Koppings Proud to Keep Farming in the Family

In 1870, a husband and wife bought 80 acres of land in Lemont from two elderly bachelor brothers.

Today, 140 years later, their great-great grandson, Gerald Kopping, and his wife, Linda, work on 42 acres of the original 80-acre farm near Bell Road and 131st Street. The Koppings board more than 100 horses and grow hay for feed and to sell.

“I wasn’t planning to be a farmer,” Gerry said. “My dad didn’t want me to farm because he said you couldn’t make a  good living at it."

Now, Gerry is on the board of the Cook County Farm Bureau.

Gerry’s father, Harold, 86, still lives in the house where Gerry and his sister were raised. Harold tends to a large flock of hens, their eggs and a white goat named Bailey. Before retirement, Harold worked for the nearby Cook County Forest Preserves.

Gerry’s mother, Loretta, was the great-granddaughter of the couple who emigrated from the border area of Luxembourg and Germany. Gerry said they chose Lemont because of the rolling terrain, which reminded them of their homeland. Loretta, who used to sell eggs to grocery stores in Lemont, died last year at age 86.

Gerry’s great-great grandparents “owned a bar first. But they wanted a farm so they bought the land,” he said.  The dairy farm had Holstein cows and a few pigs. Gerry’s dad eventually sold  half of the farmland.

Over the years, Gerry’s encounters with horses brought the stable idea — and wife Linda — into his life. 

When Gerry was a child, an annual carnival in the area would keep its ponies on the Kopping farm.  “We would have  20 ponies for the winter,” Gerry said.

Then during the ’80s, a poor economy led people to dump their animal on the farm, Gerry said. At age 15 or 16, he came to find a horse tied to a fence post.

"That was his first horse," he said.

During college, Gerry worked at a feed store and would hear people asking for horse stalls to rent. Many horse stables were closing  in the area, including two on the site of  Menard’s in Homer Glen.

And later, a friend suggested to Linda, who had a horse, that she might like to meet Gerry. When Gerry called to ask if she wanted to move her horse to his place, she said no.

“I turned him down,” she said with a laugh. But “one thing led to another; it just clicked." The couple will be married 18 years.

The Koppings are proud of the history of the farm. They pull out a painting of the farm as it was years ago. The barn still stands; the family home is in its original configuration.

Gerry and Linda Kopping have three children.

Rebecca, 16, is an accomplished horsewoman who has qualified for the quarter-horse world show in Oklahoma this summer. Her horse, Calvin (or more formally, Treasured Art) is boarded not at the family stables but at her trainer’s stable in a north suburb.

“Trainers have a reputation of who’s who, and judges know the trainers, so you have to be with a top trainer,” Gerry said.

Rebecca, who has been riding since age 3, rides English-style, and also jumps horses and has barrel-raced.

Her two brothers, twins Jarrod and Justin, will soon be 15. Both can ride, but neither has shown a passion for horses. The boys said they prefer snowmobiling and paintball. The mention of an elaborate paintball venue in Joliet sparked a spirited conversation among the boys and their father.

Justin said he thinks the paintball strike hurts less “than the suspense of waiting to be hit.”

Jarrod and Justin are in eighth grade at Old Quarry Middle School and will go on to Lemont High School.

Also in the family is the lively Titan, a Jack Russell terrier.

Linda rides a little, “totally a beginner level,” and is taking lessons in dressage, “kind of a ballet for horses,” Gerry said.

Linda, who grew up in Lyons, recalls going to a party every year in the Lemont area with a friend.

“We’d get to a gravel road and I’d ask her what’s down that road," Linda said. "She would always say there’s nothing there and would kind of dismiss me. The next year, I’d ask again and she’d say there’s nothing there.”

The gravel road leads to the Kopping farm.

“My whole life is down that gravel road,” Linda said.