Indiana Grown program, he began producing products with Bastin Honey Bee Farms, Brick House Vinaigrettes, and Fairmount Candle and Bath. The honey bees pollinate his sunflowers and produce honey, his sunflower oil is the base ingredient in Brick House Vinaigrettes, and Fairmount Candle and Bath makes a line of hand soaps and bath products using the oil.
“Many of these vendors did not have a real clear path to a retail store shelf where a consumer could get their hands on their product,” Boyer said. “And we were having kind of the same struggles early on, so we decided to open a retail location highlighting those products and be of some benefit.”
The retail store is called Rachel’s Taste of Indiana, a store where every product on the shelf has a story to be told – a story set within Indiana’s borders. He and his wife, Rachel, own the store and carry products from breading mixes to pork to pickles, all made in Indiana.
“What has happened, more by accident than by design, is that we’ve created a small-town, ag-based economy based right here in Converse, which is really unique,” Boyer said.
Retail isn’t the only part of the agriculture-based economy Boyer has helped create in Converse. He says Big Dipper, an ice cream shop and restaurant next to Rachel’s Taste of Indiana, uses their sunflower oil in their deep fryers. On the other side of their retail store is Jefferson Street BBQ, which serves Hunt Family Farms pork, fed with Boyer’s sunflower meal.
During the blooming season, the store receives as many as five thousand visitors, who come from as far as Chicago and Cincinnati to take in the spectacle of his 750,000 sunflowers, according to Boyer. And although he may be focused more on his agricultural product than the sunflowers’ beautiful blooms, growing the sunflowers has been a rewarding experience.
“After being a corn, soybean and wheat farmer for literally decades and decades, it’s kind of fun to grow a crop that brings people joy,” he said. “I really enjoy seeing that.”
