Cream of the crops

Published 6:00 pm Sunday, June 6, 2010

The cream is rising to the top at the Brookhaven FarmersMarket.

A new vendor has joined the Friday-morning garden sale for 2010and will bring the city fresh milk and dairy products straight fromthe farm throughout the summer and, if all goes well, beyond. Theunprocessed milk, homemade yogurt and other fun foods come straightfrom the Progress Milk Barn at Mauthe Farms in the southeasterncorner of Pike County.

Farm owners Kenny and Jamie Mauthe think their stuff is thebest, and they think farmers market shoppers will agree.

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“It’s local, you know where it’s coming from. It was processedtwo days ago and it’s fresh – not being trucked across thecountry,” Jamie Mauthe said Friday morning while opening her boothat the first farmers market of the summer. “It’s coming almost fromthe cow to the consumer.”

Mauthe Farms covers 50 acres, and the husband and wife dairymenmilk only five cows – three Holsteins and two Jerseys – to producea shopping list of super-fresh dairy products. Friday, Jamie openedshop by selling milk by the pint and half-gallon in glass bottles,yogurt and Creole cream cheese cheesecakes. As the summer goes on,she plans to add chocolate milk, reduced fat milk and soft and hardcheeses.

For now, the milk sells for $3 per half-gallon or $2 per quart,with prices going down when consumers return the glass bottles fora refill. The yogurt is $3 per pint, with cheesecake prices varyingby size.

Mauthe Farms’ milk is pasteurized slightly and not homogenizedat all. The farm is only a step away from being able to carry theorganic label – the Mauthes use no chemicals, growth hormones orpesticides, but they do utilize non-organic feed. They only processthe milk as much as they have to.

“We pasteurize to the minimum state requirements,” Jamie said.”In order to get milk to last long enough to be shipped across thecountry, they ultra-pasteurize it, heating it up real hot. It killsall the taste, all the freshness.”

The Mauthes know what makes milk good and what makes it bad.

Kenny is a third-generation dairy farmer, and he was stillmanaging a big herd until 2005. The Mauthes were milking 40 cows on335 acres as part of their commercial operation and were haulingtheir specialty products to the New Orleans market six days a week,where they distributed to 25 stores. But Hurricane Katrina roaredinto the South that August, and their business came to an abruptend.

“We lost our market, our total income,” Jamie said.

The Mauthes quit dairying completely after the hurricane, withKenny going through several jobs while Jamie found employment in agarden center. But they worked constantly to bring their businessback. The entire operation depended on finding an affordablepasteurizer. New ones can range from $15,000 to $20,000, Jamiesaid, but the Mauthes bought theirs for $1,200 from Alcorn StateUniversity when it downsized.

Now they’ve arrived – and just in a nick of time. They justreceived their permit from the Mississippi State Department ofHealth Wednesday at 2 p.m.

They’re starting small. For now, Brookhaven is the onlymarket.

“What we’re hoping to do is build a clientele in this area,”Jamie said. “We’ll be here every Friday for the farmers market, andif we can get enough customers, we’ll drive up here once per weekafter that.”

With one Friday down, Mauthe Farms is off to a good start.

“We had a real good response, and I’m really excited about it,”Jamie said. “People have been looking for our kind of milk.”