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Silo Serves As Legacy To Dairy Family

Cliff McBride, Tribune photo

Joe Campoamor stands in front of the 1927 silo his grandfather constructed at his dairy farm in Palm River.

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By D'ANN LAWRENCE WHITE, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 13, 2008

PALM RIVER - A distinctive silo covered with square Spanish tile is the only remnant of what once was one of the largest dairy farms in the Southeast.

It has been preserved on the property off U.S. 301 between State Road 60 and Palm River Road, land that is home to the Silo Bend business park. It has been designated as eligible for historical landmark status by the Hillsborough County Planning Commission.

Brandon residents Joe Campoamor and Gloria Nuccio said they believe their grandfather would be pleased that the community has given the old silo a place of honor. Jose Campoamor, who immigrated to Ybor City from the small sea village of Luarca on the coast of Asturias, Spain, erected the silo in 1927, duplicating the silos in his homeland.

Unfortunately, said Joe Campoamor, silos weren't particularly effective for storing cattle feed in Florida, probably because of the humidity. So the tile tower became a storage building for the 150-acre dairy farm Jose Campoamor founded - and a favorite hiding place for games of hide and seek.

The Campoamor farm came about by accident, not design, Nuccio said.

Jose Campoamor, working as a cigar maker in Ybor City, purchased a cow to provide milk for his family, then a friend offered him a couple of more cows.

The cows produced more milk than the family needed, so Campoamor began giving it away to neighbors. Before long, his herd had outgrown the small pasture on Lake and 22nd streets, so Campoamor began searching for a larger pasture.

He purchased 5 acres of palmetto-covered land on U.S. 301 in Palm River in 1921 and, whenever abutting land would go on the market because the landowners fell behind on their taxes, Campoamor would buy it.

"There wasn't a whole lot out here then," said Joe Campoamor, who grew up on the dairy farm and attended Brandon School, now McLane Middle School. "State Road 60 was just a shell road, and there was no Adamo Drive."

The silo wasn't the only thing Jose Campoamor brought from the old country. Joe Campoamor recalls helping his grandfather, father and uncle use a Spanish method of feeding cattle: they created huge haystacks around poles, and as the cows ate from the bottom, fresh hay would fall from the top. The outer layer of hay kept the hay inside the stack fresh.

Although Jose Campoamor preferred traditional ways of doing things, his sons, Joe Jr. and Manuel, were eager to try the newest technology.

They would awaken at 3 each morning to milk the cows, and then deliver milk before arriving at Hillsborough High School. A female classmate took pity on Joe Jr., who often fell asleep in class, so she would do his homework for him.

Later, he married her.

"He got up so early and worked so hard, I just felt sorry for him," Josephine Campoamor, 91, said as she looked through photographs of her late husband. They celebrated their 65th anniversary before his death in 2003.

"He'd get to school just before the bell rang and, as soon as he got out of school, the milk truck would be waiting for him to make afternoon deliveries," she said. "I used to watch him nod off in Spanish class. I don't know how he made it."

When the Campoamor brothers took over the dairy from their father, they were determined to make it one of the largest and most modern dairy operations in the country.

"They did everything from milking to bottling to delivering the milk," Joe Campoamor said. "The dairy grew and grew. At one time, it had 1,400 cows."

To reflect the state-of-the-art technology the brothers introduced, they changed the dairy's name to Modern Dairy.

"It was one of the first dairies to have elevated milking parlors, automated feeding systems and a technique developed by the University of Florida to process the cow manure so it wouldn't pollute Palm River," he said. "They had a system where milk went directly from the cow to refrigerated tanks in less than a minute."

The 1950s proved to be the heyday for family-owned dairies because, with the emergence of supermarkets and grocery stores in the 1960s, big dairies such as Borden's and Sealtest began purchasing milk from smaller dairies and putting their labels on the cartons.

The Campoamors, however, were determined to maintain their independence. When they could no longer compete with the low milk prices the big dairies charged in grocery stores, they found a way to make getting milk more convenient.

They purchased three refrigerated vending machines from a Texas inventor that would dispense half-gallon bottles of milk 24 hours a day. They put one on Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa, another on Bullard Parkway in Temple Terrace and a third on 22nd Street in Ybor City.

The machines were an instant hit.

"It developed into a very profitable business," Joe Campoamor said.

Unfortunately, Borden owned the patent for the vending machines and sued the Campoamors, so the brothers invented their version of the machine. They set up 31 of the milk carton-shaped machines around Tampa and Brandon before the big dairies began fighting back.

In 1963, the influential national dairies persuaded the Florida Milk Commission, originally formed to protect small dairy farmers, to set a minimum price for milk at 92 cents a gallon so the Campoamors could no longer undercut them.

"It started what became known as 'The Milk Wars,'" Joe Campoamor said. "My dad and uncle were fighting for their livelihood, and they believed in what this country stood for. So they kept selling milk at a lower price and almost went to jail."

In a Tampa Times article published Dec. 18, 1963, Joe Jr. Campoamor accused the commission of fixing prices and stated his intention to keep selling milk for 90 cents a gallon.

"They hired a lawyer and were able to prove they didn't violate antitrust laws because they were able to make a profit at the lower price," Joe Campoamor said. The controversy led to the Senate abolishing the milk commission in 1965.

It wouldn't be the last time the Campoamor brothers bucked the system.

In the 1970s, the Department of Agriculture began testing dairy cows for a disease called brucellosis because of fears it could spread undulant fever to humans. However, the test used was only 60 percent accurate. As a result, 8,000 cows, some perfectly healthy, were slaughtered annually.

This time the Campoamors took their fight to Washington. The ensuing legal battle made national news, but it nearly bankrupted the brothers. In the end, they proved the USDA's test was inaccurate and convinced the government that a vaccine against brucellosis was effective.

Ironically, it was progress that ultimately destroyed Modern Dairy.

In the late 1970s, the Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority decided to build the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway, and the preferred route took 30 acres from and divided the Campoamor dairy farm.

"It would have broken the farm up," Nuccio said. "My father and uncle tried to fight it, but the expressway authority condemned their land and paid agricultural prices for it."

"Oh, my gosh," Josephine Campoamor said. "It was devastating. It was the end of our business."

"It was inevitable," Nuccio said. "The town was coming our way, anyway, and my dad was tired of fighting."

The Campoamors closed the dairy in 1985 and sold the property.

"You don't know how happy my daddy was that they didn't tear that silo down, though," Nuccio said.

Joe Campoamor can only guess why his grandfather built the silo out of tile.

"That's the way they did it in Spain, and tile lasts forever," he said.

The two-story silo is reinforced with steel rims and covered with 6-inch-thick, rust-colored tiles Jose Campoamor laid by hand.

Although intended to store Japanese cane that would ferment and turn into silage to be fed to the cows in winter, the silo served another function. During World War II, pilots used the silo as a landmark as they flew into MacDill Air Force Base.

"It didn't work as a silo, but it became a monument to my grandfather," Joe Campoamor said.

Jose Campoamor died in 1959 at age 72, having learned to speak only a few words of English in all his years in the United States.

Living in Brandon with her daughter, Josephine Campoamor said she has good memories of raising her family on the Palm River dairy farm.

"It was a good life," she said. "It was a lot of hard work, but it was always interesting."

Reporter D'Ann Lawrence White can be reached at (813) 657-4524 or dlwhite@tampatrib.com.

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