(upbeat music) - Welcome to A Shot of AG.

My name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm a farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

I started a podcast which led into an XM radio show, which led into a national television show, which led into me being here today.

But today, today is not about me.

Today is about Ken Ropp.

How you doing Ken?

- Doing well.

Thanks, Rob.

- You are from where?

Normal?

- As close to normal as you can get just on the northwest side of town.

- See, it gets confusing over there 'cause you got Bloomington, you got Normal and then you got, I don't know, it just keeps growing.

That area is nuts.

- It keeps growing.

We're fortunate on our side of town actually the other side of town is where the growth has been more towards the airport and that.

But we're seeing it happen.

So we're in that little quadrant between Carlock, Bloomington, Normal that area right there out in the country.

- Okay, so you're in a place where you don't have all the encroachment coming in yet?

- Not yet.

- Not yet.

(Ken and Rob laugh) You farm out there.

What are you raising?

- So conventional farm, about 450 acres, 200 acres of corn.

200 acres of bean on rotation.

- Yeah.

- And then 50 acres of alfalfa and then all-registered Jersey herd that we milk.

- Okay, so to a non-ag audience, I don't think they even know what that means.

A non-registered Jersey herd.

Explain that.

- So it is an all-registered Jersey herd.

What I try and tell customers when they come out and they say the same thing, asking questions.

It's like having a puppy that's registered through the AKC.

You've got papers on that animal where you can trace the lineage.

- Yeah.

- So we can trace generations back on each of our animals on the farm.

- So does that make a cow worth more?

- It does, and it does especially for those that are looking to breed the perfect SI or the perfect bull.

- Yeah.

- For semen purposes or for those in the show ring too.

- Yeah, but you're milking milk though.

- I'm milking milk.

I need fluid.

That's what I need.

with plenty of fat and protein.

- Okay.

So it's Ropp Cheese Factory, Ropp Jersey Cheese.

- Ropp Jersey Cheese.

- Okay, and how long has that been in business?

- We're on our 17th year now.

- 17th?

- Right.

- Let's talk about you.

You grew up on the farm?

- Yes.

- Were you that like stereotypical farm kid that was out doing chores and raising heck?

- So I was the stereotypical farm kid that day and age for me.

So I'm 50 years old now so we're talking in the mid 80s in high school and that, but your life revolved around the farm.

For 4H, FFA, playing a lot of softball, going fishing, doing the things that kids do out in the country.

- Yeah.

Did you go off to school?

- Went off to school to the University of Illinois.

- Oh, here we go.

Here we go.

- I'll leave it alone, that's... - No, that's fine.

Tell us how great U of I was.

- It was amazing.

It was amazing.

(Rob laughing) - Did you do the whole farmhouse thing and all that?

- I was an AGR.

Alpha Gamma Rho.

- I don't even know the difference.

I know there's like two of 'em and they hate each other or something like that.

- No, there's a good difference.

(Rob and Ken laugh) - There's a good difference.

- That's right.

- We'll leave it at that.

Now.

What did you go to get your degree in?

- So my degree was in animal sciences.

- Gotcha.

- At the time when I was a freshman down there, you could designate that I was dairy science.

- Okay.

- My sophomore year, it all got combined into one.

If you were in kind of any animal production ag, you were animal sciences.

- Okay.

Did you know you were going back to the farm or what was the plan?

- My plan was eventually to go back to the farm and join mom and dad in partnership.

Didn't know what the cards were gonna be played as far as in-between time, if you wanna say.

I knew I wanted go off and see a little bit of the world.

What I got to see was a lot of windshield time doing sales for seven years before I came back in 2000.

- What were you selling?

- So you call it a sales job but what we did was we worked with the quality on the milk side.

And so we helped people with bacteria counts, manic cell counts, things like that with milk quality itself.

- You were selling bacteria?

- We were trying to take care of not having any bacteria.

- Okay.

You don't want any.

- You don't want any bacteria.

- Yeah.

That's kind of frowned on in the whole milk world.

- It is frowned upon.

And then what we did was we also worked with the truckers, getting the milk delivered into the plants.

- Milk is like stupid sterile, isn't it?

- It is.

- It's crazy.

Like if you ever go tour the plants where it's bottled and everything, tour the dairies, you can't believe.

It comes from a cow, but it's so clean.

- Very clean, very well taken care of.

- Now let's talk about your farm, right?

So who started it, how many generations?

- I'm the sixth generation on the farm.

- Okay.

- And so it was started in the mid 1800s.

We've got just over 150 years worth of business here on our farm, and I've always said to people, the hard part for me is that seventh generation.

We've got one daughter.

- Yeah.

- And whether she wants to be a part of that or not, that's totally up to her.

And it's taken me a while to realize this is her choice, not dad's or mom's or anything else.

- You could always tell her what to do.

- I could, and I would get this... - That always works out.

- It works really well.

- Not well.

(Rob and Ken laugh) - That's exactly right.

- Hey, go pick up that a hundred dollar bill.

No!

I don't know your daughter but I know my kids.

- I think you're on the right track.

(Rob and Ken laugh) - Your dad bought out your grandfather, correct?

- Correct.

- That was in '83.

You were a kid in the '80s in agriculture, which was not a great time.

How was it for the dairy side?

- It was not a great time across the board for anyone at that time.

And the strange part about the dairy industry, we've seen the same prices for so long.

It's crazy.

Are we a little bit higher then we were 20 years ago?

Yeah, but we're still not a substantial markup from where we were like what we've seen in for instance, the goods going into construction and things like that.

And what we're paying for those durables now is compared to some of the food costs.

We've seen it in the meat market.

- Yeah.

- Where things have gone up.

But man, the '80s were tough.

The '80s were tough.

- Well, who knows where it's gonna be when this airs but I mean there's times when you go in the grocery store and it's 99 cents for a gallon, an entire gallon of milk, and you're sitting there thinking how's that even feasible?

- Yeah.

And the stores will sometimes, and we know the games that can be played.

It's set up as somewhat of a loss item to draw people in - Loss leader.

- Exactly.

- That's what they say in the business.

- Exactly.

- And that's basically because if you're gonna come in to buy a gallon of milk, you're also gonna buy the bag of Doritos and a KitKat or whatever, right?

- I hope so.

- And those are the ones that are gonna, yeah.

Does that help you though?

- It helps us because if people are, you want that customer to be a repeat customer and if it's those loss leaders that bring 'em in that first time and they get some high quality product, as long as they continue, that's the main thing for us on the shelf.

- That's right.

When did you come back to the farm, then?

- Came back August of 2000.

- Okay.

- Joined the operation.

And when I came back, we were at record all-time high milk prices.

- Hey.

- Yeah, perfect.

- Did you just walk in, slam the doors open and said, "what?"

- Well, and six months later we were slamming the doors wondering what hit us because we were record lows.

- Oh, that's when everybody else is going, "what?"

- So we went through that whole roller coaster.

We didn't know what hit us, but that's really where the, the mind started going of what can we do to add some value?

And that's how this all came about.

- Because at that point, you're milking the cows, you're putting 'em on a truck and they go get bottled somewhere.

Or you don't even really have control of it over at that point.

- Correct.

- You wanted to have control of it.

- Needed to take control to survive.

Yep.

- Purely economic decision?

- Yes.

- Okay.

So what did you decide to do with your milk?

- So we decided that we would go ahead and start processing cheese on our farm.

We thought it would be a value added two or three days a week, make some product.

- Yeah.

- To add in.

And once we got rolling on that, we were given the choice of all or nothing.

In other words, you're either gonna be on the truck, going to the plant or you need to make cheese eight days a week.

- Who's giving you that choice?

- The co-ops, the dairies themselves.

- Oh, it wasn't like a strong-arm thing?

- Yes.

- The old milk mafia.

(Rob and Ken laugh) - I haven't heard that term in a long time, Rob.

- I actually didn't even know it was one.

Maybe we should move on.

- Back in the day, back in the day.

- So what, you told them to go pound sand, we're gonna make cheese.

- I didn't really have much of a conversation with 'em.

- [Rob] Yeah - It was a brief conversation, and then it was, oh my goodness, dad and I run around knocking on doors and talking to the stores.

- Oh, to try to sell your cheese.

- The hard part was it wasn't like we were looking at building the plant.

We were six months into production when this all happened.

And so all of a sudden, we were forced to go out and make some huge sales in order to not lose product.

- So it was a deal like, so you're selling your milk to whatever company.

They make cheese.

Now you're gonna make cheese and they're going, "ah, you can't have it both ways"?

- And actually, 90% of our milk time was going to a fluid plant.

So we weren't in any kind of competition at all.

The one thing that I'll give them credit on is they've stuck with that same regimen with other producers in the state of Illinois that have looked at going to value added and doing things on their farm.

- Huh?

With things you didn't know about the old milk world, huh?

- The milk mafia.

(Rob laughs) - All right, so you're making cheese.

I mean, when you try to sell this, right I can't imagine it's a deal like you're like, "oh, let's build a milk plant.

Here is a check Mr. Construction Guy, go build it for me."

You probably had to go get funding and all that.

How'd that work?

- That was the hardest part of the whole deal was talking to various bankers, accountants.

We saw the idea up at World Dairy Expo in Madison.

And that was 2003.

And they had this cheese plant contained on a semi trailer and it was for sale, but they were making cheese out of the milk from the show cows at Madison that week.

Handing it out to customers and doing their thing.

What it did was... - Whoa, whoa.

How fast can you make cheese?

I thought it was a huge process.

- We could make cheese today and have fresh curds through this afternoon.

- Really?

I didn't know that.

How long does it take to make that Velveeta?

- It depends on how far you gotta go to get the oil.

- [Rob] It's not cheese, is it?

- No - It's cheese-like.

- We call it... A common term in the cheese business is it's plastic.

We'd call that plastic as far as versus something that's all-natural.

- It doesn't mold.

Did you know that?

- No, and it can sit out in room temperature and you never have a problem.

- You can build a house out of it.

Pretty sturdy one, I bet.

- It's the old days of walking through the mall and seeing all those shelves of salami and cheese.

[Crosstalk 00:11:43] - That was pretty good to walk through.

(Rob and Ken laugh) - But you wondered how could that stuff sit out at room temperature?

- Yeah.

- And there's a reason.

- I forgot what the hell we were talking... Oh yeah, the mobile milk factory, right?

So it was for sale.

- And what I did on the way home driving down 39 from Madison, it's like, we could do something like that.

Started talking to our bankers and our accountants and things like that, and thought, is this gonna work?

And of course, they wanted something to compare to.

- Ah.

- How in the world... - [Rob] That's horrible, isn't it?

- There's no one in central Illinois doing anything like this, let alone on their farm.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- And so really it was the whole family putting their eggs all in one basket.

- Oh, that had to be scary.

- Oh, it was scary.

And the light's starting to shine a little bit now and it's fun.

We still have our days, but it takes a while.

- It's funny with the COVID, it did change.

We talk to a lot of farmers now that have started doing value added with it and milk going into whatever gelato or cheese or whatever it seems to be like, 'cause milk's had a rough last 10 years.

I don't know where you're at now, but it's been a rough business to be in.

- It's been hard.

And the nice part about the choice that we made and it just happened to be that we made cheese we didn't bottle milk.

But what it did was gave us that space too, where the consumers were eating a lot more cheese than they were drinking milk.

There was a shift in demand.

But I also have shelf life that's extended a lot further than putting milk in a bottle.

And so I can sit on it and wait for that sale to happen versus having a 15 to 21 to 28-day window on a bottled product.

- That's nice.

'Cause once it's bad, it's bad.

- There's no going back.

- Okay.

How'd you learn to make cheese?

- So I had never made cheese before.

I always start with that.

- [Rob] Most people haven't.

- No.

(Ken laughs) - Can you imagine how many people, "oh, I have"?

No.

Have you ever met anybody else?

If you get outside your ag circles, nobody makes cheese.

- And I'm in awe sometimes when there's a house-mom that'll be out on a tour and she'll say, "you know I make cheese on stovetop" and I'm like "really?"

And I'll sit there and listen to how she does that kind of thing because it's intriguing.

The process is the same.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- But how you get there, can be a lot different with what's put into that milk to make it set what you're using for culture, things like that.

But I went to school at University of Wisconsin at Madison, the main campus, went to Babcock hall there and took classes in...

It was more like microbiology 100 and 101 again.

- Okay.

- There was a lot of, this is what all is happening.

That kind of thing.

For me, I'm a hands-on guy.

And there was a lady up in River Falls at UW River Falls that had a course and they milked 30 cows there.

So it was hands on.

- [Rob] Cheese course.

- And it was hands on.

And that's the way I am.

I loved labs.

- Yeah.

Is it a science or an art?

- Yes and yes, but I always... - No.

(Rob and Ken laugh) - I know, you're asking the questions, I'm supposed to answer.

The thing is, I could take you back to the farm, Rob and as long as you're watching your time and your temperature, I can have you make cheese.

- Okay.

I would like to make cheese.

- Yeah.

- Those curds are good.

- Oh, they're amazing.

- Yeah.

I've always been a fan of cheese.

You know, one of the first, I think maybe the first show we ever did here at PBS was a cheesemaker down in Vermilion County.

She was a lot younger than you and I.

And I asked her if she remembered the old cartoons Time for Timer, do you remember that?

He was a wheel of cheese, and... Huh?

- You must be old.

- [Rob] Do you remember him?

- No, I don't remember it.

- Okay.

Did you not watch TV?

- I do, but no, I was mainly a sports guy.

- He was like a...

It was all over, you know, "I'm hunkerin' and for a hank of cheese"?

- Now that one, I remember that one.

- Yeah, that's Time for Timer.

- That's the one?

Okay.

I know that line.

- "When your 10-gallons hat is feeling 10-gallons flat"?

- I haven't heard that.

- Hunker for a... - For a hunk of cheese.

- A hunk of cheese.

I didn't know that was so rare that people didn't know.

- Are we done 'cause I'm mind-blown right now.

I don't know what to think.

- You would think someone that makes cheese would have that thing memorized would have like a poster autograph.

I don't know if the cheese is still alive.

I don't know if he was ever alive.

- Good question.

- Skip back.

Back to relevant questions here.

(Ken laughs) How many different types of cheeses do you make?

- The right answer would be too many for now.

And what I mean by that?

When we first started... - I feel like I should ask a judge if I could treat you as a hostile witness.

- Do you wanna redo?

(Rob and Ken laugh) - So if there was a range between one and infinity, where would your cheese selection...?

- We started with 80 and we're down to about 30 now.

- [Rob] 80?

- And that's a lot of varieties of cheddar.

- [Rob] Okay.

- So what I mean by that is you could walk into our store and have your choice of just a straight white cheddar or a regular orange cheddar.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- Or you could do a green onion cheddar, bacon cheddar.

- Sounds good.

- Just whatever you're looking for.

- You've got holla back girl jack.

Is that how you say it?

- Holla back jack.

- Oh, there's no... Holla back jack.

That's some people call 'em the jalapenos.

- That could be.

- Yeah.

It's got jalapenos.

What else?

- So you've got jalapenos, bacon mixed into a Monterey Jack.

- Is that a big seller?

- It is.

It's become one of our top 10.

- Mango habanero.

- Mango habanero, little sweet, little... - How's it?

Haba?

- Habanero.

- Habanero.

- Habanero.

- Some are sausage cheddar.

That sounds like a treat in Chicago.

- That sounds more like Wisconsin there.

- And dill cheddar.

Okay.

- Believe it or not, one of our top sellers as well.

- Put a little dill spice in there.

It's like a pickle and a cheese stick all mashed up in one.

- Dill weed and a white cheddar.

- [Rob] Dill?

- Weed, dill.

- [Rob] Dill weed.

- Yep.

- I just called someone that the other day.

(Rob and Ken laugh) All right.

So what is the number one seller?

- Number one seller is the green onion cheddar.

- [Rob] And that sounds good.

- It's really good if you like green onions.

- I asked you on... Now, okay, here's the thing.

I asked you when we interviewed you on the XM show, if you'd ever seen Napoleon Dynamite, when he was judging and you said you were gonna do it, that's been a while ago.

Have you watched it yet?

- I have not.

(Rob sighs) I know, I've got homework.

It's okay.

- You had homework.

- See how school was for me - You didn't know the assignment, as they say back in the day.

Do you know the most expensive milk in the world is made from donkey's milk?

- Did not know that.

- You didn't know that.

Well, I'm glad I could teach you something today.

So do you have any donkeys on the farm?

- I do not.

- Huh.

You should milk mules.

I bet you that'd be worth more.

- Oh, cows are good enough.

- [Rob] I don't think you can milk the mule.

- We get asked a lot of times, "do you have any goat's cheese or goat's milk?"

And there's a lot of questions that come out, which is neat because people are thinking.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- But one of the most popular, there's a cheesemaker up in Wisconsin that has a mix of cow's milk, goat's milk and sheep's milk.

- [Rob] Ooh.

- All combined in one.

And it's a great selling product.

- Really?

Okay.

You can't milk mules by the way.

That was a joke.

- That's why I was looking at you kind of waiting for it, but I get it now.

- The best jokes are the ones you have to explain, Ken.

- Thanks, Rob.

(Rob laughs) - All right.

How do you sell this cheese?

- So we've got several different ways that we move it.

We're in just over 200 locations throughout about 150 mile radius of Bloomington.

- [Rob] That's a lot.

- It's a lot of traveling.

- How'd you get that?

I mean, did you just stop in say, "hey, buy my cheese"?

- To start, yes.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- It was a lot of handing out samples try it, see what you think I'll get back with you next week.

And the neat part is, is as restaurants and deli managers, and that started to jump on it.

We had more people coming at us, which meant that we weren't out pounding the sidewalk.

- Well, it also meant that you got a good product, right?

- We've got a good product, yeah.

- Yeah.

- I'm happy with what we're doing.

- Is that annoying?

Like when you're first starting out, you're handing stuff to people and they're like, "oh, this is the best cheese I've ever had" and you're like, "okay, how much you wanna order?"

"Oh, I don't know."

- Yeah.

Come back and get it.

They never do.

- [Rob] Yeah.

I've always tried to...

If I can get the product in their mouth, they'll buy it.

The main thing is trying to get them to repeat and come into the store.

You know, it's more of a destination than it is coming out to get your week's allotment of meat and cheese.

And so what we've had to do is work really closely with the delis, the shopping, the grocery stores, everything that we can do.

The biggest part of our growth right now is on the restaurant side.

- Oh yeah.

More of a... Is it because you have more of a high-end product?

- I think that we got more of a high-end product.

The push from the public has been, "we want to know how this product came about."

It's even better if they could meet the person that's producing it.

But they wanna have a name and a face to go with it and know that everything was whether the word's "humanely" done.

But how do we produce this?

How does Ken do this?

And at the same time, getting to work with these restaurants.

Cheese curds are a huge mover, as far as it doesn't matter if it's a high-end restaurant or if it's your mom and pop little pubs.

- [Rob] Really?

- And it's amazing.

- 'Cause that seems like more of a bar food.

- It would seem like more of a bar food.

This, in fact, Monday we had 16 25-pound bags of cheese curds leave the store to go to restaurants.

- [Rob] Oh wow.

- That's a lot of cheese cards in one day, even for us.

But the neat part about that isn't so much the sales and what the quantity was.

It's that we're seeing people go back out to eat again and it's happening.

And it's a real positive for us.

- Your wife, Becky, and your daughter, Lee.

- Leah.

- Leah.

When you were growing up, if there was only a girl, they probably would not be talking about a kid coming back.

- Correct.

- Things have changed now.

- Yep.

- Would you be...

I know, yeah, it's her choice, which, if you wanna keep it that way... (Rob and Ken laugh) but are you excited about maybe her coming back?

- I'm excited that there's a possibility and Leah and I are very much similar.

- [Rob] Oh.

- And, so yeah, it can be a... Yeah.

I knew that look.

It can be tricky because she doesn't wanna do what dad does.

Getting up early in the morning to go down and milk and feed cows.

But she's always been interested in what mom has done.

And mom works for Growmark.

She's been there.

She's a lifer, pretty much, with Growmark.

But on the flip side, Leah has interest in the business.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- And so if we could, somewhere down the road, find that right mix.

As we continue to grow, maybe it'll be there.

- I would ground her until she finds it.

- I've thought about that at times too.

It's not a bad idea.

(Rob and Ken laugh) - Do you know what a charcuterie board actually stands for?

- What's it stand for?

- It's French for bad producer.

(Ken laughs) - For bad producer?

- Yeah.

It's a little private joke.

WTBP joke.

- That was pretty gouda.

- It's pretty gouda.

Thank you.

I bet you have umpteen cheese jokes.

- No, very limited.

Very limited.

- No, you're not that sharp.

- No.

- It's, that's a cheese joke.

- Pretty curdy, pretty dark.

- We should probably stop.

If people wanna find out more about Ropp Jersey Cheese, where do they go?

- They can, first of all, they more than welcome to come out and visit Ropp Farms, Ropp Jersey Cheese.

We're open Monday through Saturday from 9:00 to 5:30 and that's year round.

- And do what?

Do you have tours?

- We offer tours.

We've had to change that kinda lineup a little bit over the years.

We had some things happen that I'd like to say were just kind of crazy circumstances, but you know... - [Rob] Was there a cow incident?

- No, there was a cat incident and a... We had a little one get clawed by a cat and the parents went ahead and sued.

And so we had to settle... - Because they got... Oh, welcome to farm life, kids.

- The thing is, the insurance company came at me and I understand their logic, too.

They said either you're in the tourism business or you're making cheese.

- [Rob] Oh, yeah.

- You gotta decide.

- Oh.

All right.

So they can come to the farm.

Do you have a website or social media?

- Plenty.

You can go to roppcheese.com.

You can visit our online store there as well.

Feel free to email us through the site.

I'd be happy to take emails and answer questions.

We do ship all over the place.

It was kind of neat.

when we first started out, we had some troops still over water and parents would come and actually ship the product to their kids because they wanted to feel a little bit of home.

- That has gotta make you feel really good.

- Yeah, it was neat.

And so, yeah, there's a lot of ways to get hold of us.

- Yep.

Ken Ropp, Ropp Jersey Cheese.

Ken, I really appreciate you taking the time to come and see us.

And I can't wait to try some more of your cheese.

So Ken, thank you very much.

Everybody else we'll catch you next time.