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Missouri Farm Family Keen on Sun Oil Product
Tuesday, October 1, 2024
filed under: Utilization/Trade
The Browns of Hannibal Grow, Press, Bottle & Market Their ‘Show Me HH Farms’ Line of Sunflower Oil
For the folks at Show Me HH Farms, LLC, family is everything; it’s the reason they started their business. Kent Brown and his son were looking for a way to keep their Hannibal, Missouri, family farm in the family. What they came up with is something no one else in the Show Me state is doing.
Jody Kerzman visited with Kent Brown to learn more about Show Me HH Farms, LLC.
Explain the idea behind your product.
We sell cold-pressed sunflower oil that is grown, pressed and bottled on our farm just outside Hannibal, Missouri. I grew up on this farm; my father used to farm hundreds of acres. We’re down to about 250 acres now, and my son was searching for a way to keep his four children interested in the farm.
We knew that 250 acres wasn’t enough to support a family, so my son started doing some research. One night, he was up with a sick baby and was watching the Food Network and saw a special on a farm in Georgia and that inspired our family. I called the man on that Food Network show and said we’d like to come visit and pick his brain. He said, “Come on over,” as though we lived across the street. So 18 hours later, I was knocking on his door. He was a huge help to us.
How do you utilize sunflower in your products?
We grow all the sunflower we use in our all-natural cold-pressed, high-oleic sunflower oil. We press all the oil ourselves, by squeezing the seeds through a press. We don’t use chemicals or solvents like commercial sunflower oil.
Where do you get the sunflower you use?
As I said, we grow all the sunflower for our oil on our farm. We purchase our seed from the Dakotas. Our operation is small; our first year, we planted just nine acres of sunflower. Over the past few years, we’ve bumped that up to 15 acres; and this year, we planted just over 15 acres of high-oleic sunflower.
What makes your products stand out?
I think the most unique part of our products is that it’s all done right on our farm. We do it all – from planting to harvesting to pressing and bottling. We plant high-oleic sunflower, and we don’t use any chemicals on the sunflower. This year, we cultivated our fields, just to see what difference that might make.
We are a member of the ‘Missouri Grown’ economic development initiative to promote Missouri-grown and produced products. There aren’t a lot of sunflower fields in Missouri, so that alone makes our oil stand out. Being a member of ‘Buy Missouri’ has led to other opportunities as well. We are a zero-waste company and have partnered with another ‘Missouri Grown ’ member who makes soap. We save what comes out the filter when we’re processing our oil, and she uses that oil to make her soap. We sell her soap when we have events and farmers’ markets.
What kinds of challenges have you faced?
Like all farmers, the weather has been a challenge. We grew nine acres our first year and when we bumped that up to 15 acres the next year, we were able to extract about 700 gallons of oil. So, we planted 15 acres again last year, but the difference was, the rain didn’t come in 2023. Instead of 700 gallons, we got only about 150 gallons.
Another difficult part has been getting people to try our oil. Once they taste it, they’re hooked; but we’ve struggled with getting customers to taste our oil. We find that once they taste it, about 90% of the time, they’ll buy a bottle. They love the flavor, it’s lighter than olive oil, and the smoke temperature is 450 degrees — perfect for cooking on the Blackstone grill, baking or even deep frying.
We know there are health benefits to sunflower oil, but that isn’t the reason we started out on this business venture. We started because we saw an opportunity that could keep our families on the farm.
There has been a learning curve to growing sunflower; there isn’t a lot of sunflower grown in Missouri, and what is grown here is usually grown in plots for doves, or for birdseed. We’ve had to learn a lot just by trial and error. This is our fourth growing season, and we are still learning.
It takes a long time to press the oil. It takes 30 hours to press 1,000 pounds of seed. A thousand pounds of seed produces anywhere from 8 to 25 gallons of oil. After that, it still has to be filtered and bottled.
I’m also a wood artist, so while the press is doing its thing, I have a little time to work on my art. We’ve got cameras set up on the equipment so I can monitor them while I work on my art.
What market segments do you supply?
Our oils can be purchased at local farmers markets and festivals throughout Missouri. We’re in a few shops near Kansas City and St. Louis, as well in Iowa and Illinois. Because sunflower oil is so healthy, we have started to develop a market in the St. Louis area, because people there are super health conscious.
We take orders on our website: www.showmehhfarms.com/. We’re also on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/showmehhfarms.
Are there any new offerings or products in the making for Show Me HH Farms?
We are thinking about expanding into agritourism. We have dipped our toes into it a little and invited the public out to take photos when our sunflower is blooming. Word is spreading; we are a couple of hours north of St. Louis, and we’re starting to see more people from the city make the drive.
We would like to add a patch of sunflower that would not cross with what we grow for our oil, but would be strictly for photo opportunities.