Sparks Farms is family owned and operated by Mike and Jenny Sparks, and is located West of Connersville in Fayette County, Indiana. We perform planting, harvesting, hauling, grain processing and equipment and building maintenance duties ourselves and grow both corn and soybeans on a rotating basis each year. Our two sons were raised on this farm and still help out when needed. We have been blessed with the opportunity to live and raise our family on a farm in the Midwest, as did our grandparents, great-grandparents and those before them.

Our home is a very large brick two-story farmhouse with eleven-foot ceilings and walls three bricks thick, and has undoubtedly withstood many violet storms on our relatively high, open land since it's construction around 1850. Strong winds are common here, with the anemometer on top of our 100-foot grain leg recording gusts up to 63 miles per hour this December (2009), and gusts of 72 miles per hour late in the summer. Wind gusts in the 20 to 35 mph range are common.

Which brings us to the main topic-how to heat a large home under these conditions. Years ago we heated with oil, and would use two tanks (about 475/520 gallons) in approximately six to seven weeks of Jan/Feb Indiana winter. This wasn't so bad with cheap oil but it got increasingly expensive as oil rose in cost. Then the firebox cracked in our furnace in the spring of 2002. We had to make a change.

We had already been researching corn heating stoves and furnaces since we produce our own corn. We settled on a Multi-fuel furnace and, as they say, the rest is history. We have been very pleased with the heat it has produced each subsequent season as well as the many dollars we have saved compared to the cost of oil. Experience has taught us much about getting the most Btu's of heat energy from corn fuel, and we are making our knowledge available to the public. We have learned no more important lesson than this: Corn for fuel use must be very  clean and must be at moisture levels between 11.5% and 12.5% if the highest BTU potential is to be realized.

In pursuit of these goals we have invested heavily in the purchase of equipment for grain cleaning, handling, storage, weighing and bagging beyond what was required for our already existing farm operation. SPARKS FARMS now has the knowledge and the facilities to provide the consistently high quality corn fuel so many of you have come to expect and rely on each heating season. This is a responsibility we welcome and are proud to accept. 

We are very grateful for the strong support shown for our product. Through the purchase of SPARKS FARMS Corn Fuel our customers are helping to support a relatively small family farm operation increasingly pressured by very large corporate farming and big government. We very much enjoy dealing with our customers, and our business has grown each year. We attribute this steady growth to our commitment to providing a consistently high quality product along with honest advice and down-home service whenever possible.

If you believe we may be of assistance to you with your corn fuel needs or questions about using corn for heating purposes we invite you to look over the information contained within this website, or feel free to contact us directly.

There is a learning curve involved with use of corn fuel. Why not let us help you along the way with some good old Hoosier Hospitality.

Sincerely,

Mike and Jenny Sparks
SPARKS FARMS
1635 N. Hawkinsville Rd
Connersville, IN. 47331
765-825-4390
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