A Dairy Good Story: Grate View Farms
Ben and Amber met on a study abroad trip to New Zealand. It was an agronomy and dairy focused trip that Iowa State University sponsored. The trip was 2 weeks on the North Island of New Zealand over Thanksgiving in 2010 and was a fantastic trip. Once they made it back to the United States their fates seemed to be sealed.
Ben grew up on a small dairy farm in Goshen, Indiana, where his family milked Jersey cows. His dad was a first-generation farmer and it truly was a labor of love for this family who also worked full time as a construction foreman and his mom worked as a nurse while raising 3 children. The Selman family was very active in their local 4-H Dairy Club and showing their animals at the county fair. The dairy bug didn’t take long to get ahold of Ben so when looking for colleges it came down to Iowa State University or Purdue University for Dairy Science. Loving the campus and a bigger focus on dairy Ben made the decision to got to Iowa State.
Amber grew up on a multi-generation dairy, beef and crop farm in Eastern Iowa. She caught the love of dairy early on serving as the county’s Alt. Little Miss Dairymaid and later on the county’s Dairy Princess. Like Ben, Amber showed dairy cattle at the county fair. Upon graduation, Iowa State University was a simple decision for this woman who wanted to be a large animal veterinarian. However, after a internship with Midwest Dairy she decided communications was a bit more her style.
After graduation the two moved to Minnesota where Ben bred cows for Genex and Amber did public relations for DuPont Pioneer. Over the next 5 years Amber would sit in many different ag communications positions and Ben would work for a variety of dairy farms as a herdsman throughout Illinois. Upon the arrival of their first child, they decided to move back to Eastern Iowa to start their dream of becoming dairy farmers.
While it took a few years, in 2019 when Ben’s father quit milking, the pair drove 6 hours on I80 through Chicago (twice) to bring home 15 Jersey heifers and officially enter into the dairy business with Amber’s parents. Since then, their roles have grown and adjusted based on the needs of the farm, but their love for dairy farming is something that just continues to get stronger and bigger as they pass it down to their three kiddos.
It did take some discussion and years of thought before Ben and Amber settled on Grate View Farms. Ben’s parents’ farm name was Grateful Acres and Amber’s family farm was Hei-View Farms. Thus, a combination of both family heritages turned into the next generation of dairy farmers – Grate View Dairy.
Welcome to our farm stories!
We are the Heinrich Family (and more!) and we want to share how we are growing our farm one generation at a time. Together as a family we raise corn, soybeans, oats, alfalfa, dairy, beef and more!
Heinrich Farms 