ROOTED IN THE LAND, GUIDED BY FAMILY
Through every season of growth, Eric and Lisa Riehle have remained grounded in the same things that brought them here: caring for the land, doing good work, treating people with integrity and keeping family at the center of it all.
Long before popcorn filled the grain bins at Riehle Farms, this patch of southeastern Indiana was already part of the family story.
The farm near Sunman once belonged to Eric Riehle’s grandparents. Today, Eric and his wife, Lisa, have raised their own family here, building a business around the land while watching five children grow up alongside it. In one of the renovated farm buildings, old wooden beams from his grandparents’ barn remain overhead, a quiet reminder that even as the farm has changed, its roots have stayed firmly in place.
Outside, the view stretches across the kind of countryside that makes fall in southeastern Indiana feel familiar: fields rolling beyond country roads, tree lines beginning to change with the season and crops nearing harvest. Closer to home, grain bins rise beside the farm buildings, storing one specialty variety of popcorn after another.
Lisa jokingly calls them their “grain bin fortress.” After years of living and working among them, the description comes with affection. Those bins have become part of the family landscape, just as much as the fields, old barn and buildings around them. They hold crops Eric has watched from planting through harvest and popcorn that may eventually travel hundreds or even thousands of miles from the Indiana soil where it began.
It is a much bigger story than Eric could have imagined when he planted his first popcorn crop in 1998. At the time, his motivation was straightforward: he wanted to stay in farming.
Eric and Lisa married the following year, and the farm and their family grew together. At first, Eric raised just one variety of popcorn. A connection with a popcorn company brought opportunities to grow additional varieties, and over time, more customers found their way to the farm. In 2005, after people repeatedly asked if there was a way to buy the Riehles’ popcorn for themselves, the family created Riehle’s Select Popcorn.
What started with one crop has since developed into two connected businesses. Riehle Farms is Eric and Lisa’s farming operation, encompassing their popcorn and soybean production as well as bulk popcorn, contract growing and popcorn processing for other companies. Riehle’s Select Popcorn is the family’s own consumer brand, operated with Eric’s parents, Mark and Carlene Riehle, and his brother Chris and wife Susan.
Eric concentrates on the farming side, while Lisa keeps the books for both businesses and handles customer service, online orders and many of the details behind Riehle’s Select. It is a division of responsibilities that has evolved naturally over the years, just as the farm itself has evolved around their family.
And there is much more happening on this quiet Sunman farm than someone passing by might ever guess.
Growing close to home
Together, the Riehles farm roughly 600 to 700 acres of popcorn and soybeans, including rented ground, rotating between the two crops. The amount planted in popcorn changes from year to year. They consider which varieties they expect to need, what remains from the previous harvest and the anticipated needs of bulk customers before deciding how much of each to plant.
Keeping their own farming relatively close to Sunman allows Eric to watch the crop carefully throughout the growing season. It also means their fields experience much of the same weather, something that can work for or against them depending on the year.
The 2026 growing season offered plenty of reminders that a farmer never controls all the variables. Heavy spring rains forced the Riehles to replant much of their popcorn. Some fields were planted twice and one had to be planted three times. Certain specialty varieties can be especially sensitive to weather, including wind, rainfall and growing conditions that affect both the plant and eventual kernel size. It can be difficult to predict exactly what a crop will produce until harvest arrives.
That connection between weather, soil and final product becomes particularly visible when looking at the many varieties grown here. Some kernels are surprisingly tiny, while others are much larger. Baby Yellow, for instance, produces a very small kernel and ear compared with a variety such as Golden Rod.
Lisa’s favorite changes from time to time, but right now she is partial to the Pink. It is one of the varieties whose size can be particularly dependent on growing conditions, and part of her appreciation for it may come from knowing just how much goes into producing some of these specialty popcorns.
When it comes to customer favorites, Red and Baby White are two of the most popular varieties. There are also mixed-variety options, giving popcorn lovers a chance to discover just how different one kernel can be from another.
More than one kind of popcorn
For anyone accustomed to grabbing one familiar bag from a grocery shelf, the variety inside the Riehle packaging area can be surprising.
Baby Blue, Baby Yellow, Autumn Blaze and Baby White are among the smaller varieties. The family also offers larger-kernel popcorn and blends designed around different sizes and characteristics.
Some of their hull-less popcorns are heirloom varieties. Rather than purchasing new seed from a seed company each year, the Riehles save seed from these varieties for future crops. “Hull-less” does not mean the kernel literally has no hull. The hull is the seed coat surrounding the kernel, but in these varieties it tends to be thinner and breaks apart more as the kernel pops.
Even the family’s microwave popcorn reflects the way a smaller business has learned to find its own place in the market. Instead of trying to compete directly with large companies selling conventional big yellow microwave popcorn at enormous volumes, the Riehles chose Baby Yellow and Baby White for their microwave products.
The idea was simple: offer something shoppers do not usually find in a microwave bag.
It is one example of the practical decisions that have shaped the business. The Riehles may operate on a much smaller scale than the biggest names in popcorn, but being small gives them room to offer varieties that are a little different.
What happens after the combine
Harvesting popcorn begins much like harvesting other corn, with a combine moving through the field. Once the crop reaches the farm, however, the process becomes far more specialized.
Popcorn is stored in numbered grain bins so the Riehles can keep varieties and lots separated. Systems monitor moisture inside the bins and can automatically move air when conditions call for it. Maintaining the right moisture level matters because popcorn must retain enough moisture inside the kernel to pop properly.
When it is time for processing, the popcorn moves through what the family calls the cleaning house. Different screens separate kernels according to size, an important step when one variety may be dramatically smaller than another. A gravity table further separates material by weight, while other equipment helps remove stones and unwanted material.
One of the most interesting pieces of technology is an optical color sorter. As kernels move through the machine, it can identify differences in color and remove something that does not belong. If a stray yellow kernel is mixed into red popcorn, for example, the system can detect and eject it. It can also help remove dark weed seeds that may be close to a popcorn kernel in size.
Once processed, popcorn can move through enclosed piping into storage bins or be packaged for an order. Some bulk customers purchase it in 25- or 50-pound bags, while other orders fill many 2,000 pound bags.
Even the material that does not make the final cut can have another use. Kernels outside the desired size range and other usable agricultural material removed through cleaning are collected and sold to local farmers for cattle feed.
A behind-the-scenes popcorn business
Riehle Farms does more than grow its own crop. Over time, other popcorn companies began approaching Eric about growing particular varieties or contracting specific acreage. The quality of his work helped those relationships grow, and processing popcorn for other companies eventually became another significant part of the farm.
Some of that popcorn comes from other growers and other locations. It is brought to Sunman, where Riehle Farms can clean, sort, store and prepare it for bulk orders. Expanding that part of the business helped drive the addition of newer processing space and equipment.
Longtime employee Tony Hountz has seen much of that evolution. He joined the Riehles in 2008 and has watched the buildings, equipment and customer base grow over the years.
At busy times of year, the scale of the operation can be surprising. The Riehles have handled hundreds of thousands of pounds of popcorn in a season, with some years reaching around a million pounds.
Yet they still consider themselves a small popcorn operation, and that is not something they are necessarily trying to change.
Growing with intention
At one point, Eric and Lisa thought more seriously about continuing to scale the business. Opportunities were there, but experience also taught them that growth can carry costs that never show up on a balance sheet.
Some business relationships worked well. Others did not share the same approach to fairness and honesty the Riehles wanted to bring to their work.
“We prioritize honesty and integrity,” Lisa said. “We want to do a good job and be a good steward of our business.”
Eventually, the question shifted from how much bigger the operation could become to why it needed to become bigger at all.
The size they have today allows the family to pay attention to quality, maintain relationships with customers they trust and manage the operation in a way that still leaves room for the other parts of life they value.
Their experience as a small company has also influenced how they work with others. The Riehles know what it feels like to hear that an order is too small for another company to bother with. When possible, they appreciate the chance to work with other small businesses because someone once had to be willing to work with them.
“How can you support other small companies if nobody wants to help support you because you’re not big enough?” Lisa said.
It is a business philosophy rooted as much in relationships as economics.
Family first, from the beginning
The business has changed alongside the Riehle family, and in many ways, the two stories are difficult to separate.
Eric and Lisa have five children. Their oldest, Abigail, is grown, while their oldest son, Matthew, has finished college and recently married. Ben and Gabe are both in college, and their youngest daughter, Ava, is in eighth grade. Through each season, the children have grown up with the popcorn business quite literally around them.
The older children remember Lisa working while they played nearby. Abigail and Matthew remember being allowed to watch one cartoon with their mom while packing shipments before heading back outside. When Ava was younger, she liked rearranging bottles and boxes in the packaging area and pretending she was helping fill orders.
As babies arrived and family needs changed, Lisa moved in and out of different levels of involvement with the business. Tony joined the operation when the workload became more than the family could comfortably handle alone. Rather than asking family life to fit around the business at all costs, Eric and Lisa repeatedly adjusted the business to fit the season their family was in.
That flexibility was important to them. It is also one reason they have chosen not to operate a traditional storefront at the farm. A retail store would require regular hours, including time when their evenings were filled with school activities, sports and the normal routines of raising five children.
“We wanted to put family first,” Lisa said. “It’s a family business, a family farm, but we still want to put our family and the kids first.”
The children may not know yet whether farming will eventually call any of them back home, but the pride is there. The older kids have taken Riehle’s microwave popcorn with them to college and shared it with friends. They bring people home to see the farm and talk about the place where they grew up.
The business is part of their story whether or not it becomes their profession.
From Sunman to dinner tables far away
One of the challenges of selling popcorn online is simple physics: popcorn is heavy.
Shipping a food product with relatively modest retail margins can be expensive, especially for a small company shipping from one location in southeastern Indiana. Riehle’s Select has worked around that challenge in several ways, including a section of its website where select products qualify for free shipping.
Local customers have other options. Riehle’s Select popcorn can be found at George’s Pharmacy, and customers who live nearby can contact the family to arrange pickup at the Sunman farm during an agreed-upon time.
Despite those shipping challenges, popcorn from the operation has traveled remarkably far. The family has had customers in all 50 states, including Alaska and Hawaii, as well as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Bulk business has reached overseas customers, too, including a recent shipment headed to Sweden.
That is a long journey for something that begins as a kernel planted in an Indiana field, yet the growing reach of the business has never pulled the Riehles very far from where the story started.
The same farm that belonged to Eric’s grandparents is still here. Old barn beams remain tucked into a building adapted for a new generation. Nearby fields still respond to the rains, winds and changing seasons, while grain bins rise beside them equipped with technology Eric’s grandparents could never have imagined.
Together, those pieces tell a story familiar across southeastern Indiana. Caring for the land does not mean keeping it frozen in time. It means learning from it, adapting to it and finding ways for another generation to build a life from it.
At Riehle Farms, that has meant growing an unusual crop, investing in new equipment, building relationships far beyond Sunman and knowing when growth serves the family and when it does not.
Nearly three decades after Eric planted his first popcorn crop, the business is still shaped by the reason he started in the first place: he wanted to stay in farming.
The harvest today is measured in far more than pounds of popcorn. It can be seen in a family business built with care, in customers who return year after year, in relationships earned through honest work and in the beautiful stretch of southeastern Indiana land the Riehles continue to call home.
Riehle’s Select Popcorn is available to purchase online, with varieties including tender hulless popcorn, classic white and yellow kernels, specialty varieties, microwave popcorn, seasonings, oils and gift sets. Orders can be shipped nationwide.
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