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PO Box 1212 Tampa, FL 33601 Pinellas Updated May 2006
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Dairy Farm Comes To End Of Trail RIVERVIEW - The brothers shut the gates on Aprile Farms No. 2 with less emotion than they did at Maple Lane Dairy, the operation that started it all more than 60 years ago.
Aprile Farms No. 2 was more about numbers, less about history. It had the most cows, the biggest yield. Gave the Apriles the biggest headaches.
Still, it's part of their heritage. The farm was a direct descendant - as are the three lifelong dairymen who worked it - of the hard work and vision of the late Jimmie Aprile, a son of Sicilian immigrants who carved the family niche in eastern Hillsborough's landscape when cows outnumbered people.
His sons still have Aprile Farms No. 1, an 80-acre spread on Cowley Road off U.S. 301 deep in south Hillsborough County. They have no plans to close it, said Joe Aprile, the oldest of the brothers. But the once-rural road is becoming less rural every day. Even on Cowley, the subdivisions are circling.
Joe, Dan and Ronnie Aprile wonder how long they can run a dairy farm in rapidly developing Hillsborough. Land prices and tightening environmental regulations are taking their toll, they said.
"We love what we do. We've done it all our lives," Joe said. "Time will tell."
On April 21, the last day all 450 cows at Aprile Farms No. 2 took a turn through the big milking parlor off Balm-Riverview Road, Dan and Joe checked temporary fence panels and sawdust brought in for a mammoth move of bovine tonnage.
They walked the route the cows would take through the pole barn, into a chute, up a ramp, into the back of one of dozens of tractor-trailers that would carry them to dairy farms elsewhere in the state.
Some of the cows had spent their lives in Aprile barns and pastures. Richard Stith, manager at the Balm-Riverview operation for 10 years, had his favorites.
He pointed to a reddish black cow with an ear tag that read "600."
"Raised from a baby," Stith said.
No. 600's stomping grounds received approval for 133 houses and 54 villas last year. Construction is expected to start in the fall. The herd left in phases, with the last few head loading up April 26.
Rice Creek cuts through the 60-acre site. Joe Aprile said the family decided to sell rather than wait to find out how much it will cost to retrofit the operation to meet anticipated environmental regulations now in draft stages.
The Apriles keep detailed records on every cow, mostly related to breeding, calving and milk production. Each animal is an individual, but lifelong dairymen know better than to get sentimental about cows, the Apriles said.
"Some will lick your hand," Joe said. "Some are nervous or shy. Some will follow you around. Some will kick you. We've gotten a few black and blue marks over the years."
He swore it wouldn't be as hard this time.
One By One
Last month brought the second shutdown for the Aprile brothers in less than a year.
In June, they closed the dairy Jimmie Aprile started on Maple Lane in 1943, in a former vegetable patch that had been in the family since the '30s. Before he died in 2002, the patch swelled to 156 acres and then shrank again, yielding to development and road improvements. U.S. 301 and Interstate 4 sliced through the land and transformed it into a bustling urban vista.
Joe Aprile said the family is marketing the remaining 36-acre site but has no firm buyer or developer.
At least two other dairies closed last year, one in the county's southeast corner and another in Riverview. That leaves five commercial cow-milking operations in Hillsborough. One of those five, Tower Dairy in Palm River, is up for rezoning to accommodate homes and apartments. All combined, the remaining farms probably have fewer cows than the 1,300 to 1,400 milked on Aprile farms alone in the peak years of the 1990s, Joe Aprile said.
When he was a boy, riding along as his father hauled milk in 10-gallon, cork-insulated cans in the back of a Model A pickup truck, there were 50 to 70 dairies across the county, he said.
"You couldn't go a mile without running into a dairy farm along 301," he said. Now the land has become too valuable for cattle operations. As housing developments spring up next door, city slicker neighbors tend to complain about odors and flies.
Laws protect the farmer's right to operate, but the complaints still cost money, said Stephen Gran, Hillsborough's agriculture industry development manager.
"Somebody still has to investigate [complaints]," Gran said. "It ends up being more burdensome for the farmer."
Small Farms Dwindle
Smaller dairy farmers are worried about proposed rules intended to protect streams, lakes and the aquifer from pollution that stems from tons of manure being dropped on relatively small parcels of land, said Calvin Covington, chief executive officer of the regional trade organization Southeast Milk Inc.
"It's becoming a big economic impact on them," Covington said.
Federal regulations affecting farms of 700 or more cows went into effect a few years ago. Generally, they required spreading the animals out on more acreage, lining retention ponds and planting crops to absorb the concentrated nutrients in cow waste that can damage the environment.
Covington said those rules are among factors fueling a trend toward bigger dairies in more remote locations across the country. Large farms can better absorb the costs of environmental upgrades, he said.
Joe Aprile and Dale McClellan, who milks about 100 cows at M&B Products on Harney Road near Temple Terrace, said large dairy owners have had to hire engineers to design facilities that would meet federal requirements.
McClellan moved most of his operation to 320 acres in Citrus County a few years ago. He estimated the environmental costs at more than $1 million.
Under consideration are proposals that would affect farms of 200 or more cows, said officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
There is no timetable for their adoption, said Ilia Balcom, industrial waste compliance manager in the department's Tampa office. She said regulators have been meeting with dairy owners and other animal feed lot operators to discuss options, and economic considerations are on the table.
"They really want dairies to move way out and have big parcels of land to comply," said Ronnie Aprile, 47. The Apriles said the Cowley Road farm will have 300 to 400 cows but does not have the potential environmental challenges that the Riverview farm did.
Sam Elrabi, assistant director of Hillsborough's Environmental Protection Commission water division, said regulators have long worked with local dairies to coax them into controlling polluted runoff. Land development, not environmental concerns, is squeezing the industry out, he said. "It's just being pushed out by market forces and development," Elrabi said. "These people find themselves in the middle of up and coming construction. ... It's a prime time to sell."
Joe Aprile said he has been shopping around for another dairy location. He said land must be priced at less than $6,000 an acre to make a milking operation viable. He and his brothers said they haven't found any large tracts that cheap within reasonable driving distance of their homes in Hillsborough.
The county isn't alone in the trend toward fewer dairies, Covington said.
In 1992, Florida had 288 commercial dairies. By the end of 2005, the number was 180. And more than half the 131,509 dairy farms in the United States in 1992 were gone by last year.
That doesn't mean less milk. Breeding and production methods have significantly increased the yield per cow, Covington said.
Nationally, production increased from almost 151 billion pounds in 1992 to nearly 177 billion pounds last year. In Florida, production dipped from 1990 to 2005, from 2.5 billion pounds to about 2.3 billion. Covington attributed that to fluctuations in weather and other factors not related to dairies closing. (Dairymen measure milk in pounds. A pound equals 8.6 gallons.)
How It All Began
In 1943, Jimmie Aprile started his dairy with 40 cows, all milked by hand, his sons said. Making deliveries had its perks for a young boy. At Tropical Ice Cream, behind the Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City, Joe Aprile would get an ice cream cone. "My favorite was coconut ice cream," he said.
Over the years, Maple Lane Dairy grew to 156 acres. When U.S. 301 cut through in the 1950s, the government built a tunnel under the pavement so Aprile cows could safely move from the barns on east side of the road to pastures on the west side.
The brothers rode horses through the big tunnel, which later was filled in. The family sold the west-side pastures to a developer in the 1980s. Road construction lopped off other acreage.
Despite mechanical milking devices and other advances, dairy operations are demanding. At least one of the Apriles must visit every farm every day to check cows for illness or injury, order supplies and make decisions.
Dan Aprile, 50, said his children would like to keep milking cows.
"There's so much to know," he said. "We've been in it all our lives and we're still learning."
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