Family runs dairy for 92 years north of Aurora

Since 1917, the Gripka family farm has been a fixture at the crossroads of LC 2175 and 1170. The family has been at the location so long the area is known as “Gripka Corner.”

“We’ve had the power out and called the electric company and just tell them it’s at Gripka Corner,” relates Angie Gripka Sperandio. “They know where we are.”

The current generation of Gripkas running the family farm include siblings AlbertGripka, Paul Gripka, Angie Sperandio and Regina Quintin.

Their grandfather, Albert Gripka, started the farm in 1917 and over the years added beef cattle, chickens and laying hens, produce, truck crops and field crops.

In 1967, after Albert’s son Eugene Gripka and his wife Mary Lou had more or less taken over the farm responsibilities, they traded the last of the beef cattle to double the dairy herd and that December built the milking parlor still in use today.

Paul Gripka said that their parlor was the first modern milking parlor built in the area.

“Dad built his first, then we helped build three more down the road a few months later,” said Paul Gripka. “And then some folks put up a couple more after that.”

“We haven’t changed a whole lot since then inside the parlor,” said Albert Gripka. “It’s still a three-stall with a by-pass set-up.

“One thing we did change was we upgraded the milking attachments - these newer ones are more comfortable for the cows.”

Another thing that hasn’t changed in 92 years is the Gripka’s breed of choice, Jerseys.

“We’ve just always had better luck with the Jersey’s,” said Albert Gripka. “We’d get more milk on less feed with the Jerseys than we ever did with those Holsteins we were running with ‘em out here for a while.”

Eugene Gripka worked on the farm until just before he died in 2007. Today’s Gripka dairy is still milking 60 and running a total of 120 cows on their acreage.

Windstorms and age have taken care of the orchard trees and some of the older outbuildings, but the farm is still run in much the same way it was in 1967.

“I think we’re a dying breed anymore,” said Albert Gripka. “There just aren’t many small dairy farms left, escpecially as old as this one.”

“In another eight years,” said Paul Gripka, “it’ll be one-hundred years of milking Jersey cows on this farm by the same family.”

When asked about the secret of their longevity Albert and Paul agreed it was “getting and keeping a good government job.”

Paul Gripka has been a rural carrier for the United State Postal Service since 1985 first a substitute and now full-time, after having started on the farm full-time in 1981.

Albert Gripka, who is named for his grandfather, is the only member of the family still working full-time on the farm.

“Working off the farm and being born one helluva manager is about the only way you can do it anymore,” said Albert. “That and keep it small enough to handle it all yourself.

Albert Gripka says about the biggest change that’s happened since he started dairying in 1975 has nothing to do with the farm.

“It’s the price we get for our milk - when I started we were getting $27 per hundred weight and now it’s down to $7 or $10 per hundred weight.

Besides working on the dairy farm, the Gripkas also have a growng collection of Minneapolis-Moline tractors, and the Gripka brothers are active in local tractor-pulling events.

“We both missed being first at Lockwood by less than an inch,” said Albert Gripka.