Sussex dairy farm prospers with ties to Cooperative Extension

Four generations of the Hopkins family on their Sussex County dairy farm (from left): Walter, Burli holding daughter Grace, Jacob, William and Michael

2:25 p.m., July 27, 2005--The value of the support provided by Delaware Cooperative Extension to the state agricultural community is well understood by the Hopkins family, which has been farming in the Lewes area for more than a century and now operates the sprawling Green Acres Dairy Farm on Route 9.

The Hopkins family began an enduring relationship with Cooperative Extension early in the 20th Century through Alden Hopkins Sr., and continues the affiliation to this day through brothers William Hopkins, a 1942 UD graduate, and Alden Hopkins Jr., through William’s son, Walter Hopkins, a 1970 UD graduate, and through Walter’s son, Burli Hopkins, now the farm’s chief herdsman.

The relationship will continue into the foreseeable future with the fourth generation of the Hopkins family now coming of age and enrolling in Sussex County 4-H programs.

Green Acres, established in the 1930s and so named by William Hopkins because “I guess that’s what I always wanted to have, some green acres,” is set on about 1,000 acres just west of Lewes. The livestock includes about 500 milking cows but no chickens, which Walter Hopkins said “makes us unique here” in one of the world’s busiest broiler markets.

“We do a different type of farming than most people around here,” William Hopkins said. “All the crops we grow, the corn and the alfalfa, go through the cows. I like to say that we are refining crops into milk.”

Green Acres is an important part of the annual Sussex County Farm Tour and is “quite a hit,” Walter Hopkins said, drawing thousands of children and their parents.

Participation in the tour, along with an active outreach, is a way of giving back to Cooperative Extension for all the support the organization and its agents have provided over the last nine decades, he said, adding, “We enjoy working with Cooperative Extension to educate the public about agriculture. I think that is a responsibility we have.”

Remembering how his own father worked with the Cooperative Extension, William Hopkins said the first county agent he recalls was M.C. Vaughan from Mississippi, who worked during the 1920s as a young man fresh out of college. He says Vaughan introduced Sussex County farmers to soybeans, now a $46 million per year industry.

William Hopkins credited another agent, Frank Gordy, a 1928 UD graduate who later took a position as director of the then agricultural research station in Georgetown, with helping promote cooperation among farmers that led to a boom in the broiler industry. An important early step was a chicken auction, broadcast on a local radio station, which brought buyers to the farmers in Sussex County. Today, broiler production in the state is a $686 million industry.

Cooperative Extension also was responsible for the introduction of large-scale dairy farming in the Lewes area, according to William Hopkins, who recalls milking his first brindle cows at the age of 2.

The Supplee Wills Jones Milk Co., which served Philadelphia suburbs, expressed an interest in building a dairy receiving station at Nassau, just outside Lewes. “They wouldn’t come unless they were guaranteed a supply of milk,” he said, and Cooperative Extension worked with area farmers and got 15 initial subscribers.

William Hopkins said the dairy business proved strong, providing steady income to local farmers and taking the pressure off their reliance on cash crops.

In subsequent years, Cooperative Extension provided support to help farmers upgrade their herds, Hopkins said, recalling the “bull ring” in which groups of farmers were provided access to registered bulls. “That was an educational process put into action, and spearheaded by Extension,” he said.

Through the years, the family developed close ties with the individual agents, William Hopkins said, including George M. Worrilow, who later became dean of UD’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources from 1954-65, and Bill Henderson, who Alden Hopkins Jr. said served as “a farm evangelist. He would go out of his way to promote agriculture and the Extension Service.”

Now, one of their own family members is part of Cooperative Extension, with William’s son, Brinton Hopkins, serving as a professor of dairy nutrition and an extension dairy specialist at North Carolina State University.

William Hopkins said he cannot imagine a career in farming without Cooperative Extension. “When my great-grandfather started farming, there was no Extension Service. They learned the hard way,” he said. “I hate to think what my life in farming would have been like without them. They have been instrumental in planting the seeds of so many important farm organizations, in providing countless demonstrations of better livestock and crop-management techniques.

“They use every possible means to promote innovation in agriculture. Cooperative Extension truly is an extension of the University in rural education.”

Article by Neil Thomas
Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson

E-mail this article

To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here.