POPLARVILLE — Tough economic times has sheared away hundreds of dairy farmers over the past decades in Pearl River and surrounding counties, and if you want to remain in the business now, you have to be big and always looking for ways to improve or expand the operation. Butch Smith makes his living as a nurse, He works at Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg. That’s his day job. The family and his father, Kiahnell Smith, has a dairy farm on 100 acres about 11 miles east of here on Mississippi Highway 26. They milk 65 Jersey dairy cows. He has had that going on here for about nine years. Overall, Kiahnell, has been in the dairy business more than 30 years. After taking about a 10-year hiatus, when he taught agriculture at Gulf Coast Junior College, he opened up his second go of it here on the 100 acres. Butch never was interested in the dairy business, although he was reared next to it, in the middle of it and knows all about it. “I just never was interested in the business and farming, so I trained in school to become a nurse,” he said. You know, there’s that “milking thing” that goes on each day, seven days a week, forever. Discourages a lot of people from entering the dairy business, or sends them packing soon after striking out on their own. “You have to love it to stay in it,” says Kiahnell. Cows eat grass; they produce milk; but the milk has to be harvested, just like a crop. Unlike regular crops, cows eat everyday and produce milk everyday. This is what happened when one of those serendipitous moments came along for Butch. Two of Butch’s teen-aged daughters like to raise and show dairy cows in the Pearl River County 4-H competition, and, of course, dad was drafted to help in his spare time when he wasn’t nursing. “You know, we were out here at the farm working with the cows much more often,” said Butch. One time Butch was in Oxford at a show with his daughters, and he bumped into this man who owned only six Jersey milk cows, which produced 200 gallons of milk per week. Well, that was not a “wow-moment” for Butch, who was familiar with how much milk dairy cows can produce, but what did catch Butch’s attention was how much money this guy was making per gallon off that 200 gallons. “Through good marketing techniques and appealing to a specific clientele, those who want home-grown food without additives, the specialty health markets, he was getting $8 per gallon and selling all 200 gallons each week. He delivered it to a market. Now my father, wholesaling milk, was getting paid about 80 cents to $1 a gallon,” said Butch. “The lights went on in my head,” he said. Do the math. Two-hundred times eight equals $1,600 a week, or $83,200 a year. Of course, overhead comes out of that, but the figures motivated Butch. His father has 65 Jerseys. Butch began research into what it would take to add, as an adjunct to his father’s basic dairy business, a creamery that would serve the specialty markets. It took about six to eight months to do the research, get the necessary licenses and equipment in place, and early this month, only about two weeks ago, he, his wife, and family members launched “Country Girls Creamery,” which produces and sells, among other things, milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, jellies, milk baths and lotions. He markets to mainly specialty markets, like farmers’ markets in Wiggins, Poplarville and Hattiesburg, and plans on adding other distribution points as business expands. Some customers come to his farm and buy directly from him. He’s looking for an outlet in the Picayune area, but he is careful about where he places his product. The farm is located 9.1 miles east of Interstate 59 going towards Wiggins on Miss. 26. Then take a left on Sammy Jo Road and follow it north to the end to the Smith farm. The address, for those with a GPS, is 203 Sammy Jo Road, Lumberton, Miss. The farm is on a mail route out of Lumberton. The phone number is 601-606-1762. The cheeses that the Smiths produce are most interesting: There’s jalapeno, pineapple, plain, honey pecan, garlic and onion, all spreadable. He does not offer buttermilk. What does the Smiths’ butter, cheeses and milk offer that would allow them to charge a little more for it, although his prices are competitive? Well, for one thing, says Butch, the milk comes from Jersey cows, which are pasture grazed. That means they walk around and get exercise. Next, Jersey milk is more nutritious than that produced by other dairy breeds. It contains the highest levels of proteins, says Butch. It also contains 20 percent more calcium than other milk, and more vitamin A, B1 and the highest concentrations of B2. Also, surveys say that milk from Jersey cows taste better. It does; the writer sampled it. The reason Jersey milk tastes better, says Smith, is the milk has a higher milk solids (not fat) content. Therefore reduced fat Jersey milk tastes delicious, he says. The milk has a cream line because it is not homogenized, which is another benefit of the milk. “When milk is homogenized, it breaks down the fat into particles small enough to be absorbed into our blood stream directly from the gastrointestinal system,” Smith said. “That puts you in line for many health problems.” He added, “Our milk is pasteurized, free of hormones, antibiotics and pesticides. It is also processed to meet the standards of the Mississippi Department of Health.” What the Smiths are trying to do is parlay a traditional dairy operation into an expanded operation of a creamery, a production unit. That way they can get into the market more directly and make more money. Mainline dairy farmers are more like wholesalers, but moving into the creamery end of the business is much like pushing into manufacturing of milk products. There is more expense and responsibility, but the chance of a bigger profit is attractive. Butch’s father, Kiahnell (pronounced Ki-nail), can remember when the dairy business was one of the largest industries in the county when the Crosby family was into it. He says that after the Crosby family harvested the virgin timber here, they, among other things, opened up a dairy and creamery business here. The main farm was located at Hillcrest Farm where Anchor Lake is now located. There’s only one old weather-beaten arch left of the farm that marks the entrance to the farm. During World War II about 300 German prisoners worked on the farm, too. “If you had a barn and place to milk, Crosby would loan you the money to purchase 20 cows, and you were in the business,” said Kiahnell. “And people, especially farmers out in the country, jumped at the opportunity, because it was the Great Depression, and most of’em didn’t even have enough money to buy a Coke. There was no money here.” At one time, he says, during the height of the dairying operations in Pearl River County, mainly in the 1950s and very early 1960s, there were 186 dairy farms spread throughout the county. The Crosby operation was known as Crosby Dairy Products, and it made ice cream and all sorts of products that were distributed throughout the South. “At one time, they shipped train-car loads of canned milk out of here,” said Kiahnell. “Now, there are only about three dairy farms in Pearl River County,” he added.