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Jun 30, 2023

From farm to table: A family’s legacy continues

Alan Royek of Till Top Creamery highlights the 100-year history of his family’s dairy farm during a presentation at the museum on Monday. In the early 1900s, Jacob Rojek (now spelled Royek) immigrated

Alan Royek of Till Top Creamery highlights the 100-year history of his family’s dairy farm during a presentation at the museum on Monday.

In the early 1900s, Jacob Rojek (now spelled Royek) immigrated from Poland to the U.S. through Ellis Island. In 1921, he purchased a homestead in Corry, at the top of the South Center Street hill.

Over 100 years later, his family is still farming there today.

Jacob was great-grandfather to Alan Royek, who owns Till Top Creamery on Pennsylvania Avenue along with his wife Alyssa. The two visited Corry Area Historical Museum on Monday and shared about the history of the Royek family farm, which has been designated a Century Farm and Dairy of Distinction.

The first classification indicates the farm has been owned by the same family for at least 100 consecutive years, and the second, that it has been well maintained, presenting a positive image of agriculture in Pennsylvania.

After relating how his great-grandfather got started, Royek continued to talk about his grandfather, Jacob’s son, Walter Steven Royek, who doubled the small herd with an addition to the original milking barn.

Walter Steven died in 1978 at the age of 56, Royek said. Royek’s father and Walter Steven’s son, Walter Joseph, was 16 years old at the time. After about a two-year gap, during which Walter Joseph worked outside the farm, he decided to return home and grow his own heard again, from 20 to 30 and then 50 cows.

Currently, the farm is home to roughly 100 head of cattle, about 50 to 60 of which are milking, Royek pointed out. The others are calves and young stock. The farm also constitutes about 200 acres of crops that feed those animals.

“The farm you see today is the result of the hard work and deviation of these three generations, and also the fourth,” Royek said.

That fourth generation consists of Royek and his three siblings, though of the four of them, he said he was the one who took to the farm the most, recounting memories of working many hours in the barn or fields with his father.

In 2019, an idea came to Royek and his wife about opening the store now known as Till Top Creamery, which sells freshly bottled and pasteurized (but not homogenized) milk from the farm, which produces roughly 3,000 pounds —about 200 to 300 gallons — per day.

It took a couple of years of planning, but in 2021, the two purchased the building that now houses their storefront, which was once home to Grange League Federation, or GLF Feeds, and Agway.

“There’s a good 50 years at least of agriculture in that building,” Royek said. The pair purchased the building from Linden Plumbing, Heating & AC, and it took some renovations before it was ready to open in June 2022.

To get up and running, the Royeks needed a new pasteurizer and bottler along with other equipment that they purchased used.

The pasteurization process, Royek explained, heats the milk up to roughly 145 degrees Fahrenheit within about 30 minutes in order to kill unwanted bacteria. Then, there is a rapid cooling process that cools it back down to 45 to 50 degrees before it is put in a bulk tank that cools it the rest way to about 38 to 42 degrees.

The rapid cooling process can cool about 150 gallons in five to 10 minutes, Royek said, noting the faster the milk is cooled, the longer the shelf life it has.

Homogenization, on the other hand, is a process that disperses the fat molecules, makes them smaller and keeps the cream from separating and rising to the top of the jug.

Royek has opted not to homogenize his milk, noting he enjoyed the experience growing up of shaking the bottle to mix the cream back in.

“We felt it [homogenization] took away from the end product,” he said. “I grew up on raw milk, and I wanted to keep that aspect of it.”

Besides at their own store, Till Top milk can be found at Ploss’ Lunch Box and Barista’s Roast in Corry, as well as Simple Dick’s Outlet City and Sure Fine grocery store in Warren.

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