Malcolm Dykes: The Tradition Lives On, Dairy Festival 2023

If my little Tylertown, Walthall County MS has anything to boost of, it's our annual get together in celebration of what put us on the map, The Dairy Festival.

With thousands of attenders visiting, it is a return in time when our community was basically a dairy farming community with most households having a dairy.

They may not have had only 10 or 12 cows but there were many dairies thus earning us the name the Cream Picture of MS.

Times change and so does our way of making a living and the diaries for the most part are gone with only the old dairy barns still standing by the road as a relic and not a reality.

In their place is chicken farming, cattle farming and logging.

Other than that if a man is going to provide for his family he has to go out to parts beyond like me even overseas to have any kind of income worth talking about.

But yesterday's events had my Mikella girl standing by the main symbol of the festival and it's meaning, a big ol Holstein moma cow.eating hay like all that provided the milk.

I spent  many a morning and afternoon up under the business end of many like that old cow attaching the vacuum milking machine to those 4 utters on my sister Jeanette Dillon's dairy farm growing up.

Our 65th governor, the honorable Gov. Tate Reeves, was in attendance and was seen churning butter along beside a dozen more candidates running for office.

This is the main attraction for the festival, a fundraiser that has local celebrities churning as it is election year for the locals, had candidates for this year's election shaking their large jar of fresh milk the old fashioned way to make butter.

For several minutes, there was a whole lot of shaking going on!

The first one to get their butter made is the winner and sadly, our good governor came in last!

There was the usual display of all the old farm equipment, ancient in comparison to today's equipment like an old 'Puttin John', the old John Deere tractor that the farmers once used to work their fields with that gave off that 'putt-putt' sound.

The shaded walking paths of the Magee's Creek Water Park where the event was held had all of us attenders walking and examining all the many vendors with their crafts on display for sale..  

Booth's like my wife's friend Evelyn and husband with their veggies booth, all grown from their 1/3 acre garden.

Yes, it is always a delight to attend our yearly event and walk back down memory lane.

The tradition lived on, Dairy Festival 2023.

God bless you and God bless America.