In Burns And Carpenter, Ice Cream Is Smoothing Old Wyoming Rivalry

The little burgs of Burns and Carpenter sit roughly 15 miles apart out on the Great Plains about 20 minutes east of Cheyenne.

At one time, both towns had their own schools, as did most of the farming communities scattered along the cusp of the Wyoming-Nebraska state line. Carpenter and Burns were even rivals once upon a time.

But in the 1970s, as locals tell it, the Carpenter school was shut down and classes were moved to Burns.

“That caused a lot of hard feelings,” Cody Smith told Cowboy State Daily. His family goes back generations in Carpenter.

The Smiths never imagined that their once-disliked rival town would become central to their family’s future, as they’ve established an ice cream business there.

Ice Cream In Burns

Smith went to the school in Burns. On Monday, he stood in the dining area of his family’s new business, Josie’s Creamery ice cream kitchen and scoop shop.

It’s a space he was familiar with long before the Smiths set up shop.

“This used to be the school band room,” he said. “I had band classes right here.”

Back in the kitchen, his wife Coralee was running some liquid ice cream mix though a machine called a batch freezer. It condenses the mix into a slurry, which is put into containers and placed in a hardening freezer.

In the immediate area, the nearest “big” town is Pine Bluffs with a population of roughly 1,200. It hosts a few businesses and some schools. It’s where Coralee and Cody send their three children to school.

Prior to opening Josie’s Creamery, the Smith’s didn’t spend much time in Burns. They instead traveled to Pine Bluffs, which they simply call “Pine,” to shop and send their kids to school.

“Pine was our town to go to,” Coralee said. “It was where we go for supplies and where the kids go to school. But since we’ve opened the shop here in Burns, we’ve been getting to know Burns and making some great connections with the community here.”

It turns out, ice cream really does bridge gaps and bring people together.

Burns has a fascinating history, Cody said. German settlers originally named it “Luther” in honor of the German church reformer Martin Luther, founder of the Protestant movement.

But after the town was incorporated, the name was changed to Burns, after a Union Pacific Telegrapher, J.J. Burns.

A New Family Venture

Wyoming is associated with beef ranching, but there’s a large, thriving dairy farm in the Burns-Carpenter area.

Most family farms have at least one milking cow, so Cody and Coralee grew up around dairy and were familiar with it.

But they weren’t directly involved until a few years ago when they got their first dairy livestock together, a rescued Jersey cow named Josie.

“We named our ice cream business after Josie, the first dairy cow we had,” Coralee said.

Sadly, Josie “got sick and died” about a year and a half ago, she said.

The Smiths have since gotten another dairy cow, but they milk it only for their own household supply.

They get their liquid ice cream mix from a company in Illinois that uses all-natural ingredients. Only the very basics go into their ice cream, such as pasteurized milk, sugar and gum extracts.

The fat content is also high, about 16%, which Cody said adds to the smoothness and exceptional flavor of the ice cream.

“I think people get so used to eating stuff with artificial ingredients in it, and then they taste our ice cream, and it’s like nothing they’ve had before,” he said.

Coralee agreed, explaining that why she thinks the smaller containers from Josie’s Creamery — the cups and pints — are the best sellers.

“People like the smaller sizes, because once they start eating the ice cream, they can’t stop until it’s all gone, and they don’t want to eat a whole quart of ice cream at once,” she said.

A sample bite proved the Smiths’ point about the quality of their all-natural ice cream.

Chosen For Penn State Ice Cream Course

After getting their feet wet in dairy with Josie, the Smiths began mulling selling dairy products. Ice cream seemed like the best choice.

Having no experience in the business, they decided to enroll in a Penn State University agriculture program, even though getting in would be a long shot.

Penn State offers a course on making ice cream on a commercial scale, but it’s extremely exclusive, Cody said.

“They teach you every step, from cow to cone, but the course has only 100 openings per year,” he said.

“Registration goes live on the Penn State website at 9 a.m. on June 8, and it’s full by 9:05,” he added. “I decided to go ahead and try signing us up, and we got in.”

Coralee and Cody went to the main campus in Pennsylvania in January for the weeklong course. Upon completion, they were eager to put their knowledge to use.

Back To The Old School

The next challenge was finding a space to set up shop.

“At first I thought we would be making ice cream in our garage,” Cody said.

But they found out that the kitchen and dining space at the old school in Burns was available for lease.

When a new school was built in Burns about 20 years ago, the old building was given to the town. It’s been the town hall since, serving as a recreation center and providing leased spaces for a few small businesses.

Coralee and Cody pitched their idea for an ice cream kitchen and scoop shop to the Burns Town Council and got the green light to move in.

Next, the operation had to pass an inspection by the Wyoming Department of Agriculture to ensure it met commercial food sales standards.

“We were dreading that part, and thought the process was going to be horrible,” Cody said.

But it went smoothly. Josie’s Creamery was approved and started churning out ice cream in March.

“It’s nice that our state government is encouraging to small businesses,” Cody said.

Up-Front Investment

Getting the proper equipment wasn’t cheap, but not as expensive as they worried it would be.

Ice Cream batch freezers are highly specialized equipment, a single unit can cost as much as $45,000.

Though a connection they’d made at the Penn State ice cream making course, the Smiths got a reliable used unit for about $10,000.

The hardening freezer cost another $14,000. Then there are the ongoing costs of the ice cream mix, containers and labels. It was a hefty up-front investment, but they’ve almost made that money back, and soon start turning a profit, Cody said.

It’s All In The Size Of The Crystals

A good hardening freezer is an absolute necessity, Coralee said. Most standard freezers go down to just a few degrees below zero. The freezer the Smiths found plunges all the way down to 30 degrees below zero.

Because of the sugar and other ingredients, ice cream must be frozen at much lower temperatures than other products, she said.

And it needs to be frozen quickly and properly, Cody said.

The amount of ice crystals in ice cream never changes. But proper freezing creates smaller crystals. If the crystals get too big, ice cream starts to get a undesirable grainy or “sandy” texture to it, he said.

“The smaller the crystals, the smoother the ice cream,” he said.

High Hopes

The whole family pitches in with the ice cream business four days a week, “three days of making and packaging ice cream and one day of deliveries,” Coralee said.

She and the Smith’s daughter Grace are the most involved.

Because the local community is so small, the scoop shop is open only two days a week.

The bulk of business is deliveries, Coralee said. Josie’s Creamery ice cream is offered at seven locations between Pine Bluffs and Cheyenne.

She loads the ice cream from the hardening freezer into coolers and makes deliveries in her Chevy Suburban.

“I pre-chill the coolers in our walk-in freezer, so it stays properly frozen during the deliveries,” she said.

Cody said the ice cream is selling great.

“In just these past few months, we’ve gotten to where I’d thought we’d be after two years,” he said. “I can see this going really big.”

Contact Mark Heinz at mark@cowboystatedaily.com

Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.