FILL THE SCHOOL BUS -- with Sour Cream!?

Here in Bossier it’s almost time for school to start! That means it’s a good time to make a pitch for United Way of NWLA’s Fill the Bus campaign.  Each of your Bossier Parish Libraries branches has a box available through Aug. 2nd to collect school supplies for this program. The United Way will distribute the supplies to Bossier schools and students who need them. 

Did you know almost a century ago there was another program where school buses were used to provide community aid for tough economic times. In 1930, the first full year of the Great Depression, the Bossier Parish School Board had shelves installed in the back of school buses so the buses could contain not only students, but sour cream! That might sound a bit odd, but sour cream was very deliberately chosen for what would now be referred to as a “cash cow” project. It was a project designed to bring local farmers additional cash with little ongoing investment beyond the initial one, which in this case was literally the purchase of a cow! 

Bossier parish farm agent H.F. Spencer, as well as agriculture agents across the region, encouraged farmers to get a cow, or maybe even a few cows, which could then produce cream that could be sold as a profitable “sideline” in the slower season of their farms, like late fall and winter. Agent Spencer believed that the cows could “bring in a nice little pay check during a season that is often barren for most farmers. Though they cannot hope to realize any great profit from such a program, they can, by using sour cream shipping as a sideline, make enough money to buy groceries and other necessities during the great part of the year.” 

Why sour cream? According to agent Spencer, as reported in the “Bossier Banner-Progress” in September, 1930, “It is not necessary to have dairy barns and practice extreme sanitation with sour cream as with marketing whole milk.” He instructed, “Cows may be milked in the usual way, the cream skimmed off by hand each day and put away in a cool place, preferably in a tub of cool water. Then when the shipping day is at hand the cream is taken to the station and the money received for it.” The farmer could keep the skim milk at home “to feed to hogs and poultry.” Spencer admitted the price for the sour cream was not as much as for milk, but given that refrigeration was prohibitively expensive (and electrification had not yet reached all of rural Bossier), he argued that with the lower overhead costs for sour cream, the profit from cream versus milk was just about equal.

The August 14, 1930, issue of the “Bossier Banner” reported that,

 “As evidence of the interest in the milk cow, the Bossier Parish School Board held a special meeting Monday to discuss plans and ways of aiding the farmers of the parish in the marketing of sour cream.  All members of the Board were very much interested in the movement, and have agreed to equip their school buses with racks for the transporting of cans of cream and other farm produce to the high school agricultural departments.” 

In other words, the buses would pick up both kids and cream on their drives through rural Bossier Parish, and bring them both to school! Once at the high schools, the cream was tested for butterfat in the agriculture department and then shipped to the Claiborne Cooperative Creamery in Homer, which would pay by the pound of butterfat. 

The Bossier Parish Libraries History Center can provide an abundance of interesting facts about Bossier Parish.  Visit us soon at 2206 Beckett Street, Bossier City. We are now open: M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Fill the Bus School Supplies will be collected from July 14 - August 2. Requested supplies include pencils/pens (black, red, blue), wide ruled lose leaf paper, glue bottles or sticks, safety scissors, and crayons. For more information, and for other intriguing facts, photos, and videos of Bossier Parish history, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/

Photo: Claiborne Creamery, courtesy of the Claiborne Parish Library. The Claiborne Parish Cooperative Creamery provided farmers of the region, which included Bossier Parish, a cash market for milk and cream. The Creamery opened on June 16, 1929 and operated successfully until the business sold in 1960.

Article by: Pam Carlisle